Gum balls!

Kindergarten learned about artist Wayne Thiebaud.  He is famous for all of his pictures of desserts!

Our Inspiration!

                                                          

These little artists drew their gumball machines, painted them in and then used dotters to create their gumballs.  Acetate was used to give the appearance of glass.  

Kindergarten artists!

Mrs. Rispo's 1/2 day Kindergarten worked really hard to create their artist self portraits!

Winter landscapes

Kindergarten and 1st Grade created a variety of Winter Landscapes this year!  Each landscape was inspired by a book that we read in class.  

Below, 1st Graders made a picture inspired by the Book Snow Bear.  We focused on a horizon line and Texture!  The little bear is create out of tissue paper and the mama snow bear is created out of a shaving cream glue mixture- Boy did the students have fun using that!

Monsters in my closet!

Kindergarten read Go Away Big Green Monster and as I read, they pointed out different Geometric Shapes.  We then talked about all the shapes we saw that didn't have names like those wiggly arms and the squiggly nose.  Those are called Organic Shapes.  

Collage Birds

The Kindergarteners worked together to create a Class Mural.  

My Many Colored Days

Here's another Dr. Seuss inspired lesson.  I try to take a theme and then get all of my grade levels to do a different project within that theme.  This sometimes poses a challenge but it's always worth it in the end!  I am currently at a school that is Pre-k through 3rd grade so it limits the amount of different lessons that I need to create.  With the combination of snow days, holidays, and various assemblys my kindergarten classes were left with one class period to make a picture for Read Across America.  We read My Many Colored Days  by Dr. Seuss which is a very short book which talks about how colors can represent feelings. 

                                         
                      

 I made a chart with all the different colors written and the class and I brainstormed how each color made us feel.. mad, sad, happy, excited etc.  When the students went back to their seats they got a slip of paper that said..  "The Color ________ makes me feel _________."  The students had to fill in the blank.  As the students were doing this (with spelling assistance from their classroom aid) I passed around tracers of simple figures like the ones used in the book, a magzine page and a white piece of paper to each student.  I chose to use pages from magazines to give their people a little more interest and texture.  Although, if the student was a little over zealous with the paint you would never know they used magazines.  

The Little Engine That Could

The Little Engine that Could inspired this fun project!  

My Kindergarten students have been spending the last few weeks working on Trains!  We read The Little Engine that Could which the kids really enjoyed and it sent such a great message- You can do anything you put your mind to!  So we set our minds to making great Train Scenes. 

The first concept we talked about was Line!  I asked the students what Kind of Lines Mountains were ... We eventually worked our way to Zig Zag Lines.  We used our fingers to make zig zag lines in the air.  THe students seemed to really enjoy this .  NOw for the Hard part- Making the lines on the paper!  After a little adjusting, we got our mountain Lines in!  To try something new, We used Coffee grounds to "paint" our mountains.  Boy What a strong aroma that made!  The Background was decoupage Tissue Paper, and the Track was made with textured paint rollers.

Sandwich Day!

I love Holidays!  Usually we celebrate the typical holidays by making a themed art lesson, But today I decided to celebrate the little publicized holiday known as National Sandwich  Day.  National Sandwich Day is celebrated each year on November 3rd. 

The Sandwich

Students were given a rectangle piece of oaktag, A yellow Triangle for cheese, Green Tissue paper for Lettuce, A red oval for the tomato, white string for onions and either pink paper for ham or brown paper for a burger.  The students were to make their sandwich on the oak tag.   I was given some old seat cushions which ended up being perfect for our crust.