Fun-Filled Friday!

Today marked the end of our study on various artists. We did two projects today, which left me a little worn out at the end of the day...but our creations turned out fantastic! My third graders recreated Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night. For this project we used oil pastels, tissues, as well as white and black construction paper. First, my students took yellow oil pastels and drew the stars. Then they picked up blue and green oil pastels and made several cirlces around the stars. After that, we created a "swirling" effect (showing the wind/movement) using more blue "waves." Taking a tissue, my third graders rubbed the sky to blend in the colors. As the last step to our project, we created the skyline. We discussed the importance of using a "pinch for an inch" when moving from one building to the next. After they cut them out, my students glued the skylines to their sky and there you have it! The finished products look quite nice in our classroom! :)

The last artist that we studied was Jackson Pollock. Although several of my students have done "marble art," they still loved this project! We discussed Pollock's abstract work, and then set out to create our own! Half of my class worked on the actual marble art, while the other half of my class created a similar project using the mouse on their laptop. Then of course, they switched! It must have been a long day because I accidentally placed an "a" where an "o" should be for his last name :) This is probably because another teacher and I keep wanting to call him (Po-lack) not (Paw-luck). Oh well-too late to fix it now, I'll correct it on Monday morning! None of my kiddos have seen it, so all is well!

ART, pART 2!

 

Yesterday, we studied another artist. Georges Seurat was a French painter who led the artistic direction of Neo-impressionism (his work is shown below). To create this art project, we gathered the following materials: long colored paper to hold pictures, sandpaper, crayons,  two small white pieces of paper, an iron, and wax paper. We brainstormed a list of appropriate objects that could be drawn and discussed the importance of creating one object that fills up the page. They colored the sandpaper (very hard) and then I placed the white paper down on my counter, then sandpaper, followed by wax paper and an extra piece of construction paper (just to make sure the crayon didn't melt through). Then I ironed across the top of the layers for a few secons. I stapled the transferred picture (with dots) towards the top of the long black paper, and then placed the sandpaper picture below it. As a challenge, I had several students complete a regular crayon picture of their "original" drawing so we could see how much the color vibrancy changed from one to the next.

Stay tuned for more art projects to come!

More student examples:

 

Wild about ART!

I know what you're thinking: I thought this lady taught in the classroom...? Yes, it's true: I am a third grade teacher, but I also get to teach Art every week to my kiddos! We get to use a variety of materials, but instead of traveling to another teacher/classroom to learn about art, we do it in our own room! Some projects turn out better than others...I just keep telling myself that my hidden artistic talent is going to shine through. While I wait for it to "show up," I'll continue to practice  :) Whenever my students complete an art project, I allow them to "display" it on the whiteboard with a magnet so that we can view everyone's work! They love doing that!

With Math State Assessments underway, we get to enjoy an hour together every afternoon to get creative! Today we studied Pablo Picasso. Featured above is a picture with several of my students' art pieces. My students thought it was fun getting to create a project with an abstract look. Before we began, we talked about Pablo Picasso's life and viewed several of his creations. There is a slideshow (52 seconds) of some of his work shown here.

Another artist that we learned about was Georgia O"Keefe. My students saw pictures of her and her creations. We talked about how most of her art pieces are "close-up" views of flowers. Then we discussed how we could create our own Georgia O'Keefe-inspired artwork. We decided that there should be only one or two flowers on the page, so we would need to spread the petals all the way out to the end of our paper.  Varioud pictures of flowers distributed to each group.  They got to select which flower they wanted and make a quick sketch of it before recreating the picture using oil pastels. They got messy as they rubbed the oil pastels in to "fade in" the colors, but I love the way they turned out! It looks so Spring-y on our bulletin board in the hallway!