2nd grade Pumpkin Farms

I changed this project slightly this year by allowing students to color their hillsides and pretty much everything except their pumpkins unrealistically!  I love the colorful results!  Their pumpkins had to be orange, but other than that, anything was fine.  We drew these together and colored them with our favorite crayola color sticks!

Over the river and through the woods!

We are working with watercolor in 5th grade to create these beautiful winter scenes.  We discussed opacity in regards to different types of paint, and learning how we have to work from lightest to darkest with watercolor.  By letting each area dry thoroughly, we avoid unwanted "explosions" of color. More pictures coming soon! 

Bicycles!

I saw an idea for this on one of the art blogs I follow and I'm so glad I tried it with 2nd grade!  We drew the bicycle step by step.  Then added the strips to the bottom and the background details with construction paper crayons.

Puzzle trees

I found this neat idea on Pinterest, of course, where I tend to find a lot of inspiration!  We painted our background during the first class.  Next we created patterns in our landscape, flipped our papers over and drew a tree on the back.  I encouraged them to keep their trees SIMPLE!  3 to 4 branches total.  After cutting the trees out, we put the puzzle back together and glued them down onto black paper so that the negative space now becomes the tree.  They are so unique! 

Kindergarten cows!

 I think this is one of my favorite projects with kindergarten!!  They ALWAYS turn out so bright and adorable!!  Who wouldn't want to hang these cuties on the wall?!

Winter birds

Still hoping for some snow here!  So we are still doing winter themed projects for art!  2nd grade has finished their cardinals in the snow this week.  I found this project last year on Pinterest, and my friend and fellow art teacher Michelle Osbourne also does a similar project with some of her classes!  She does a neat variation with painted cardinals.  Perhaps we should try painting our birds next year too! 

Walking in a winter wonderland!

5th graders are finishing up their winter watercolor scenes this week.  We created these step by step and learned how to "plan" for watercolor.  I think they turned out pretty great!

What's the VALUE of a winter sky?

4th grade began their winter sky value study this week.  Value is the lightness and darkness of an object.  After seeing a similar painting on Pinterest, I decide to teach value and color mixing to 4th grade using this beautiful night time sky scene.  It's perfect for a winter's night, don't you think?  We first drew a circle for the moon, then starting with white, we gradually began mixing varying shades of blue then purple and lastly, black.  More pictures to come as they are completed!

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen?

Kindergarten has been busy working on their reindeer paintings this week and I have a few classes finishing up!  We drew them together and discussed horizon line, background, and even a little lesson on foreshortening with the reindeer body!  

Grant Wood Pumpkin Farms!

I found this unique lesson plan from Mrs. Knight's Smartest Artists!  She has a fantastic blog that I love to visit often! Check it out here.  We discussed the artist Grant Wood and looked at several of his rural landscape paintings.  We discussed depth and many of the elements of art, such as line, shapes, colors, space, and value.  We also learned how to show perspective and point of view just by placing objects in certain places on the page and making them smaller or larger.

First we drew our pumpkin farms together and traced over our pencil lines with permanent marker...

 Then I had students color only specific parts of the picture with crayons, encouraging them to color dark and heavy.  "COLOR IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT!"

Last we painted with an acrylic wash of three shades of green, one for each hillside and blue for the sky.