Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays, I'm not sure why, maybe it's all the red and pink!  I've always loved it and now with my own children we always make a big deal of Valentine's Day every year.  My students are working on these nifty looking abstract hearts this week.  I've done so many variations of this project, but it's a great quick, yet neat looking design that I always fall back on!

My usual variation for older students involves patterns!

Penguins sliding down the hill!

Kindergarten created these adorable penguins over the last few weeks.  This was a fantastic lesson for teaching depth.  I simplified it a little by giving them 3 different sized ovals for each of the penguins.  We added the details, colored the beak and feet, painted them black and lastly painted the sky and a light shadow underneath.  

Birch trees, 3rd grade

This was an easy and such a neat looking project to complete!  I found a similar design on Pinterest.  We painted our background on the first day, traced and painted our trees white on the second, and on the last day we added the details in black paint.  I love these!

Watercolor winter wonderland, 5th grade

Over the years I've done this project, I think I've finally figured out how to get students to make horizontal lines in the water.  I have them hold their brushes at a 45 degree angle and pretend it's in a vice, unable to move.  They can go side to side and up or down, but they have to move their entire arm so it reminds them to keep their lines horizontal.  The water in this year's project looked much better!

Snowy evergreen trees

4th grade learned about layering and overlapping in these snowy scenes, and I love how the sky turned out in several of them!

Snowy owls

As we are wrapping up some of our winter projects this week, I can't help but to wish for some snow to go along with them!  I know they're getting a ton of it in the Northeast this week, so maybe they can share a little with us? :) It doesn't snow often here in the south, but when it does, it's like Christmas all over again!  At least for me it is!  Here are a few of the snowy owl trees 1st grade is finishing this week. I found this one on Pinterest a couple of years ago and I was happy to try them this year!

Lantern instructions!!

Before Christmas break I sent my 4th graders home with a little homework task.  

They cut the pieces for this lantern out during class but we ran out of time to finish, so I gave them a little challenge... To finish it at home and bring it back for a prize! I had some students finish it at school but if you haven't quite gotten it, hopefully these step by step photos will help!  Remember you need 10 strips to put it together... 

Start by interlocking the top of two strips..

Continue this pattern...

...alternating colors as you choose until you get them all in place.  Then evenly space them out.

Then carefully flip the entire thing over...

 Pull one piece up to the middle...

...and interlock the next strip into the first...

Continue this pattern, one strip beside the next until all pieces are interlocked into a peppermint swirl pattern like the bottom of the lantern.

If all the pieces are put together correctly, it should stay together when you're finished! :)

Light it up!

This is the last week before Christmas!! Woohoo!  It really is the most exciting time of the year!  We've had so much going on and I've had several classes missing art to practice for their annual Christmas program, so we haven't had much time to do an in-depth project.  I am glad to have them back for this last week so we're doing a quick but cute little project for Christmas!  I found the inspiration for this one on Pinterest of course!  Here is the beautiful in-depth version: http://www.artwithmsgram.com/search?updated-max=2013-12-01T13:21:00-05:00&max-results=10&m=1

We used crayola color sticks, a little less messy, although I would love to do them as she did above when I have more time with them!  They are beautiful!

Had a very shiny nose!

I'm enjoying seeing these reindeer come to life as they're finishing them up!  Each one is different and unique, and has their own personality!

Value pumpkins

 These pumpkins were a great opportunity to study value and practice shading with paint in 5th grade.  We started with the white pumpkin so that they only had to work with two colors, white and brown.  Then we used yellow, green, and brown on the green pumpkins.  By the time we got to the orange pumpkins, where we used orange, yellow, and brown, they were getting pretty awesome at painting value!