Burlap Wall Hangings

                               

Loving these little burlap weavings my third graders recently made. The burlap is about 6"x10". Students used lots of different types and colors of yarn to weave through and cut the ends (the burlap holds all the strands in place so no need to wrap. We used sticks for the hangers and added beads if we had time! My kiddos had SO many compliments on these-- and they were insanely proud of them!

12 Days of Christmas Holiday Advent Calendar

This is a little project we are doing in the next couple of weeks for the 12 days of Christmas. Is it totally "artsy"...NO...but I've learned to loosen the reins (so to speak) on my non-holiday art. Because let's face it...the kids LOVE it and you CAN tie them into standards. That being said...

For this project you will need:

12 strips of paper (1 brown, 1 yellow, 10 green)

Mini Staplers ( I have one on each table)

PATIENCE!!!

Here you can see the basic configuration of the loops. The theory is that you pull one loop off each of the 12 days before Christmas and you are left with the "star" the night before Christmas.

Have students that don't believe? Use all white paper to make snowy trees and leave the "advent" part out of the equation.

I also did a larger version of this project, for the 25 days before Christmas, on our collaborative blog PreK and K Sharing. You can check out that project here.

HAVE FUN!!!

Drawing Dreams

One of my first grade students, Gavin, has work that is featured on the home page of Drawing Dreams today (Thanksgiving). Thankful for the exposure this blog has given my students, my school, and my little art lessons in the past couple of years.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Positive/Negative Trees (and Implied Line too!)

I did this project with my Fourth Graders as a quick one-day lesson focusing on Positive and Negative Space...as well as Implied Line. While it could definitely be used as a Halloween project with a little more "spook" to it, we kept it simple and my students did SO WELL with it!

Materials:

12x18 white paper

10x16 black paper

white oil pastel (or crayon, or even white colored pencil)

black crayon (or oil pastel, etc)

glue

We started out working ONLY on the black piece of paper...with the white oil pastel. We made sure our features went off the page (this is important for later, as you can see!)

We then glued the black paper on to the white paper and extended our drawing (this time using black crayon because I think black oil pastel smears and really gunks up white paper) onto the white framed area.

A sure-fire project with great results. Happy creating!

Drawing the Mayflower

This week has been so crazy- I was absent two days last week at my state conference and with next week being a short week, I needed a one-day filler lesson for some of my K and 1st classes.

I modified Art Projects For Kids' Mayflower for my littles and loved how they turned out!

Kandinsky Circles



I tend to get TONS of great results from this project inspired by Wassily Kandinsky's "Study of Concentric Circles"...this year we used fluorescent paint and drew on top of the paint with oil pastel. I just love how they turned out! For more about the extensions and BIG IDEAS I posed to the students, check out my article that I wrote this month over at PreK and K Sharing!

The Spectrum of our Personalities

OHMIGOSH, I am so in love with this project. I originally found this idea on Pinterest (of course!) and thought I had pinned it but didn't. Hmmmm. Anyway, it was a great lesson on spectrum, paint mixing, incorporating text into artwork, and creating a personally meaningful work of art.

I had the students start out (using a 12x18" sheet of paper) make between 8-12 wavy lines on their paper. They then used ONLY the primary colors to paint in the wavy lines and mix the paints into the secondary and tertiary colors. (This took an entire class period).

On Day 2, I had the kids outline the lines with black crayon and then use a scrap sheet of paper to write words that describe themselves (or phrases about themselves, likes, or dislikes). They had to double-check spelling with me (some did, some didn't as you can see!) but for the most part, they did a wonderful job!

Part of my National Board portfolio that I realized was SO important was that artwork needs to be RELEVANT to students (Entry 3). I learned so much about my students doing this project: their frustrations, their likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, etc. This was also a beautiful PROCESS-oriented project which ended with a beautiful and meaningful PRODUCT!

Have a wonderful weekend!