Author's Week

The focus of Authors Week this year were the "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" books. The Media teacher made the overall theme around the Olympics and Ancient Greece. I had 5th grade make a frieze and pediment for a Doric Style Greek temple based on their favorite book characters. My Art club/aftercare helpers/buddies made the door decorations from two different Percy Jackson Books. "The Sea of Monsters" and "The Battle of The Labyrinth"

Each class also had to make their own door showing who their favorite author was. I chose Leo Lionni. Mine was hung on the gym door since it has an overhang and the Art room doesn't and technically I am am a PE assistant (bad idea) so I am in there a few periods a day. AND the Coach and I are buds. 

Various other art projects

5th grade fabric texture 

5th grade galaxies

after 5th grade mixed their 100 colors they painted galaxies!

1st grade flowers

kids draw flower outline in black crayon, then Using my fool proof method for painting- one day warm colors, next day cool colors (this way no muddy mess) kids paint. Then go back re outline flower in black craypa. Add details in colored craypas. BEAUTIFUL!

Kindergarten painting

Free paint- This was an in between project. I like to split up the warm and cool colors, as I have said before, so this was separated in to two sessions, They weren't consecutive classes so they were surprised when they got their papers back and were like "Oh hey, this is pretty cool" then added their other 3 colors plus white to make tints

6th grade recycled container 

I have been saving milk jugs and coffee creamer bottles for 2 years. Basically "dumpster diving" in the teachers lounge and tortureing my husband by never throwing out our Ice tea containers. I was so excited by the prospect of this project but it really didn't work out how I wanted it to. I had some success but I think really the kids just looked at me and were like, "Mrs Love, this is your trash..." which it is, so I have yea I don't know about this project??

Pre K 4 Symmetry

Folded 18X24 paper in half. Kids used squeeze bottles of tempera on one side. Folded paper (This is easy stuff) Then I had then go back into it the following week with crayon. They had to do the same thing on the right that they did o the left so their crayon drawings would also be symmetrical. This was harder for them. This kid did pretty good I think

Pre K 3 painting

4th grade texture Tissue box monsters 

Anyone who goes into my art room will first notice all the recycled "treasure" I have teachers dropping off empty tissue boxes all year in anticipation of this project. And the kids love it. 

Paint the box all one color. 2 coats

Add details to your box. Some kids like to use those net orange bags to create texture or freehand designs

White egg cartons for eyes

white oak tag for teeth 

Pipe cleaners, feathers, buttons, fabric ect.

Hot glue it all

A happy day for me!

We have zero ruined brushes thanks to Murphy's oil soap! I took down all the ruined brushes ( all 100+) and let them soak over the weekend. 72 were saved. The rest were missing brissles, broken or beyond repair. 

Organization Part 2

Thanks to my AMAZING co-workers who gave me a post wedding party, I was able to purchase 7 of these plastic chests with walmart gift cards. I have one at each table. Each one has 3 draws. Everyone has the exact same thing in it. Clean up was becoming a problem and I needed that to stop. So now there is no fighting about gold colored pencils or skinny markers or whatever a 5-10 year olds crisis is.

Inside there is one box of colored pencils, 2 boxes of crayons, a box of scissors, a box of glue sticks,

 2 boxes of markers, and a sharpener box - The sharpener box is a life saver in my opinion. They now don't have to get up to use the electric sharpener or to empty the hand held. They just dump it right in the box. No more wasting time!

I store markers and colored pencils in plastic bins, which is not too inventive but since I have about a zillion of them I was left with a zillion tops sooooo I thought why not use the tops as palette!

I only use palette when kids are mixing colors. I like kids to use one color at a time so we don't end up with a muddy mess, so lots of the time we work with paint from these tubs 

When one color is dry then they move on to the next. This is how we paint the chairs.

MORE primary color art!

Kindergarten  Primary Color Shape people...

2 for the price of 1,  gotta love that!

Seriously, how adorable are these???

MORE 1st grade Superheroes!!

Some of these may  look pretty chaotic, but there are really extensive stories that go along with these artworks... ask you kids :) !

5th grade mixes 100 colors!

After 5th grade learned about the primaries and secondaries I wanted them to try it out for themselves as well as create a challenge for them. They received a 8.5 x 11 piece of card stock with 100 shaded boxes on it as well as the 3 primaries in acrylic paint. They were told to mix and experiment to make 100 different colors. After week 2 I gave them white and we talked about tints. They liked their colors much better after the introduction of the white. This was to prepare them for a big painting project!  (More on that later...Shh it's top secret)

(notice the first few rows are not as pretty...that was before they got white)

Prek 3 learns Blue

Blue crayon with blue watercolor

2nd Grade continuous line doodles

we looked at Joan Miro for inspiration, it turned out to be a very vague inspiration but that's OK

They were told they could just use primaries or use primaries to mix secondaries to add also. Some did it some didn't.  I think they look pretty cool!