Kandisky concentric circles

 This is a  very well know painting. Many, many art teachers have used this as a lesson plan base.

This was a two day sub assignment.I created variations on it to make the project more or less challenging depending on the age group.Students also got to choose their level of challenge.

Kindergarten students used took rectangluar drawing paperand we folded it together as a class step by step so that the paper had 4 sections. Then students drew one large circle and two smaller circles inside it. It will look at little like four small a targets. Students used a pencil to draw the circles first, then a sharpie then the last step was to color in with artstix the background and within the rings of the circle.







 For older grade students(2nd) we folded the paper into 8 sections and used watercolor paints for older classes.All classes got to choose their challenge level with the choice of how many rings to add to each circle pattern.

Happy birthday Dr. Suess

Hundreds of school children celebrated the "birthday" of Dr. Suess today and Read Across America week.So I thought why not bring the fun to art class too? After all the art of Suess was just as important as the text. So in honor of these events we designed and made drawings of Birthday cakes for Dr. Suess.

After a day of drawing those cakes I thought today I would try my hand at making some Dr. Suess birthday cupcakes of my own.
I  used chocolate cake mix, white frosting  I mixed with some blue food coloring for fish cup cakes.
 I also mixed the white frosting with some green food coloring for the "Green Eggs and Ham" cupcakes.

I got red Swedish fish and sandwiched them with white frosting for cat hats and red shoelace licorice for cat whiskers.  I used some left over gel icing for all other details.

Feb is Parade month

For the last few years while I have been working as the lead teacher for the after school  program we have been doing "parades" around the hallway of the schools. We do one for  Chinese new year where the kids all put a large piece of paper over there heads to be a parade dragon. Every year I pull the dragon out of storage and well add new decoration to it. I have a large head I made from a brown paper bag and some card stock with a Styrofoam ball for the nose. I made the dragon first in 2007  when I was teaching preschool at a daycare and he is getting a little worn out. I also brought in a gong and some other instruments for the kids to play.
this year was  the year of the snake so we also made red money envelopes with 2013 year of the snake on them. we made the paper dragon parade puppets from a template and we made recycled bottle cap snakes.

We also like to do a Mardi gras parade. for our Mardi Gras parade kids decorate cardboard boxes and make parade floats from them. We put large strings on them so kids can drag them in the ground behind them. Kids bring in stuffed animals from home to put in their boxes so that the animals can ride the floats and be in the parade.




Now that I have an iphone we were able to pull up videos on youtube of real dragon parades and Mardi Gras parades so kids can see where the idea comes from. I always preview the videos at home and save them in a list on my favorites to make sure the content is appropriate.

Gustav Klimt inspired "Tree of Life" mixed media

 I just recently finsihed a longterm substitute teaching position at an elementary school.
We looked at the " Tree of  Life" mosaic mural by gustav Klimt. I used a powerpoint and projected it via the computer on to a large flat screen television.
We looked at the orginal Tree of Life Mural.

Then we looked at several forms of reproductions of the image so that student could see how popular the image is.

We first learned about using brushes properly and I showed students how to drag the brush to make thicker lines and how to lift it up toward the tip to make smaller lines.

We then talked about blending and layering colors and using art stix for the background. The last step was adding on some sequins with glue

Birch Trees in Winter

This idea came from The beginning pages of the book Snowballs by Louis Elhert. This is a simple collage using strips of white paper, black tempera paint and white paper that was hole punched.I did this as a project with the after school program kids.

So many snowman so little time

 So I have not always been the biggest snow man fan. I know some people are all about the little guys but in the past  I was not as affected by the snowman craze. This year I have been bitten by a snowman bug it seems.

 I have been making a lot of snowman projects. I have created snowman earrings with polymer clay and  we be making many different snowman projects with the students in the after school program.

In the classroom while subbing I have also carried over this snowman craze of mine.

In the classroom student have been painting simple white outlines on blue construction paper to make snowman collages with.  They paint the snowman first then later glue on the button and precut construction paper hats and noses and foil paper scarfs.

We  have also been making snowman collages with students and using a template I found on Big Activities.Their is even a great step by step with visuals directions page you can print out.

The results vary and although the worksheets are identical students have unique perspectives on how their finished snow person will look.

So when you are teaching projects on snowmen you have to have some snowman earrings. These are easy to make but if you would like a pair to wear without the time it takes to make them you can order a custom made pair on my sculptresslink etsy shop.

I even made a snowman math activity for the after school program.
this is from an old curriculum guide I had. To do this first make copies of the snowmen,then cut them out color them in and write math problems on their bellies then glue sticks to them and write the answers on the bottom of the sticks. Then decorate a shallow box and put holes in the top to hold the sticks and the box will conceal the answers,

Winter scenes at night

This is a drawing project I did with my after school program students.  I gave them black construction paper and white colored pencils. I showed them how to draw the snow hill,a pine tree and a snowman what they did with that was up to them.  We added some color with crayons for snowman details and color and the trees.