Student Blogging

This year, one of the other teachers and myself, started up a Photojournalism Club at our school.  The kids are acting as "reporters" by taking pictures and writing about special events and projects that go on during the school day.  They have a blog, which is now coming along very nicely, and I wanted to share!

RumseyEngineers.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

6th Grade - Surreal Hands

This was a lesson I did with my last year's 6th graders.  I just came across the pictures and wanted to post them!  This was a somewhat challenging project, but well worth it in the end.  Students learned about surrealism and had to come up with a sketch of their hand as some kind of surreal scene.  Next, they turned their drawings into clay sculptures.  Each person's sculpture started with clay slab, where they traced and cut out their own hand.  Next, they added details to the hand, make it more realistic before bending it into the particular pose they needed.  They got more clay to add on their "surreal" parts to the hand.  The sculptures were then fired and painted.

6th Grade - Rainforest Drawings

6th grade students had a great time drawing colorful birds as part of a rainforest scene.  They looked at various pictures of rainforest birds and animals and focused on a balanced composition for their artwork.  The drawings were colored with oil pastel and backgrounds painted with a tempera wash.

3rd Grade - Eric Carle Collages

3rd Grade students learned about the author and artist, Eric Carle.  They painted A LOT of paper to use in their animal/creature collages, just like Eric Carle did!  In the process, they learned about several watercolor painting techniques; wet-on-wet, wax resist and adding salt to the wet paint. 

The following week, students used the painted papers and created a real or imaginary creature, animal or insect.  They drew backgrounds for their collage with crayon. 



4th Grade - Picasso Portrait Paintings

I decided to change up a lesson I did last year with the 4th graders.  This year, they still learned about Picasso's abstract portraits, but instead of coloring the portrait with tissue paper, they painted it.  Also, instead of painting a full background, they drew a patterned border with markers.  They're just about done, and I love how they came out!

Art Word Wall

This year I'm trying out something new with a bulletin board.  I really wanted the students to see just how much they learn about art throughout the school year, so they're keeping tabs of all the vocabulary words, art processes, media and artists they learn about during the lessons on a Word Wall.  I keep blank index cards on or near the board so anytime a student suggests a new word to add to the wall, they can grab it, write the word, decorate it, and staple it up.  So far, they've been very good at pointing out words they can add on! 
Here's pictures of the word walls at each of my schools:

Art Portfolios

I must say, it's great to be back at school!

I started all my classes out with a portfolio design lesson.  Each grade had a separate design, but all included their name or initials.  Here's an example from each grade:

1st Grade; Made a patterned "frame" around their painted first initial

2nd Grade; They first wrote their initials, then filled in the spaces the letters created with various patterns, using marker and/or colorsticks (and using only warm or cool colors).  When finished, they painted over their initials.

3rd Grade; Students started by writing their name in block or bubble letters.  They filled in each letter with a different pattern or design.  The backgrounds were colored with colorsticks.

4th Grade; Students learned about the "layering" style of Jasper Johns by looking at the painting "0 through 9."  They layered their initials, outlined in oil pastel, colored some of the spaces in with crayon and watercolor painted the rest. 

5th Grade; They created radial designs around their names using sharpie and watercolor painted it in.

 6th Grade; They had their first lesson in one point perspective drawing to write their names.  They used white colored pencils to outline and metallic crayons to color them in.

Kindergartners will be making their portfolios in the next couple weeks.  Stay tuned!  :)