4th Grade - Pop Art Food Sculptures

These paper mache sculptures were a huge hit this year!  Students learned about Claes Oldenburg and his pop art food sculptures.  They each came up with their own food sculpture ideas and made it happen with just newspaper, masking tape, aluminum foil and paper mache.  Some students also brought in some "props" from home to go with their sculptures. 

The sculptures looked great on display and I'll be sad to take them down!

2nd Grade - 3D Shape Drawings

2nd grade students learned about 3D shapes in math, so I did a drawing lesson with them go along with it.  In math, they call the forms "space shapes" or 3D shapes.  We discussed how those terms also mean "forms" in art.

They drew the six forms on separate pieces of paper using charcoal pencils.  They had a lot of fun using the charcoal to create shadows. They also used construction paper crayons to add designs onto their forms.

After cutting out the 6 drawings, they made a "pretend sculpture" by stacking them together.  As you can see below, there were many interpretations to this!  

1st Grade - Leaf Color Wheels

First graders began this lesson by painting a pre-folded piece of paper with the primary and secondary colors.  Many times I'll have the older students mix colors on a foam plate, but for this, I had them mix the secondary colors directly on the paper.  I was pleased with how well that worked.  Also, since we were working with tempera paint, I had them use magenta for red and turquoise for blue.  They mix much better than regular red and blue.

Next, they used one of the many beautiful fall leaves from outside and traced it on each of the 6 colors.  They also had to draw on the veins of the leaf after tracing.

They cut out the 6 leaves.

The final step was to glue the leaves in the correct color wheel order on the black circular piece of paper.

5th Grade - Triangular Design Color Wheels

5th graders reviewed the color wheel, and with this, made a 6-color color wheel.  However, instead of just mixing colors and painting them in a circle, they created a line/shape design inside of a triangle template I gave them.  This design was then traced onto tracing paper and copied onto the larger white paper 6 times using the graphite transfer technique.  To do this, students colored the back of their design on the tracing paper with a graphite stick.  They then turned it back around and traced over their design with the pencil, leaving the graphite marks on the white paper.

Each section of the color wheel was colored with one crayon.  They made different values of the color depending on how hard they pressed with the crayon.

2nd Grade - Zoo Animal Drawings

Our 2nd graders recently went on a trip to the zoo because they were learning about animals, habitats and adaptations in science.  To go along with this unit, I decided to have them each draw a zoo animal.  I have many old "zoobook" magazines and I randomly chose students to each pick one, therefore everyone in each class was drawing a different animal.

They learned how to look at the pictures in the magazine and find the big shapes that make up the animal.  They drew the shape of the body first, then the head and legs/arms.  All the other smaller details go last.  They were asked to draw at least 3 different poses of the same animals.  Next, they added the animals habitat.  Horizon lines were reviewed in this step!  The practice drawings were then traced onto the nice white paper using the light box or a window. 

The animals and habitats were colored with oil pastels.  The skies were painted with a tempera wash. 

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.