Mouse Paint!

I have to admit I found this point on another art education blog but totally fell in love with this lesson! I have been doing Mouse Paint for years to introduce coloring mixing but really liked how this teacher incorporated two author/illustrators.

After reading both stories, student doing a coloring mixing worksheet they can use during their painting portion of their lesson.

Let the coloring mixing begin!

Paper Sculptures

PK, Kindergarten and 1st grade artists took their lines and shapes into the third dimension! They created paper sculptures, thinking about different ways to change and manipulate their flat piece of paper to turn it into a 3-D line or shape.

We began by learning about the difference between two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects. We thought about how we could change a piece of paper from 2-D to 3-D, just by using our hands. We came up with a few different techniques, including folding and bending the paper. We learned how to fold it to make a zig-zag line, and how to fold the ends of a curved piece of paper to create feet to help it stand up when glued. 

We experimented with paper before beginning to work on our own 3-D sculptures. Starting with a cardboard base, we added colorful 3-D lines and shapes by changing the paper. We discovered even more ways we could change the paper, and creative ways to connect and add them to our sculptures. We also focused on using the appropriate amount of glue!

As we were building, many of us realized that our sculptures reminded us of playgrounds and amusement parks! 

Line Challenge!

We have been learning about line across many 

different grade levels. Lines are a basic element of art, and we noticed that once we started looking, we could see them everywhere around us!

PK, Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade artists drew a variety of different lines in their "line challenges," using crayons to draw straight lines, zig zag lines, and even some lines that they invented from their imagination:

During the next class, we explored what happens when we add paint on top of our crayon lines. We realized that we could still see the crayon lines showing through, because the wax-based crayon and water-based paint resist each other.

Community Circle Painting

 

Community Circle Painting

For our Art and music Week Extravaganza community project students and their families created "Circle Paintings". It was so fun seeing parents painting with their kids! And the results were beautiful!

So what is Circle Painting? It’s a creative process in which a group of people come together and create a collaborative painting. The process is simple, but the result is quite amazing! To make one you and your friends draw lines and shapes and build on each other’s.

1. Why Circles?
The circle is a universal symbol everyone can relate to. Simple yet profound, it symbolizes wholeness, enlightenment, and the universe in all cultures. For us, the circle means connect, create, and celebrate. What does the circle mean to you?

2. How did Circle Painting get started?
Hiep Nguyen created the first Circle Painting when he returned to his native country Vietnam in 1999. Driven by his desire to connect with neighborhood children in the mountain town of Dalat,  Hiep invited them to paint circles with him in his studio. To his surprise,  the children kept coming back for more, sometimes even with their friends and families. This experience inspired Hiep to continue exploring the circle theme as a way to create and connect with others.

Calder Contour Portraits

The 5th Graders started the year by doing a unit on contour line. We used Alexander Calder's wire work as our inspriation to take our line "off " the page to create wire self-portraits. We started by doing continuous blind contour drawings of our friends to understand how with wire, everything had to be connected. It was amazing to see the student's personality come through in a media most of them had never used before.

Chihuly Inspired Community Project

This year during Hosmer's Art and Music Extravaganza week we are taking our "green" initiative to a new level. Inspired by the glasswork of Artist Dale Chihuly, students are using disgarded plasitic water bottles and turing them into beautiful gardens of flowers. These gardens are on large sheets of plexiglass to be hung in the windows of our connector hallway. Together there will be 14 panels that measure 2'x3'. Here is a peek at the process...will post final project when finished.

Final Project pics...

 

Fall Tree Silouettes

As we warmed up to watercolors in the beginning of the year, we do a quick "wet on wet" watercolor technique sky and talking about different times of day. Then students use what they know about line and shape to create a silouette compostion. This year it was trees, during our fall color unit.