Fabulous Facades

In March members of the Sagadahoc Preservation Society visited the art room to teach fourth graders about local architecture. Students learned the architectural details and styles of Italianate, Colonial, Federal, Greek Revival, and Queen Anne homes found in Sagadahoc county. Part of the presentation was viewing beautiful models of homes created by SPI member Judy Mansfield.  After the presentation, students used their new knowledge to create a clay relief of a house facade.  Rather than choosing a particular style, students were asked to become the architect and design an original facade using at least two architectural features they learned.  The sculptures had fanlights, shiplap, gabled and hip roofs...the combination of elements made for some fantastic facades!

Fishy Watercolors

Students are helping raise money to fund RSU #1's swim program. Each fall third and fourth graders are brought to the Bath YMCA to take swim lessons. This program is supported through private donations and local fundraising. Since the swim lessons are intended to teach students to swim like fish, we created 5X7 images using oil pastels and watercolors of fish. We were inspired by a Maine artist, Karla Gerard. Our goal was to create simple, colorful images. The images above were created by second graders, who will benefit from the program next year and the ones below by fifth graders. These one of a kind watercolors will be on sale at a fundraiser this summer!

Portraits of Zorba

For two weeks, our school is participating in the event, "One Book, One School." During this event the whole school gathers in the gym each morning and is read one or two chapters of the book, The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly by Luis Sepulveda. In the story the main character is a big, fat, black cat named Zorba. Zorba has a difficult job in the story. She has to raise an orphaned seagull chick and teach it to fly! Not an easy task for a cat. 

Third graders created clay portraits of Zorba. The body of Zorba is an upside down pinch pot. Legs and tails were attached by scoring the two pieces of clay. Students used clay tools to add faces, claws and other details to their cat portrait. The cats are drying and will be fired in the kiln next week. The third graders look forward to glazing them.

 Learning Targets for week one of this project are:

1) I can use pinching and pulling techniques to create a cat from clay.

2) I can attach two pieces of clay together using scoring techniques.

Wocket in My Pocket

There's a Wocket in My Pocket! What??? Anyone who has every read Dr. Suess knows he had an incredible imagination! His book, There's a Wocket in My Pocket illustrates that imagination perfectly. In the book, a young boy lives in a house with all kinds of characters-big, small, friendly and scary. While first graders read the story we noticed that Dr. Suess' characters did share some characteristics. They were furry, had crazy hair, and long necks. Their bodies came in all shapes and sizes. After reading the story students drew their own crazy character. They painted them with tempera paint and then outlined them with black so we could see all the awesome details. The backgrounds were made using crayons and textured rubbing plates. The final touch was to give a name to their character.

The inspiration for this project was found at TeachKidsArt.

One Fish, Two Fish

March 2 is Theodore Geisel Suess, aka Dr. Suess', birthday! To celebrate second grade listened to the story One Fish, Two Fish. While looking at the illustrations students noticed that he used black outlines in his illustrations and some of his fish swam like regular fish, while some were standing. His fish were also a variety of colors. They began their project by drawing the fish as big as possible on their paper with black crayon, including details. Bright tempera paint colors were used to paint the fish. When it dried, they outlined their crayon lines with black craypas and cut out their fish. Their backgrounds were made my cutting a variety of lines from red construction paper. The red and white pattern is a reflection of Dr. Suess' most famous book, The Cat in the Hat. The results were a beautiful and a great tribute to Dr. Suess.

The idea for the this project was found at Deep Space Sparkle.

100 Hearts!

The 100th day of school and Valentine's Day are the same day this year! In honor of these two great days coinciding first and second graders tried drawing 100 hearts.  I taught them a heart drawing trick-"draw a 3 and then a V" (see below).  We talked about strategies of fitting all of those hearts on one paper-overlapping, changing size, and drawing partial hearts to activate the edges of the paper. After students drew the hearts they had a choice of coloring solid colors or using the texture rubbing plates we have in the art room to add interest.

100 Day Art!

 

Face of an Owl

 

Scuba Diver Mask

 

Key to a Door

 

Tomorrow, February 14, 2012, is the 100th day of school at Phippsburg Elementary! To celebrate, third graders were challenged to use their imaginations to use the number 100 in a piece of art. They traced the numbers, cut them out and got creative! 

 Turbo Truck

 Zombie Girl and Jewelry Store Thief

 Monster Truck

Hunter