What Everyone Has Been Up To

I will post some pictures of some K-2 projects in just a little bit, but here is what EVERYONE has been up to the last couple of weeks here in the art room.

Kindergarten has been working on drawing faces and bodies. We drew a face only self-portrait then drew one that included our whole body. Last week, we took a little break from the "hard stuff" to read the book "One fish, Two fish, Red fish, Blue fish" by Dr. Seuss and the students had fun drawing fish. This week, we dove right back in and worked on a drawing that included our whole family.

First grade worked on face and full body portraits as well. Then they did some projects inspired by story. We watched a video reading of "Giraffes Can't Dance" by Giles Andrae and Guy Parker-Rees and drew some dancing giraffes. Then we listened to the story "The Princess and the Pea" and drew princes or princesses on some mattresses decorated with pattern and color. We also took a little "Halloween" break to make some spiders by painting our hands. Those should have come home with your student last week. This week we learned a song to help us remember the order of the colors in the rainbow, and made baby chicks in rainbow order.

Second Grade has been learning about the four parts of a landscape: background, middle ground, foreground, and horizon line. They saw what things should look like and began working on their own landscape of any kind. When they finished that, we started working on a drawing of what we think heaven looks like.

Third grade finished up their self-portraits and began working on a "stained glass" dove picture. We talked about where we see pieces of stained glass artwork (usually in churches) and why the dove is important in The Bible. Students attempted to replicate the stained glass look on thin printer paper using markers.

Fourth grade has been finishing up quite a few projects. This week we made paper masks that turned out quite nicely.

Fifth grade turned in A LOT of work this week, and we began a printmaking project that will take a few weeks to complete. I am very excited to do this project and I CAN'T WAIT for you to see the results.

Sixth grade has been working on a collage "profile". Students used the projector to trace the shadow of their profile on their paper and is now picking out magazine clippings they believe represents themselves. They will add other elements to this project that will make it a mixed media piece of artwork.

Seventh grade did a few small exercises the past couple weeks to practice their perspective skills.

Eighth grade learned about Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead and looked at some example artwork that represents this holiday. We used implied line to decorate a skull using oil pastels on black paper. They are turning out quite nicely. I am excited to see them finished.