Indian corn, 1st Grade

         

Our first grade artists have been busy creating these beautiful indian corn paintings. I’ve loved watching these observational drawings come to life! We begin this project by looking at a photograph of Indian corn and using our observational skills to answer questions like; What do you see? What do you think? What do you wonder? Once we identified the subject matter for our next project, we read the book, “Corn” by Gail Gibbons. We looked at how corn grows, how it got its name, How many different kinds of corn there are, and how it is used in our food and the food of animals.

With the help of some real indian corn, students got to work studying the shape of the cob, the husk and the kernels. We drew these observations using sharpie markers. Once our shapes and lines were drawn, it was time for color! Students used pan watercolor sets and liquid watercolor to mix colors and paint their kernels. Students brought their indian corn to life and off the paper by creating a wood texture for the background and even adding a shadow to make their corn look 3 dimensional!  I Just love looking at these fall still lifes. They currently on display for all to see an admire!

Character Counts!

Our final three collaborative murals are now complete!  Take a look at the work of our Kindergarten, First, and Fourth Grade Artists. They used the elements of art to illustrate their grade levels character values.

Grade Four, Citizenship                                            Kindergarten, Caring 

Grade One, Fairness

It was so nice meeting my Monday classes yesterday, and finally getting to piece together our mystery murals. Students enjoyed working together to create one unified piece of art! I love the rainbow of color now filling the hallway outside the art room. Check out all six pillars of character! 

T.R.R.F.C.C. 

Beetle Bop, 1st Grade

In celebration of the BUGZ Show, our first graders created these original beetles! Inspiration for this project came from the book, Beetle Bop by Denise Fleming. There is so much to love about Denise Fleming’s books, from her playful illustrations, to her rhyming text, and even her creative process for each handmade page. Her website is fun to explore too! Take a look.

We also learned interesting facts about beetles, like there are over 300,000 species of beetles in the world. After learning how to draw each segment of the beetle’s body (head, thorax, and abdomen) students had fun creating unique markings. We used black oil pastels to draw our lines and chalk pastel to add color. To create the same look as Fleming’s pulp panting’s, we mixed tempera cake and applied it to our black paper.

I’m hoping to learn and teach Pulp painting next school year!

Congratulations to our 1^st graders on their wonderful performance in the BUGZ show this past Friday. One of the best BUGZ shows yet!

First Grade Alligator Weavings

Our First Grade Artists just finished these Grand Gators inspired by our TG mascot, Tucker! We crafted our Alligators by first learning how to weave.  Students learned terms like loom, weft, and warp and used them to create their alligator’s body. To create visual texture, we used 2 different size weft strips and a variety of green colors. We pulled our weft strips over and under our loom’s slots to create a checkerboard pattern in our weaving.

It was so much fun watching as strips of paper transformed into a colorful and functional masterpiece.  I just love the magic of hand weaving! On our second meeting day we created our alligators head, tail, 4 legs, teeth, and eyes. All of these details really brought out gators to life! I love the character and color that these reptiles exhibit!

Some of our Gator’s swam over to Board Office, for our TG Art Exhibit up now until Friday, June 12th. Enjoy the work of our TG Artists!

Square 1 Art Fundraiser

Square 1, Fun! Here is a sneak peak at our Square 1 Art projects!

Our 1st grade artists have been busy, “Finding Spring” through their Square 1 art creation. Through experimentation, we learned that when you combine any 2 primary colors together you get a secondary color. We used the milk changing experiment to explore this idea and test our hypothesis.    We then explored mixing colors with paint, and using tools like forks and tooth picks to create visual texture. On our second meeting day, we read another amazing book by Carin Berger, called “Finding Spring” We used our texture papers to create our birds and flowers shapes and collaging them together to create our Spring inspired artwork.  A couple weeks back I shared with our first graders, that the author of, “A Perfect Day” and “Finding Spring,” Carin Berger, saw our snow angels, on our art blog, and commented on how, “ absolutely charming” they are and loved the work they are doing in art! I hope she sees this blog post and knows, just how much she has inspired us through her writing and illustrations. Take a look at our spring inspired work!

Our 2nd grade artists created these beautiful symmetrical butterflies using contraction paper crayons on black paper. We created colorful abstract backgrounds using liquid watercolor! You may even notice the use of salt to create texture in our painting.

Take a look at the colorful creations of our 3rd grade artists! They created these whimsical peacocks using crayons and liquid watercolor. We learned so many cool facts about peacocks and put them to great use in our creations.

Our 4th grade artists created these tree silhouettes, using warm and cool colors! Students used color to create feeling of calmness, relaxation, or excitement.

Our 5th Grade Artists turned the letters of their first, middle, or last name into things about them.  They were so creative and imaginative in their illustrations. I just love these!

Our kindergarteners will be working on their Square 1 project this coming week! I’m looking forward to meeting and working with TG’s youngest artists. All artwork will be shipped to Square 1 on March 2nd. Families will receive their child’s personalized order packets (and sticker) around March 12th. Until then, enjoy a preview of work from our 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade artists.

Precious Pinch Pots, 1st Grade

This blog post is months over due.  Our first graders created these Diya, pinch pots in celebration of Diwali, “The Festival of the Lights“. We look forward to this project every year in First Grade, because it’s our first introduction to the clay medium. Year after year, we combine and expand upon our clay skills, getting to work with it in new and fun ways.  Whenever the bag of clay comes out there is always cheers and excitement in the art room. It’s a magical, transformative medium, and every grade loves getting into it. This year we had brand new clay, and fun new texture stamps to try! These precious pinch pots went home, as gifts over the winter break. I hope they are getting a lot of love at home.

In My Heart, 1st Grade

 

In My Heart: A Book of Feelings by Jo Witek and Christine Roussey 

“My heart can feel so many feelings, and yours can too! Today, my heart is proud. How does your heart feel?”

Our first graders followed this prompt, as they used color and emotion to explore how their heart feelings. We learned that our hearts are full of different feelings, some feel big, others small.  In the book, the heart changes size and color as it uncover feelings of happiness, bravery, madness, calmness, sadness, hopefulness, silliness, and shyness.

To get a better understanding of color, we used an emotional color wheel to create our repeating heart shapes.

We used the emotional color wheel, to talk about the feelings in our heart.

The outer heart represented the emotion that we felt the most in our heart. While, the smallest heart representing the emotion that we felt the least. We created a symbol around our repeating hearts, that represented our feelings for today. I just love the imaginations and creativity of my 1st grade artists. There creations fills my heart with so much happiness. Here is a look, at the beautiful heart creations of our 1C artists.

 

Guest Artist, Sasha Prood

Let’s have a Fruit Adventure! 

On Friday, we welcomed Guest Artist, Sasha Prood, sister of one of our TG Student’s, to our art room to share her illustrations and drawing book. The book, Fresh Fruit, is part of a series of drawing books she is currently working on as her graduate thesis, at the School of Visual Arts.

Fresh Fruit, uses creative and fun prompts to get children interacting with the fruit they eat. I personally love the playful owls and insects that take us on this creative journey of buying and eating fresh fruit. Students loved using their senses to respond to questions like, “What does your fruit look like?” and “Where did you buy your fruit?” They used their words and illustrations to creatively respond to these fun prompts.  Here are their fruit stories!

Where do you buy your fruit?

What does your fruit sound like? 

What texture is your fruit?

Our first graders had fun adding their colorful creations to each beautiful written and illustrated page. One thing is clear, 1D loves Fresh Fruit!

Here are more photos of the colorful illustrations of 1D.

Thank you Ms. Prood for the drawings books, Fresh Fruit, inspiration, and experience!

 

Fresh Fruit tasting! Yum 

For more on Sasha Prood work visit here!

1st Grade, BUGZ in a Jar

Congratulations to our 1st Graders on their wonderful performance in the BUGZ show!

1st Graders have been busy studying insects. In Art, we had fun creating our bugs in a jar. Many students chose to draw the bugs they played in the show. We learned about concave and convex lines and learned how to use them to create our mason jars. Inside our jars students drew sticks and leaves for our insects to live on and eat while we studied them. Using geometric shapes, students creating each part of their insects. Pencils, sharpies, and tempera cakes were used to add contrast and color. I loved seeing our 1st Graders bugs come to life. Enjoy a look at our bugs in a Jar display!

 

1st Grade Square 1 Art

A collection of work by 1D 

 Raina 1D

Pasquale 1D

My First Graders have brought so much cheer to the art room with these textured flower collages.  Grade One used a painting technique called double-loading to create two sheets of paper using both warm and cool colors. On our warm color sheet we drew fun, creative flowers using lines, shapes, and patterns. Once complete we began cutting our flowers out and gluing them down to our cool color paper. We completed class on Thursday by “filling a friends bucket” with words of kindness. 1D loved sharing what they liked about a classmates work.  We love celebrating each other in art. My First Graders filled my bucket this week!