Cajun Blue Dogs

Students watched a little 'You Tube' clip on artist George Rodrique and all of his Blue Dog fame! I think the student's liked Rodrique's spunk and attitude. He wasn't trying to impress and be the best, he was just doing what he liked and what he wanted to paint. We drew the blue dogs together and then worked on brush control and painted in our dogs. The second class students were to choose a contrasting color for the background. I had the students add a little blue frame for a polished look. Love this project, it's back again this year by popular demand!

Cityscapes Inspired from Europe

This is a great project I picked up at http://alisaburke.blogspot.com/ She's got a lot of neat ideas that are super for inspiration. I believe this was under her April posts.

My 4th graders looked at St. Basil's Cathedral, The Taj Mahal, Italian cities & Paris cityscape's. We looked at roof shapes, patterns, lines, shape and color. Students used sharpies to draw in the layered buildings and then liquid watercolor to finish up. Love these results! Thanks Alisa Burke for the inspiration!

Van Gogh Flowers

I snagged this idea from another blog and here I am at home with out the name in front...I'll post a link once I'm back at school on Monday.

Great little project for Kindergarten, the results are very pleasing and a super way to introduce an artist to these little artists. The room sure got quiet when they found out about the whole ear thing! ;)

Jackson Pollock Weavings

This is something I saw over there at 'Dali'sMoustache.' I thought it looked like a great way to do splatter type painting without having the custodial staff giving me the stink eye for the rest of the year! I used squirt bottles and had the students drip their paint (3 color limit to avoid mud) on and use toothpicks to spread it out more. Day 2 we created our loom and used the same 3 colors we painted with to weave with. Super great job 3rd grade and super thanks to Dali's Moustache!

Monkeys!

Kindergarteners LOVED this project! It took us one full hour to complete these crazy monkeys! We worked with curling, cutting cirlces from squares, folding paper to get two of the same and creating character in our art. I love how they turned out. If you need mearsurements just leave a comment & I can mail them to ya. I'm at home with our my plan book and can't think off the top of my head!

Rocket Ships

I've seen some rocket/space ship projects floating around on the blogs so it gave me an idea to try one...another reason I love art blogs! Together the students and I drew space ships and added aliens, planets and stars. Once their drawing was finished they used liquid watercolors to fill in the spaceship but not the background. During class number 2, students carefully cut out all their plants, ships, and stars. Once cut, they glued them on to a black or blue piece of construction paper making sure all the edges were stuck down tight and no curling! I think their imaginations took off super great on this project! I think it's a keeper! The results were pretty fun and amazing!

3-D Block Letters

This is always a great lesson for the 5th graders, especially during the end of the school year! They were to choose the first letter of their first or last name, then I helped them draw it into a block letter on a piece of 12X18 tag board folded in half. Once they cut the letter they came out with two, had to build & measure 2 inch walls, stuff it will paper towels so it won't cave in and finally cover it with any paint color of their choice....whew! Now for the fun part, the clips! Student browsed through magazines looking for clips of interest to them, cutting and collecting. Once they had 30 clips they were able to glue them on and then finally a coat of Mod Podge was applied. The students always take pride in their own letter and I've been told by the younger brothers & sisters that their older sibling still has their letter hanging in their room...cool! I love keepsake projects!

Art Award Dilemma

I am getting ready to start working on my art awards for the 5th grade graduation ceremony. We are just in a K-5 building so our school holds a little graduation in honor of those 5th grade students. We have such a great group of 5th graders this year that I'm finding it so very hard to come up with the best way to give out awards and not leave someone out. In the past I've given two types of art awards: Art Excellence-for those students with true artistic talent & High Achiever- for those students who always try their very best and have great behavior. The whole 5th grade has pretty great behavior and they all try really hard, so I feel that will put the second award to rest. I have some students who love art and try so hard but they don't have the advanced talent I give for the Art Excellence award. Maybe I should just pick the top boy and girl from each class this year (we have 4 fifth grade classes!).

I just wanted to know what some of you do when you give out elementary awards or if you even give out awards at the elementary level. I never want to hurt feelings or leave out by picking so many, that's why I'm leaning towards 1 girl-1boy from each of the 4 classes this year. What do you think?