Clay Pizzas-2nd Grade

This week my second graders began to make some clay pizzas.  I got a a similar idea from the Clay Lab book that Cassie Stephens wrote.  The book is amazing and a must have for an art classroom.  The students started with ball of clay, tapped and flipped to make a slab, I cut the pizza slice shape with my pintool and then they used the extra clay for their toppings.  Once they are dry I will fire then and then I plan to have the kids mix colors and paint them.  Stay tuned for the final result! 

Bubble Trees-Thanks Pinterest!

This was a little project inspired by some Pinterest pictures I'd seen done with buttons. I decided paper would work well especially with bright colors. It reminded me of bubbles or gumballs so 'bubble gum trees' became the name ;)! Here's how I started:

I created a template for the tree and the kids traced it on black construction paper. Step 2 they glued their tree onto a larger pieces of construction paper (I tried light blue and light green-both looked good). Then...I had different sizes of various colors for the kids to cut out their circles and layer on the color and sizes. The students did really well and the results turned out great! Love Pinterest!

Pumpkin Perspective

https://smsd.digication.com/crestview_2nd_grade_art_07-08/Pumpkin_Patch_Perspe

Always a great 2nd grade fall project. End results are fabulous and the kids really seem to enjoy it and get a great idea of perspective. The link where I first saw this is above.

Rectangle People

Another one from the great Blue Moon Palette--I love it over there at her site!

http://bluemoonpalette.blogspot.com/2011/08/rectangle-people.html

We added some landscape features on ours. Love the ways these turned out!

Picasso Guitars

Second grade LOVES this project! I saw this last year over at Mr. E's place and had to do it again! The students enjoyed learning about Picasso and all of his many styles of art. We also learned the parts of a guitar and talked about the difference in an acoustic and electric. Lots of fun!

Clay Snails 2nd Grade

Second grade used a coil to made the shell for their snails. After they dried we used glazes to paint on the shell and the body. We talked about the stages of clay as well as form and sculpture.

Valentine Pop Art

2ND grade is currently working on this project as an upcoming Culver's display. Once a month I take art to the local Culver's restaurant and they put it in frames around the restaurant. The kids enjoy seeing their work up. I usually try to go with a theme/holiday/seasonal art for the Culver's activity. We talked about Jim Dine, Andy Warhol, actual texture, simulated texture and finally positive and negative space! The kids enjoyed using the texture plates with the melted mini muffin tin crayons I made over the summer.

Candy Cane Overlap

I saw this project last year over at Oodles of Art. We changed it just a bit. I did the project with second grade but it was quite a challenge. I let my older graders do this as a holiday bonus project! The results are always great!

Jasper Johns Flag Collage

In honor of Veteran's day I had my 2nd grade classes create a flag collage. We talked about pop artist Jasper Johns, Veteran's and how flags are symbols. We used a newspaper half, I gave them strips of Red, White and Blue for them to cut into squares. We finished with a little glitter in the blue for the star sparkle. I've done this project with paint and it works but the news paper gets pretty flimsy.

Fall Landscape

I love this project for 2nd grade! We talk about perspective, fore, middle and background. The students start with painting the sky, we add white to the blue for a tint. Then the students mix the two compliment colors blue & orange to get a nice brown color for the stems. Once dry the students add details to the pumpkins to make them look round and some crows in the sky. We construct our scarecrow as a class and glue him to the paper. They turn out really successful! I saw this a few years ago on a school art webpage.

Cityscapes

This was a 2nd grade project. I usually use this as my starter project for 2nd grade. We review our lines and shapes and talk a lot about detail. We also look at some of City, Land & Sea "scape" pictures comparing and contrasting. The students draw with a pencil, outline in sharpie and color in. I love looking at all the different details each student uses.