Animal Habitats Watercolor Paintings

3rd Grade Children in art have been building their skills in drawing animals and are now using them to create a painting of one of their favorite animals sketches and its habitat. The painting lesson is split into 2 sections, one where the all shapes are first painted and at another lesson where the details are added with a smaller, detail brush.

Children make choices in the work about composition, size, as well as all items to be included.
Children take great pride in their work and are very deliberate and careful while painting. I don't just hand them a set of watercolors and say "paint!". Kids really get to learn all about how to work with the media, its properties and general characteristics so that the end product shows a much higher skill level than when they began. When you see these paintings you will be amazed!!

You can do this at home by purchasing your child a Crayola watercolor set and a 80lbs-140lbs. sketchbook. The best way I found to get my kids hooked on painting is to do it with them.

4th Grade in progress self-portrait samples

Children in 4th grade are creating self portraits based on the facial proportion skills developed in the last 3 weeks. The works will be painted in watercolors and detailed in coloring pencils. Watch out for the big reveal of all 3 grades' portraits in the next 2 weeks. I'll keep you posted.

Kindergarten Insect Paintings

Kindergartners have been working on both drawing and painting insects from real images of insects. The children should be taking their sketchbooks home this week, so look out for it in their backpacks. For these paintings children used a 3-step process 1. painting the background, 2. painting a silhouette of the insect and 3. adding the details.

You can work with this at home by allowing your child to paint over a painting from the day before that has already dried and see how they could rework the painting once it's dry. Also, buying various sized brushes will make your little artist aware that different sized brushes make different types of lines and they might purposely reach out for one or another once they have practiced with them enough.

Working with plaster of Paris-2nd

Children created their own molds using modeling clay that have been imprinted with tools. The results were these interesting castings that looked a lot like sandcastles. Children are painting them and taking them home this week.

This week, children are making a group mold and here are the kids waiting for the Plaster of Paris to harden. They were very excited to see how fast this process happened. The plaster also warms up as past of the process and that too was a huge hit with the kids.
We talked about molds such as cupcake molds, cake molds, and we also discussed fossils and how they are made. Here is a mold waiting for the plaster of Paris to be poured on top. Children used various small hard toys and made impressions of these items onto the modeling clay.

Leaf Prints- A peak

Prints, prints and more prints. 1st graders worked on printing the leaf prints they designed last week. Such an amazing array of leaves. When you see them you would think they were professionally designed. Check out some of these prints.

The ink needs a day to dry. They are hanging in the art room until tomorrow when I collect them and hold them until next week when we will assess our work and think of ways to create a flawless print. you too could do this at home. Just buy block printing ink from Michael's. Cut 4"x4" squares from the meat trays and have them use a pen to draw an image. Make sure they thicken the lines so that the image comes through clearly.
Here are the stamps after we used them. Still as beautiful. I will be washing them and we will be using them next week to make a group print project.