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.

Recycled items I need for the art room....

Here is an updated list of recycled items I'd love in the art room. Your contribution opens up the yearly allotted art funds to be used on other art supplies and allow your children to explore more sophisticated and higher quality art mediums.

LIST: (items in red are badly needed NOW)

* Buttons

* Magazines

* Cigar boxes......we can;t have enough of these.

* Newspaper (city paper sized preferred, but all accepted)

* Yogurt cups

* Corks (No, I won't judge you for bringing me hundreds....LOL)

* Cardboard (8x11 or larger) for everything

* Cutting board (for garden related art signs)

* Old house paint (any color) to paint old discolored wooden shelves

* Sheets (any color as long as it's solid and not prints. I use this for banners)

* Large old T-shirts (for smocks for kids who have not yet brought one in)

* Thread spools (for everything from stamping, sculpting to construction)

* Used or new canvases on stretchers for permanent art for the school

* Cardboard baby books (any kind)/ (We will repaint and make new books)

* Ribbons -for collage, to construction)

* Old broken toys - for construction projects.

* shoe boxes- all sized for construction

* Calendars- for visual resources

* Plastic/styrofoam egg cartons- for palettes (no cartons please)

* Wire roll (any kind as long as its easily bent

* Small boxes of any kind (soap, gift box, toothpaste box)

* beads/old broken jewelry for sculptures, etc

* old clean towels

Things I don't need ever:

* Cardboard egg cartons

* Milk cartons

* Water bottles

Things I do not need right now:

* Large yogurt containers

I love my Murch Parents

I love my Murch Parents. I come to work everyday to find bags of recycled items waiting for me. They are like mini presents and they absolutely make the art program work at its best. below, dozens of yogurt cups. We use these for all sorts of projects. We use them for paint, for glue, for construction projects....and the list goes on.

Thank you all.....

I am also posting an updated list of recycled items I need for this semester right after this post.

4th Graders Learn About Ways in Which One Can Add Character to a Portrait

Children in 4th Grade are working on creating character-filled self portraits this month. We began by looking at portraits dozens of portraits. Children were given descriptive labels and asked to walk around and place their label on the portrait that was congruent to their description.

During the end of the class the young artists were asked to describe three things about themselves and to list ways in which they could include these characteristics in their portrait.

3rd Grade Create Sculptures from Tetrahedrons

In art we discussed what a 3D shape was. Some kids began by describing 3D as a "pop-up shape". We went further in defining solid 3d shapes by defining it as an object that can be measured 3 ways; length, width, and depth.

My Monday 3rd Grade art class (Friedman) see me twice a week for the first quarter. One of those days is used to go further within the unit we are working. Today we learned about tetrahedrons. It's a solid shape made out of 4 equilateral triangles. Children traced 4 triangles as shown and created various tetrahedrons and begin taping them together to make a much more complicated shape solid.

Connections with books

In one side of the art studio classroom I have an art library. These are books I use with specific grades and units. In making unit connections with books, it allows children to witness ways in which books can help us further inform ourselves on topics of interest.

5th Grade Plunge into painting water.....

Children in 5th grade have been studying traditional paintings of water/ocean. They answered questions that required them to really look at the paintings. The questions were:

1. What colors were used in depicting water in these paintings?

2. The brushstrokes go which directions (vertical, horizontal, vertical strokes)

3. How long are the brushstrokes you see?

4. How do you think the colors were applied? which one was first and last, etc.

children will paint their 'water' this week and next week they will be adding their shorebirds onto their water paintings.

Half the children in art choose to stand while they work. They all are so focused on their paintings.

2nd Grade Learn About Molds and explored uses of Plaster of Paris

The children in 2nd grade are going to create molds of basic doll faces and individualize them. This week children are first creating very basic molds using plaster of Paris. See the molds drying below.

Children used modeling clay in cups, used tools to create imprints on the clay. We then mixed plaster of paris and poured them onto the cups. Next week will be the BIG REVEAL and children will discuss what they learned about the working of molds and come up with creative ways to use this new medium.

1st Grade Leaf Paintings-(Bergin)

Last week children learned how to create various types of marks using a thin flat brush.

This week, they used their skills learned in using a brush to paint giant leaf paintings.

Since we are working with lines, leaves are a perfect subject in which to explore this topic.