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Blazing Banyan Tree

My grade 5's loved the challenge of this project. Every tree was individual and unique. Yes, it did take 4 sessions to complete though the final results were amazing. 

Kandinsky Colour Study

Collaborative Painting

This project was a fantastic way to create positive working relationships amongst my Grade 3 students'. During session 1 we focused on line & shape making. The kids worked as teams to create as many different shapes and line styles as they could in 10 minutes on scrap paper. These shapes and lines were then transferred onto large group drawings with black paint. Students' were encouraged to rotate around the table groups and to add whatever they felt like to each drawing. (shapes were drawn first then the connecting lines were added after). During session 2 the kids got to add colour to their group painting. My only instruction was that the same colour could not be touching. Again the students' got to rove table to table and work with various classmates. (this was a great teaching moment to talk about Artroom safety & moving around with paint brushes)

 

 The finish product as you can see is AMAZING!!!! Hands down my favourite lesson so far this year.

Salt Dough Van Gogh Sunflowers

Van Gogh has been one of the many masters we have been studying this term. After completing many drawings of sunflowers (focusing on texture, drawing techniques and realism) Grade 2 were ready to make their own 3D sunflower tile.

Below is the Salt Dough recipe we used. I'm guilty of over baking our tiles but once painted you can't tell the difference.

YOU WILL NEED:

A cup salt

2 cups of flour

¾ cup of water

 

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. In a large bowl mix salt and flour together.
2. Gradually stir in water. Mix well until it forms a doughy consistency.
3. Turn the dough onto the bench and kneed with your hands until smooth and combined.
4. Make your creations using the salt dough.
5. Place the salt dough creations into the oven at 180C.  The amount of time needed to bake depends on the size and thickness of the salt dough creations.

Tips & Ideas:

• Store your salt dough in an air tight container as it keeps well for a few days.
• You can paint your creations with acrylic paints and seal with varnish or polyurethane spray.
• Salt dough can also be aired dried and is an alternative to oven drying. 
• Involve the kids in making the salt dough as this encourages and promotes so many learning opportunities, plus it is so much fun!

 This was a great activity to prepare my students' for Clay later in the term.

Colour Theory & Optical illusions

 This project was great to teach tinting/shading and the art of optical illusions.

 Students worked through a set of drawing instructions as guides by me on the whiteboard.
1. Draw 1 horizontal line across the paper
2. Starting at the horizon line, create small bumps (arc's) across the line. Vary the size of each arc.
3. Starting at the same starting point jump over the bump, finishing at the same point for each.
4. Continue creating jumps over each bump until you reach the end of the page.
5.Repeat the same action working your way toward the top of the page.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 below the horizon line.
7. Colour using 2-3 different colours for each column.
8. Students should shade heavier the outer edge of each column and apply the colour lighter (tinting) towards to middle of each column.

Felt Fairytale characters

 'Once upon a story blanket' was grade 2's focus for sewing/textiles this semester. The children created their own character using felt, decorative items, wool and material. They practiced their sewing skills by sewing the border of their quilt square.

From Macbook to Tropical Fish???

Recycling in the artroom is one of my things. I love getting donations for the other departments within the college. Being a 1:1 laptop program school (Secondary students) every year we get additional Macbooks to lease out to students. Along with the Macbook comes a lot of packaging.
Enter Cindy to scoop up resources for the Art room :P

These CD fish were made from using the cardboard packaging corners from the Macbooks as the bases and the start up CD's.

We looked a lots of pictures of tropical fish and coral reef environments to get ideas for fish scale patterns. The fins, tail, eyes and lips were paper coloured using crayons.

Not bad for FREE!!!!

Still life drawing-surpise!!!

 Never under estimate your kids and what they will think is 'cool'. This still life drawing activity in my eyes was one of the more 'not as exciting' activities i had planned for my grade 4 classes. Coming off the back of creating wire sculptures i thought the kids reaction would be BOR-ING!!!

Oh how wrong was I. They LOVED IT!

 For the lesson i set my room up in true art studio formation. All the tables facing inwards so everyone had their own angle of the fruit bowl (i have never done this with this grade, so just by moving the tables around created that 'hook' to get them interested)

Materials: fine line pen, watercolours

Constrasting colours

This lesson was a last minute addition to my planner this term. Because of some Public holidays I found that some of my grade 1 classes would be out of sync with the rest, so the solution was a fill in activity to reinforce some colour theory. 

Surprisingly some of the kids had never made paper snowflakes before which blew my mind (this was one of my all time favourite things to make as a kid)

 This activity was great for talking about shapes, colour, symmetry and fractions.