An Art Show Connecting Art and Science!

With the theme of "Why do artists need to learn about science?" first grade artists investigated landforms, translated them into lines and placed them horizontally on their paper to create a landscape that shows depth. They used warm colors and cool colors, one scheme for the  sky and the other for the ground. I am not the first person to create these kinds of landscapes with students, they are very striking, but I have not seen anyone tell how they connected these beauties to other learning taking place. This show will be on display at the Regal Cinema 16 in Green Hills (Nashville, TN) for the month of November! I have included some pictures from this Wednesday's opening with the artist and their families! Enjoy!!

This is my daughter! So proud!!

I had students mount them on different colors by class so they would be easy to find at the show and easy to sort afterwards.

I am the concession lady. I usually have a parent volunteer willing to help. Everyone stops for the movie popcorn and pink lemonade donated by the movie theater so I have a chance to chat with parents.

Mirror, Mirror in my hand...a Frida Kahlo inspired self portrait.

 I love using oil pastels over paint, it is one of my favorite ways to create self-portraits with my students, especially young ones. These are 2nd grade portraits inspired by Frida. Students learned about her live and art before creating their portraits using mirrors. Then we framed them on paper that is shaped like a hand held mirror. (Thanks Phil from There's a Dragon in my Art Room for that idea!) Using crayons they added some motifs that are common in Mexican folk art as well as some symbols that are personal to each artist to decorate their symmetrical mirror shaped picture frame. They look almost as serious as Frida herself!

 This is a quick paint before the artist intro. We whip up the skin color for the head, neck and shoulders, adding the hair last and whisking it away to the drying rack before breaking out the idea books to learn about Frida Kahlo and practicing some front-view facial proportions!

 This way the paint is dry before we add the oil pastel the next week. Day three includes cutting out the portrait, gluing the three papers together and adding the designs on the mirror. You can see more on our Percy Priest Elementary Artsonia.com art gallery!

Our school year is in bloom with radial flowers by 3rd grade!

 We are off to an amazing start this year so I wanted to show off some of these amazing flowers created by 3rd grade artists. This is one of the lessons that I learned from Laura Lohmann (Painted Paper) at the Tennessee Arts Academy (or as my husband calls it "Art Teacher Art Camp").  After learning about radial symmetry and learning how to paint without water, they created these amazing flowers. I love how very different each one turned out, just like the artists that created them!

Rock-it Baby with that leftover table paper!!

So every year I cover my color-coded tables with the corresponding paper color. It is incredible how challenging it is for my very smallest students to remember what color table they sit at when all the tables are brown! But after a week or two, the paper gets kinda nasty so I usually just roll it up and toss it in recycle.  But not this year....Here is the before picture!

And this is what my tables looked like after everyone had been through the art room for the first day of art!

The second graders are adding some "circle painting" inspired backgrounds to these six rocket ships. Our theme is "Soar to Success" so rockets are the big thing. The fourth graders came in and detailed the rockets and now they are hanging all over the school! This is the fastest I have every managed to get student work up! They're so awesome and I heard not less then three times that it was "The best art class ever!" I Rocked-it, (haha)and suddenly I hear Def Leopard in my head, don't you...Rocket, yeah, Satellite of love! Rock-it Baby! Come on!!

Exploring Enduring Themes in Indianapolis!

Last week I spent two days with the Arts teachers in the Indianapolis Public School system for some summer PD before they headed back into the trenches for another year of growing people. They experienced a unit using the enduring theme of Identity and explored several student growth indicators, then discussed how to shift their teaching focus from studio to students. We grow people, that is what we do! They made a personal work of art and did a little planning. They talked, planned, problem solved, and collaborated. It was a personally inspiring experience to see the change in the room from 9:00AM Tuesday to 11:30AM Wednesday.

James Stephens (Music for All), Ila Nicholson, Linda Friend, Tina Atkinson, David Neman(IPS VAPA Instructional Coach)

Funky Kindergarten Flamingos

We made adorable patterned flamingos inspired by this adorable book about Sylvie, the little flamingo who decides to try being a bird of a different color! After reading the book I lead a guided drawing session to get everyone's flamingo looking flamingo-ish using letter forms like "S" for the neck and the numeral 4 for the legs. Using oil pastels the students added three or more different patterns to their bird.

 



The next class, we took another look at Sylvie, especially the sky and backgrounds. The students used oil pastels again to draw in the horizon line and two details and then watercolored the rest. Finally, once they were cut out and glued into the background, students did a written reflection. Using a chart, we brainstormed great flamingo names, things you would find on a beach and words that describe patterns. Then, using the word bank, students finished a fill-in-the-blank reflection.

My Flamingo's name is ______________.
My flamingo ate a _________________________ and had a ______________________ pattern.

To save time in some classes we skipped cutting out the flamingo, but the backgrounds on the blank paper turned out better. I don't think you can really tell the difference!! Either way, these flamingos are absolutely fabulous!!