3d grade Winter Forest Reflections

My 3d grade students are just finishing up some really beautiful winter forest reflection pictures. They only took us two 30 minute classes to complete.  One to draw out the trees with Crayola water base markers (broad) and create the reflections by wetting the bottom half and creating a mono-print and another class to add color to the sky and water/ice, add more detail to the trees with markers if needed, and paint the gently falling snow in the scene.  We worked with a 9x12 piece of white sulphite drawing paper.

I love how the space in the center that was dry and didn't print looks like snow on the ground! 

The kids liked them before we added the finished details, but they really loved them after the extra details!

                                              Each one has it's own personal beauty...

I have seen several different takes on this mono-printing idea, all beautiful.

These are just a few of the many... I have three more classes finishing up this week before our Christmas Break.

My 4th grades are extremely jealous that they didn't do these last year! I told them I will come up with an idea for this technique for them...  :)

For some of my kids this was a lesson in finding beauty in the not so perfect! I have some students that think everything has to be perfect and I am working on getting them to see the beauty in non-perfection! 

I saw this on Instagram and it made me laugh out loud, cuz I've been there! 

I have 1 and 1/2 days left before Christmas Break and I am looking forward to the long break to restore my "batteries" ( and regain my sanity... )

I'm off to continue working on this South Bay Shawl I started last night...I had to frog 2 rows because I screwed up the repeat and didn't find it until a row and a half later when the pattern didn't jive...  I always go into auto-pilot with this pattern and sometimes "V" stitch where I should be creating a single Double Crochet stick ( or visa-versa ). I saw the Lacy Shawl in the Simply Crochet issue 24 and decided I needed to make one. I love the border they put on it! 

Well, off to procrastinate cleaning the house for Christmas...  have a good beginning of your week and a wonderful Christmas! 

Mrs."C"  :)

Creating My Own Canvas...

I am trying to do something purely creative for an hour or two every morning this summer... yesterday it was simply sketching flowers in my sketchbook, this morning I printed on a cream colored piece of cotton canvas I bought last weekend for this exact purpose!

Ok, so everybody needs to have a cat invade their space when they are working... if you have/have ever had cats you understand... its their way of saying, " Hey, look at me! " 

Ok, so inspiration for this whole thing comes from Alisa Burke, she is an amazing, very inspirational artist who freely shares her creative ideas to inspire others! She has so many cool ideas! Sometimes I will see her do something, like this plastic bag printmaking and think OMG how did that never occur to me to try?!?  Then I realize it's because 10 months out of the year my mind is on overload from school, lesson plans, SGO's, assessments, data.... you know... all the stuff that SUCKS ALL the creative and physical energy out of you! ( if you are a teacher you know what I mean... )

I started by painting some fabric paint onto a plastic bag( Ziploc , not the grocery kind...) and placed it randomly onto my canvas and pressed...

Once I started to get into it I became more random in my placement...

Now its starting to resemble Monet's Waterlilies to me...

Time to break out the random kitchen items...

I really wanted some bubble wrap but do you think I could find any? I had my daughter searching through the house... 

Ended up with a piece of Lego instead...

... it made the dots I was wanting but I would still like some bubble wrap...

The kitchen table is not just for eating...

...ready for something contrasting...

I tried a couple of ways to paint onto the bag but was not loving it... I ended up drawing on the bag with the paint bottle and then gently printing the sketch into the fabric...  to much and it over squished... found I could quick blot it up with a paper towel and all was good...

over squished... blotted it up and the background color came through in places, looked way better...

... added some white flowers too...

... even when I'm not at school my hands are a mess...

I so LOVE how this turned out!!!

Now the whole piece is drying out on my front porch in the breeze...

Time to go clean up my mess...

I'm going to be using this with some awesome fabrics and recycled denim I think for a bag...

I'll play later...

Mrs."C"  :)

Heart Prints - K, 1st and 2nd Grades

My K-2 art room has been printing up a storm this week in anticipation of our school's yearly celebration of Kindness and Justice Week!  Every January during the week of Martin Luther King's birthday our school has what is called our "Kindness and Justice Week Celebration".

Each year a different book is chosen that shares a lesson in kindness and all of the school's activities during the week center around the book and it's message of kindness. This years book is...

 

 It was the perfect time to try out this idea for making heart stamps out of recycled cardboard I found on Pinterest.  

 

All of the classes started by painting a colorful background using watercolors.  

 

I spent an entire PLC meeting (multi-tasking people!) and evening rolling, folding and taping over 30 cardboard hearts!  I found that if you rolled the cardboard around a large glue stick or a marker it was much easier on your hands!  Although, I do think that if I had octopus arms it would have come in handy a few times when I was holding and taping! 

 

SUCCESS!

I made the hearts in various sizes and designs.  I made sure that on one side of the stamp all of the edges were as close to flush as possible so the kids could get a good print.  Even if it was slightly off, after they started stamping with the paint the edges mushed down slightly and they were all getting good print images.

 

 

Each stamp was 3-4 inches tall so they were chunky and easy to hold and stamp with.

 

Before the children made their prints, I gave them some materials (tissue paper circles I cut and cut up pieces of last years painting place mats) to cut into shapes and add a little bit of collage to their paintings first.

 

I poured purple and blue paint onto paper plates that our PTO donated to me last spring.  They were leftover from our school's Senior brunch.  It made for a very easy clean up when we were done stamping at the end of the day!  If the plate got a little soggy, I just put another one underneath it.  I started with two plates together for stability.  They actually held up really well.  I think they were more of a heavy weight plate, not the cheapo kind.

I demonstrated to the children how to stamp with our cool heart stamps to create their prints before I let them use them. 

Let the stamping begin!

 

The kids loved using the heart stamps!

 

They thought it was a very creative idea for recycling cardboard.

 

 Some said, "You come up with the coolest ideas Mrs.C!"

I told them "I found the idea on the computer."

 

When the kids were done printing, they carried their masterpieces to the drying rack. 

 

Next week I will be hanging them up around school and on our front hallway bulletin board.

I will post some of the finished pieces next week.  I meant to take some pictures before I left school today but I was busy looking for my desk...

 

It was buried under many projects I had taken off the drying rack and I spent some time organizing and putting them away after school!

Thus, I forgot that I wanted to photo some things...

There's always next week! 

Have a great weekend!

Mrs.C :)

Kindergarten - Free Paint and Printed Circles !!!

 

Well, I survived my 400+ progress report grades from last weekend so here I am with some awesome (I think) art created by my Kindergarten's!  Let me just say:  "I LOVE MY KINDER'S!!!"  I have been having the best time with my Kindergarten's!  I'm exhausted, but so in love with working with this group of students!  They have come such a long way since that first art class when I was scrambling to get names on papers and prepping numerous activities to keep them all busy for the full 40 minutes.  They are all writing their own names (yes, I still have to do a bit of deciphering, some of the names resemble a code by Da Vinci!)

Now they are all coming in, sitting down and ready to start creating!  Two weeks ago I painted with them for the first time.  The Kindergarten teachers said all week the students  kept asking when Art was because I had said we were going to paint!  I used the tempera paint cakes I had purchased with my Artsonia money.

 

I started the lesson with how to get prepped to paint in the art room...  Once they got their paper and put their name on it, I called the students by tables to walk over and get their smock from the back of the bathroom door.

 

I physically walked over and showed them how to get their smock off the door and then walk away so other students could get in for their own smock.  I used one of the students as a model to show them how to put it on and we were ready to paint!  I demonstrated how to use the paint brushes and paints correctly and how to wash out their brushes between colors so they didn't get all mixed up.  (Note to self: get smaller smocks for Kinders next year!  They are being swallowed alive by the smocks I currently use!)  We're working with them though! 

 

I passed out the painting place mats and had the kids spread them out on the tables.  I passed out the paints, water and brushes as they eagerly dove into the paints and began to paint their papers how ever they wanted.  The only rule was that they needed to cover the whole paper the best they could.

 

When they were finished painting, I showed them how to put their own paintings on the drying racks before they cleaned up.  Washing their hands is a little hard for a lot of them as they are too short to reach my soap dispenser and the faucet to turn on the water!  My room was not designed for the shortest members of our building!  I have been dispensing soap into one of the water buckets and letting them dip their hands in to get them soaped up!

During the second class the kids stamped circles onto their paintings using black tempera, plastic cups and old marker caps.  At clean up we had another refresher course in Hand Washing 101!  They like to soap up and immediately rinse it off before it can do any good!  They also just hold their hands under the water with out rubbing them together.  I went through the whole procedure for being "Scrub-A-Dub" clean after painting.  They thought it was quite funny how I gave the directions in a Sing-Song way!  I did however hear several of them sing the same directions to themselves as they were scrubbing hands!  Here are some of the painting/printmaking results...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see that some of them were still wet when took the photos!  I hung some of them up on the bulletin board in the school's front hallway...

 

 

 

I put the pieces up late after school and a meeting on Monday afternoon so the display was up for a day with out the sign stating that it was the work of Kindergarten.  The day I hung the sign everyone kept exclaiming that they couldn't believe the Kinders made them!  They thought it was 1st or 2nd grade!  I think they did a really great job and I'm so proud of them! They are so proud of themselves!  These are some close-ups from the bulletin board display...

 

The reflections are from the laminating film I use to cover the art work so it is not destroyed at bus time by the bus lines.

 

I hope everyone has a great weekend and a chance to re-charge so we can do it all again next week!  :)