4th Grade Monet Lily Ponds

I love Claude Monet.  I love teaching students about him and his art work.  I came up with the idea to paint a Monet lily pond from an inspiring post from Painted Paper.  

First my 4th grade students painted blue apple trays in Monet style using a variety of blue tempera paints, violet, green, white, pearl it and texture it paint mediums.  

I told them to make sure to paint the whole tray, even the sides!

Students then made lily pads with green painted paper, and flowers with tissue paper.  We talked a lot about balance when adding lily pads and flowers to their trays.

These projects were displayed in two different ways for our art show.  Some were hung in the hallway with 3rd graders Monet bridges and some were set on tables displayed with third grade clay fish and 3rd grade paper frogs.  Checkout my flickr account to see more photo's from this school year and our art show!

Sorry and Two Point Perspective

First I should apologize for taking more than a month to post...so much for my ''New Years Resolution''!  I have lost 11 pounds though! My other New Years Resolution to lose weight and work out!

There have been many things going on over here.  Many projects, preparation for my Art Show, finding out they are not replacing the other elementary art teacher who is retiring...yah know..the goods and the bads!  So I have many posts to come.  My spring break starts next week and I plan to post away and get caught up!

One 'good' that is happening is that we are lucky to be getting a new school built! It is a very exciting process.  Next year around October/November we should be moving into the new building.  I am so excited to have a new art room! No more creepy clowns on the floors and random fire place....yes I said fire place...I will be sure to post before and after shots!

So I decided that my 5th graders this year would draw our old building and I would have our superintendent choose one to be framed and hung at the new building.  Loved the idea, I have been planning this since I found out we would be moving in 2012.  What I did not plan for was how difficult teaching 2 point perspective would be!  I will have to admit...drawing detailed precise lines is not my thing! I am a potter! Even though this has been a major challenge for me and my students I think my 5th graders are working so hard!  I am so proud of their dedication! I have a few examples to share.  We plan to water color paint these and use colored pencils for details. 

Valentine's Day Hearts

4th graders created these fun Valentine Day Heart paintings inspired from Artsy-T on Flickr.

Day 1

1.  On a 12x12 white water color paper, students painted their paper with red and magenta liquid water color paints. (This class I allowed them to use blue and violet...I made the other classes only use red and magenta...I found kids went a little to crazy with to many color options!)  They had to paint at least one heart and could blend the rest of the paper with color.  Some choose to paint words or swirl designs.

Day 2.

Using a chisel tip and thin sharpie marker, students added designs to their heart paintings!