Our first week of school in the art room

Here's what we worked on for our first week of school. We looked at the artwork of Kandinsky and made as many lines as we could think of and then we painted them with tempera paint. Beautiful paintings of color and line emerged. 

Color and line composition by a 2nd grade student

We also started working on our self portraits after looking at self portraits by Frida Kahlo and Vincent Van Gogh. This is the beginning of a self portrait by a kindergarten student. Don't you just love the lines of his hair so quickly rendered?

A fourth grade student begins to paint her self portrait and then begins to work on an interesting background. I can't wait to see how these turn out!

New School Year....New School!!

I am very excited to be a new member of the incredible staff at Valley Academy Charter School! Our school is in its fourth year and will offer all of the four art forms this year. We have highly qualified, certified and experienced music, theatre, visual art and dance teachers! The students will have visual art twice a week, which will increase their depth of knowledge and skills. I am very optimistic about how much we will accomplish this school year!!
Here's a picture of the new art room. Take a look and see what we will be doing for our first projects. Please come in and volunteer or participate in our art room whenever you would like! I will be teaching every day, all day so come catch the enthusiasm and learn along with us!

German Holiday Tradition Nutcrackers

This week in art we are learning the history of nutcrackers and how they went from a tool to a work of art that is now part of our holiday traditions.
Students started with a folded in half, black paper and then placed a rectangle template right on top of the fold in the middle and traced around it for the body of their nutcracker. Then we began adding details and talked about how these objects were brought over to the US by soldiers returning home for Christmas after WWII. This became a popular American holiday tradition during the 1950's and has been a part of our festivities ever since!
To finish the project students traced over their pencil drawing lines with black oil pastel and then colored in each section solid.

Eric Carle Insects

 This is my rendition of Eric Carle's insects. Kindergarten and first grade students are learning about the life cycle of insects, so I showed them a short video of Eric Carle talking about "The Very Hungry Caterpillar"( Eric Carle's 40th Anniversay Video)
Next,  we talked about how many body parts insects have, how many legs and that they have antennae and usually wings, too!
With painted paper from past projects, the students drew circles and ovals on the painted paper, glued it to their yellow papers and added lines, patterns, legs, eyes, antennae and wax paper wings!
The sweetest little insects I've ever seen!

Waitress of the Arts

A waitress of paint, water containers, pastels, pencils,

A constant voice of encouragement, of positivity, 

A mentor, patient as the day is long-

Understanding, kind, a pleasant voice, smiling eyes,

This is me-my art teacher persona-

Day in and day out-No child left behind, 

No character broken, no damage done-

The arts heal-

Not only the students, but they heal me.

Spring Birds

1.  This week fourth grades learned about spring birds and how they know when its time to build their nests. We also talked about how trees know when its time to bloom and grow leaves. 
2. We drew the bird step by step, but first we used a small, plastic condiment container and we traced it for the head size. Doing this started everyone off of the right foot and not one student felt overwhelmed. From the head we drew the oval body, feather details, beak, eye, feet and feathers. We then put the birds in a flowering tree filling up the empty space and they drew a border to finish it off. A great way to teach proportion, size and observation. They colored the background with blue oil pastels and painted with secondary colored tempera cakes. Spring has arrived!!

2nd Grade Habitats

 This week 2nd and 3rd grades studied habitats and what animals need to survive in their environment. The students water colored their animal and then added details with oil pastels and then went to work on the habitats. They were required to include; food, water and shelter. To make the habitats more interesting we talked about horizon lines and drew them and then cut the lines we drew to make for an interesting line! I told the students it was like "cutting the sky off". Check these out!!