Peace Dove

Grade 3 artist created these beautiful clay symbols of peace. For this project students carved out a dove shape and applied a texture. When dry the students applied a blue paint wash and finished with a gold metallic blend around the outer edge. 

3D Leaf Prints

3rd grade created these beautiful leaf prints by pressing leaves into modeling clay. Then painting them with watercolor when dry.

3D Geometric Forms

In this 4th grade projects we learned what makes something 3 Dimensional. Our 4th graders should be able to tell you from this lesson some key aspects of both art and math, such as...

A shape is 2D, like a circle or square.
A form is 3D like a sphere, cube or rectangular prism.
A 3D form has length, width and most importantly depth.

After learning the technicalities of each form students created balanced compositions and added charcoal shading for give the appearance of depth!

ELMO

Elmo is not just a cute fuzzy red character on Sesame Street! An ELMO is a brand of document camera and has quickly become one of my favorite feature to accompany our SMART board in the art room!! The document camera projects what ever is below it onto the interactive white board. It is great for the teacher to show a drawing or painting demo so that each students can see it close up. On this occasion 4th graders were studying 3-D forms and composition's. We used Elmo to display a student created composition so that all could sketch the same thing. We also used the interactive whiteboard to outline and emphasize the placement of the forms. In the second day of this lesson we used the Elmo for a charcoal shading demo. The finished projects will be posted soon!

TOTEM POLES

This lesson is done with 3rd grade as part of my Native American Unit. Every grade level does an art project that focuses on the native culture. In this particular lesson we study what it means to make symbols and the idea of creating "spirits". By using construction paper we create a 3-D piece of art work. During this lesson we learn about the differnce between balance and symmetry when designing how our poles will look. The process of digging through the large scrap bin and finiding interesting ways to create faces, symbols and charactors is always a process that the students enjoy. This lesson takes approx. 3-4 40 minute periods (including a day of discussion and practice sketching then 2-3 days of work time). We usually end by having a class critique "native style" we sit in a circle on the floor and discuss the meanings behind our poles. All in all, it is a student favorite.