Ode to Starry Night Mural

My art club recently finished this amazing 4ftx8ft mural with their version of Van Gogh's Starry Night. They enjoyed studying the "vibrations" and movement of the painting. We explored the way a painting can evoke an emotion. I have a great little coffee table book called "The Wisdom of a Starry Night" it shows paintings with a single question prompt. For this one we wrote about what wisdom we could find in this starry night. Some sample responses from my 4th and 5th graders were: "The stars in the sky remind me of how small we really are," "The bright starts remind me that my grandpa is always watching over me," it was a great reflective exersize to go with our mural.

Under the sea

This is a 1st grade lesson that allows students to explore the world that lives underwater. We start by finding interesting fish facts from books and internet sources. We have a class discussion on ideas we already know about underwater life then we build on that knowledge base by adding new facts from research.

Now that we have a good knowledge base we delve into the art process. Student do thier sketchbook connections first by doing step by step how-to-draw demos that allows them to do sketch work on about 8 different marine life animals. Then we choose our best fish to create a large individual sketch. Then we create a resit with watercolor and oil pastels. To wrap up each student presents their fish along with one interesting fact they learned and places them in a mural that we have previously created.