It's a Jungle out there!

With my English Art class, I am very crunched for time, and the attention span of some of them is quite short. It's been difficult for me to come up with meaningful projects that are do-able! I've found 2 projects in Mes premiers pas d'artiste (Heritage jeunesse), which I think I got through scholastic.
The first one I did was Birds of Paridise.

The kids chose 1 colour to paint their hand, printing it twice for the wings. They continued with the same colour and painted the head, body and tail. While the other kids were waiting for the paint station, they worked on making hibiscus flowers and palm fronds to decorate the display. After it was dry, on day 2(!), kids used pastels to draw patterns and designs on their birds. The BEST part was getting to use real feathers to add texture and interest to their birds. The kids were quite happy with how they turned out.

The second project in the jungle theme were VERY simple giraffes and zebras. I stole these from a birthday party my children were at. Kids from 2-5 were making them, so I figured they were do-able in less-than 20 minutes with 7 and 8 year olds! My fabulous birthday-party-planning-queen friend had a station at the party with everything pre-cut and ready to go. Bless her, she was more than happy that I took all of the leftovers!
For the head shape, she traced her kids' shoes (they are small!), then she found some fabulous fringe to use as the hair. The kids painted the stripes and spots, and glued on googly-eyes.. who can resist googly eyes?!

This week's jungle-themed project involves hippos! Last year I was looking at apple separators (like what they use to layer apples in a box) and thought it looked like rippling water. I did a fun project where the kids coloured hippo templates and cut them so they looked submerged in water, then added water-lilies. Cute, sure, (sorry, no pics!) But this year, I'm combining this idea with the other idea in the aforementioned book, and we are making standing hippos in the "river".
We started with a template of a hippo, very basic, on one half of a piece of cardstock. The children folded the paper, then cut it out to have a standing beast.
Next, we took tissue paper (various colours) and cut them into shapes and glued them with liquid glue onto the hippos.

The hippos were placed on the river and secured with large puddles of glue... this was the trickiest part to figure out, if anyone has suggestions for improvement, please share!

La Nuit Étoilée- Van Gogh

inspiration:

My new cricut! hee hee!

This is another project I did last year, borrowed from Art Projects for Kids. I actually did 3 versions of this one last year, with grades 1, 2 and 4, but this year's batch turned out the best, so far!
I started by giving each child a blue piece and a black half the size of construction paper. They had to use a ruler (tricky!) to draw a cityscape. The hardest part was cutting this out without cutting buildings off.. the goal was to have ONE piece of black to glue!

Before we glued, however, we used blues and yellows to create the stars, moon, and the movement of the sky. We talked about how the planet moves and the moon moves around the Earth. I love the "movement" on this one! This little gal moves a lot in class too!

I love it when I connect Fine Art with Science and French.. a 3-for-1 deal in this lesson!

Un Voyage dans l'Espace

- our new unit in French is about Space! I have been getting excited for this month as I have 3 bang-up projects to do with the kids.
The first one is the titular "Deep Space Sparkle" project from Patty's fabulous blog that I found last year. I can't quite find it now with her new formatting, but basically I meshed her ideas with the inspiration painting: Kandinsky's Several Circles No. 323 (Cercles divers No. 323):

Students started by tracing an odd number of circles in various sizes. They then colour them in with oil pastels.
Paint around them with two coats of black poster paint.
Meanwhile, the students made rocket ships using white glue and bits of boxes that they pieced together. These they painted with either cool or warm colours.
After the black paint was dried, the rockets were glued to the "space" background and I added some *sparkles* - I liked how sometimes the glue trailed a little creating a sort of meteor effect.

This is the second year in a row that I've done these and every one turns out amazing! It was the class's idea to mount them all together so that it looks like a universe, and I really appreciate that idea and the effect it produces!

PSYKO!!!!

Quick note: here's an AMAZING site: psykopaint I have had so much fun creating away! You have to check it out yourselves!! Here's the one I spent until midnight last night working on!


Also, I think most Art teachers have found this one.. The Google Art Project but it's always good to put it here, so that I can remind myself of it!

Pink Day.. anti-bullying and .. FLAMINGOs!!!

Tomorrow is Pink Day at our school, and indeed the district. It's when we all where pink shirts with anti-bullying messages to remember a boy who was bullied for wearing a pink-shirt.. Here's MY boy wearing HIS (ok, well, my old) pink shirt..
I thought with all this pink going on, it's the perfect time to implement the lesson I've had in the works for a couple of weeks.
Every gym period, for the past month, I've looked at this big wooden flamingo that's sitting on the top of a bunch of lockers on the stage of the small gym. Random? Yes! It's been the inspiration for this project, that and some lovely beverage napkins!


Yesterday, we did a drawing of our new feathered friend, using chalk on grey construction paper. We looked at this giant wooden beast (I think it used to be used as a planter? - and I'm sorry, I forgot to take a picture of it!) as well as pictures on google images. We then used pastels to colour it in. Most of the class used oil pastels, and some of the more gifted students used chalk-pastels. When students were finished, they worked on the palm tree fronds and tropical flowers that I used around the border. I really liked how this turned out.. it both gave students something relevant to do while they waited for others to finish, and I love how fabulous the display looks with the extra foliage (and foliage I did not have to make!) I'm going to do this again tomorrow with my other class, when we do birds of paradise.. I'm trying to beat the winter blues by imagining a tropical holiday!
I love how each flamingo has a unique personality:


They really ARE fabulous!!!!!

100-Day - Le 100e Jour d'Ecole

In the February Scholastic book order I found TWO FRENCH books around the 100e jour d'ecole theme. I was excited about them and ordered them, and then when they arrived, I was estatic to find that they were both really good! People who teach in the regular program have no idea how hard it can be to get resources like this, especially ones that you find are good and language-level appropriate!! One was a cute story book with tons of potential spin-off activities, and the other was a book for teachers with activity suggestions "Le 100e jour d’école : Célébrons-le de 100 façons! " . One suggestion in the activity guide was to do a self-portrait of when you're 100 years old.
The kids and I had a BALL imagining ourselves. They did a great job following my instructions about proportion, and I even dared to talk about womanly curves! oh my! (well, it is a French immersion class after all!) haha!

Grade-Wide Quilt

I teach Art to most of the grade twos at my school. I have a sweet deal where the reg. program (English) gr 2 teacher takes my kids for PE while I teach his kids Art. I decided to do a project where every child in grade two was included, and a grade-wide quilt seemed like the perfect project. I was initially inspired to do some paper weaving after going to a Math workshop where teachers had to make a few manipulatives to use during the workshop. This huge box of lovely long colourful strips of paper destined for the recycling was located next to me. It was an opportunity I couldn't miss, so I asked to take them home, and proceeded to transport them by ferry and car back to Port Alberni!
After teaching the kids how to weave, I borrowed this silhouette idea from someone else recently (I'm sorry, I can't remember who!) We talked about symbols and shadows.

I'm very pleased about the unifying presence this quilt has in the primary wing of the school. Especially when there is often divides between our two programs, once again, Art provides an opportunity for equality and unity.