I am Back

I am Back! Yikes I have been gone from the blog for almost a  year. Life happened. It is  a new school year and I have some new things I am trying and a lot of old stuff that I have improved upon. I am going to try and do better with keep the post more consistant. I will also post some things from last year that I didn't have a chance to post. You can always check instagram I was keep up with that until this year when our school district blocked it. Oh well I am looking forward to a Happy year. This is year five for me.

Kindergarten : 1st NINE Weeks Wrap up

The kindergartners are no longer newbes and have finished a tone of projects for this nine weeks.
In the primary grades I am trying to make it a point to read them at least 2-3 stories every nine weeks.

 We listen to the story the rainbow fish and talked about sharing

 We also talked about Kandinsky and produced our own version of Circles.

 We drew angle fish and colored them, I also added glitter to the fins. The students really enjoyed that part. We also just followed along with the video to artforkidshub.com

I let them listen to the grouchy lady bug and we created our own grouchy lady bug.

Second Grade: 1st NINE Week Wrap up

Oh my! Its been over a month since I have posted anything. I have been a little overwhelmed with the beginning of the school year. I think I am a little caught up now.

The second Graders finished up their fish and monster projects. Most of them turned out pretty well.
They were having a hard time understanding that the fish are suppose to be the primary and secondary colors. They also kept forgetting that they were suppose to mix the secondary color.

They were also learning about Jacob Lawrence. They had a chance to make on of his paintings. They did not  use paint, I had them use oil pastels. We talked about he told any stories through his paintings. So we did the same We wrote stories about something that happened in our lives and they we illustrated it. They had to write and illustrate the story first, then they could use the oil pastels and redraw their illustration on a bigger paper.

2nd Grade Fishes

So I thought it would be cool to have the second graders make an underwater scene for their color theory project. I thought that they could have primary and secondary fishes in the water about to be eaten by a big fish. Now I saw this project somewhere on pinterest. Not sure where thou.

 They are suppose to cut the fishes our and glue them to the paper that they painted. We will see how this project goes. I will keep you updated.

Mouse Paint

I do enjoy the story Mouse Paint. It really does a great job explaining primary and secondary colors to my Kindergartners and 1st graders.The also enjoy the story. We are doing a mouse paint project. I use artforkidshub website to help the students draw some pretty good mice for their projects. The kindergartners colored the mice Primary colors and the first graders colored their mince secondary colors and did a crayon resist. I only gave them primary colors and they had to mix them to make the secondary colors.

Paint OVERLOAD!

So I had this crazy thought that all my classes should be painting last week. It was ok. It went off better then I thought. Now all of the classes did not use tempera paint. The older students used more tempera paint and the younger students use  the Liquid water color I make for our class room.
 Color study is underway.

 2nd grade did a resist with the crayons and water color paint.

3rd-5th grade are painting their reference sheets and their circles and Ice cream scoops

Hand Prints for Kindergarten

So while we are doing the mouse paint project we are also simultaneously  doing a hand print color wheel to see how we can make secondary colors. I love doing this project with my kindergartners. They are so excited to get their hands in paint and when they rub their hands together and make new colors they just lose it. They are amazed that they made green purple and orange. I usually do this project for three weeks. It helps with the mess and I can allow the whole class to get a chance and not have a big mess in my room.  

Second Grade Fishes

Second grade really came out the gate swinging. We have begun on their first project of the year. Our color wheel fishes.

Cool Site for childern

On occasions I stumble upon some amazing site for children to learn about art of to produce art. The one site I have found that I showed in class last school year is called Art for kids hub. It is a great site to inspire children to draw and feel good about something that they produced. It's a great draw along. The instructor has children draw right along with him. These videos are well put together and can hold children's interest for the entire time.

Color Theory

We are now going into our third week of school. It's been going pretty well. Going into my 4th year of teaching I am noticing how much quicker they are in producing work. It use to take them forever to finish something that should only take 15 mins to do. I am really impress so far.

 We are focused on the element of design, "COLOR". It is my favorite element to start with, for me it is easier to incorporate other elements and principals. The student love this unit and they get a chance to do a lot of painting.

 The very first thing I start off with is my slide show on color. This year was great I didn't have to start with the first 4 slides because most of the students knew all the information. Awesome! Then I show my two favorite videos on color. I love show these color videos because the kids get so excited and they actually start remembering what the colors are just from the songs.

 Everyone completes a color wheel. We often go back to them as a reference in my upper grades.  For my 3rd, 4th and 5th graders they make a study guide and a reference sheet. I test them on the color wheel each year. My 5th graders should make all A's with the exception of our new students they have seen this test at least twice.

We are everywhere

Were are now on Twitter and Instagram as well as Artsonia!

School is In

The First week of school is over and it was fantastic. We went over the rules and procedures. I find it went over very well this year. The students understood the instructions very well and I think I delivered the information better then I have every done in the previous years. I look forward to an exciting year. This year we have an hour instead 45 minutes.

 The older kids completed a Pre-test.

 The primary grades completed a self portraits as well as a drawing from Art for kids Hub.com

This is a great website for kids to learn how to draw