Toucan

This lesson comes from the video, Art Lessons with Kids presented by Donna Hugh.  It has 3 lessons of rainforest animals, including the toucan, iguana, and tamandua.  I wasn't sure I would like watching a video for the lesson, I am ADD myself so sitting quiet for a full 50 minutes isn't ideal, and I'm an adult.  But, I do have to admit, when the tv is on the kids become mesmerized!!  Anyway, we broke it up into pieces.  We would watch 10 minutes and then I would review that information with a demonstration.  She goes extremely fast, so the kids can't watch and create. It took 2 days to get through the lesson this way and then they used an extra day on top of that just adding details.  The best part of this whole thing was their reaction to VHS, I'm sure this was a first experience for many of them.  If I backed up the tape to show them something they would geek out at her "erasing" her art!!  Got to love it.  I guess VHS really is a dinosaur technology.  (This lesson was done with 2nd graders)

Mad Science, Round Two

This is round two of the Karen Kamenzky art project.  Her work starts with silk and cotton that she hand dyes and paints.  Working from sketches of the images she sees under the microscope, Karen hand cuts the pieces and layers them, where she hand and machine stitches, to add line and color.  Our version of the art is done with layers of paper.  The largest piece has at least one cutout that is backed by construction paper.  Then on another piece of paper, students did their detail work with watercolor, and metallic temperas.  We also used sharpie to add line and color, similar to the stitch work in Karen's fiber art.  

Mad Science, with Karen Kamenetzky

I've been seeing Karen Kamenetzky's images on pinterest for about a year now.  I've always thought the colors and organic feel to the images were captivating, but I didn't know anything about Karen or her art.  Finally, after the December break, we were searching for a few new projects to do.  We came across one of her images and decided to do this with our third graders.  Her work is based on microscopic/cell images. Please visit her online gallery to see her fiber art, so inspiring!!  http://www.karenkamenetzky.com/index.html  She also has a fantastic blog; http://blog.karenkamenetzky.com/. With this project we each took a different approach, changed things as we went, added in last minute materials.  It was really a discovery lesson for the students and us as well.  I absolutely love that each student really has a very unique look to their art.  This is just a sampling of what we have done, I plan to post more images.

Glub, Glub, Glub...Little Fishy

Our sweet little kinder friends made these cute one day fish.  The details are done by practicing their  line skills.  They sharpied their fish and painted with watercolor (yes, we sometimes loose our minds and give kindergarteners black sharpie!!).  We cut them out and mounted them on a colored background paper.   

 

Wolf Kahn Landscapes

Wolf Kahn is a German born American who studied under Hans Hofmann. He is known for his colorful landscapes that combine the color field movement into his realistic landscape paintings.  His use of magentas, pinks, and vibrant oranges are breathtaking.  These second graders mimicked Kahns landscapes with brightly painted trees, skies and foreground.  This lesson actually took a couple of turns as we started the lesson more as a batik.  After a couple classes, and not exactly the results we were looking for, we simply did a crayon resist art piece with much better success.  That is what I love about the this job.  Not only is it a learning process for them, but for me as well.  In this line of work, flexibility is key!! 

Happy Monday!!

Sometimes it is good to laugh!  "It's a little bit awesome, but it's a little bit ruined!!"  I feel that way all the time.  (click the link below to have a little laugh)


Kid Snippets- Art Class

Banyan Tree

This is the Banyan Tree project from Crystal Productions, Dynamic Art Projects for Children.  I would say that this book is a must have for the art room, and more than likely, you have it or have at least seen it.  There are great instructions, visual steps and great color examples of finished products from kids, plus list of materials.  Sometimes the art room can be a bit overwhelming and we just need to give ourselves a break, 'cause teaching 650 kids in a week can be exhausting!!  That is just what we did, we gave ourselves a little break and had a very successful art lesson with the help of this book.  What I like from this particular lesson is how differently they all turn out.  You know, we teach some amazingly talented kiddos!!