Blue + Yellow = FUN

I was not exactly sure what the lesson of the day was going to be with my second graders. They are such a wonderful class and easily go with my impromptu ideas.
Remembering what I had seen on a blog about green, and given the fact we are learning about color mixing, I dove in.

I wrote the word green on the board.
I searched the stacks of art prints in the room and pulled out ones with many shades of green on them.
I found a couple objects that were green and held them up in a very animated way.
Soon, the class was scurrying around the room bringing me objects of green.
Once the excitement of GREEN!! slowed I gave each student a blob of yellow and a blob of blue acrylic paint.

I asked them to find how many shades they could come up with with just these two colors. Once they had a nice variety of shades I gave them some foam stamps.
This was a fantastic afternoon. Thank you for the jumping board.

Here we go again!

I am back in my classroom for the after-school art class. It was exciting to meet my new students 2nd grade and see some returning students from last year. I ended last year with dancing cows and chickens from Deep Space Sparkle and I decided to open up this year with the very same thing, only returning students got a colorful twist.

I displayed the larger 2nd grade work in the art room window. It is fun to hear giggles and comments as every student walks by on their way to the bus.

I had third graders sketch out their cows on a coffee filter. They used a sharpie and then colored in the cow with a white crayon. (if they chose to do so).

Then we used liquid water color to saturate the coffee filter. the results were very nice. I will have them sandwich these between two pieces of black cardstock and laminate them to give a stained glass effect.
This was a fun welcome back.

Last Day of School Calls for Cows & Chickens

Living very much in the country I decided to have the students paint dancing Cows and Chickens from Deep Space Sparkle.

The projects turned out to be a HUGE success. I love the step by step tutorial that comes in the pack. I had been holding on to this for quite some time, thinking I didn't really want to paint cows. I am shocked I waited so long. this will be a fall project for sure.

It was the last day and everyone was really anxious, but here are the results.

Bargain Paper Wreaths

I had my second graders cut out a lot of leaves from paper, then glue them in a circular pattern onto a paper plate. This kept them busy and content for quite a while. Some colored them in, some drew veins and all put these great sparkly things in the middle. ( I got these donated from Micheal's Craft Store last year after Christmas.)
This was a fun project and I will post all the wreaths once I get them photographed. 

Notan on Marble Painted Paper

I saw an excellent tutorial on how to create this art form, I simply can not remember where I stumbled upon it. Here are my results from a few sixth graders. 

I had them create a background paper using the classic 'marble painting" (where you roll marbles through some paint drops on your paper)

The students who were absent on painting day adhered their shapes to white paper and marble painted over everything. I like the results better I think.

Experimenting with color

It was so much fun to see the excitement in their faces when colors mixed.
I have been wanting to do a color wheel project with my classes. but wasn't sure which medium to use, how to exactly complete it and what it would turn out like. I have looked at many blogs and I think I just got overwhelmed. Here are my results.

Samples on the board

I told the class about the three primary colors, that other colers were created by mixing those together.
I DID NOT TELL THEM HOW.

I told them we were not going to make a specific  art project today, however we were going to experiment with the watercolor pallets. They were only to use yellow, red and blue. They must use yellow first and clean their water after using a dark color.

I informed them how to properly take care of the paint trays, you will see they were all very good about it.
I had them paint 1/3 of the paper yellow, then 1/3 blue/ and finally red on the remainder.

Once they completed that they were encouraged to experiment with one color on top of another.

There were so many gasps as they saw colors change before their eyes. They were excited to tell me as if I had no idea. This is why I love teaching children.

Cursive Name Creatures

While perusing Becca's blog I landed on this great project.

 I started teaching a new group of students that I had never met before. What a great way to really get to know the names of your new students. Being in the third grade, these students were excited to write in cursive.

Very fun!


Everyone works at a different pace so I thought this would be a great project to 'start' with and easy to work on when done with other future projects.

They love the googly eyes.