Clay Bobble Heads

Unloaded the first group of bobble heads from the kiln today.  This is the first time I have tried this project with my students.  These were done by 4th graders.  I think the kids will be so excited.  I was so thrilled to see these.  My students continually amaze and delight me with their work.  

Looks like Yellow Snow!

One of my student created this during our clay unit in the after school Art Club.  He used neon tempera paints to add the color and we grabbed the stick arms from the tree out front.  Too cute, don't you think??

Painted houses

Latest projects from the Art Club.  Student build little clay houses and then painted them after learning about the painted houses of Burkina Faso, a village in Western Africa.  The women of the village work together to adorn new homes with geometric design work prior to the new residents moving in.  Most of the work is done with black and white paint only although the ancient practice included the color red.  Learn more about the practice here. 

Third Grade Clay Owls

Third grade students work with slabs for their clay project.  Instead of glazing, they paint with neon tempera paints.  The results are so much fun!

Rethinking and executing a Kindergarten Lesson

 After taking the AOE course "Rethinking Kindergarten" this past summer, I decided to revamp this lesson and give students more choice with how they completed their sponge painted snowmen.  I gave each student a stack of multicolored papers and will just a few brief demonstrations on how they might cut their paper to create various parts of their embellishments, they went to work personalizing their snowman.  I started by sharing the book SNOWBALLS by Lois Ehlert so they had lots of great ideas for their own snowmen.  Some added hair and a few even added strawberry noses.  I love the new way this project took itself, a totally student guided project.

Surrealism in Art Club

Art Club work from this afternoon.  We studied a few works from the Surrealism period and talked about how the colors were laid down.  Using oil pastels and baby oil, these small paintings were created.

Check out the texture in this one

Clay time...firing the kiln

I've been managing the kiln all week.  Four loads later and almost everything is fired.  I have half of everything with a coat of wax resist on the bottom.  The kids are eager to glaze so I've really been putting in the extra time to complete them all.  Hopefully we will glaze the end of the month.  These are the bobble heads from 4th grade.  First time I've tried this project so I am hoping I can get them to bobble.  The kids did some really cute things with the assignment.  I'll post when they are completed.

MINIONS!!!

 I am so enjoying the Art Club kids and our once a week meetings.  Deciding to run an Art Club rather than an afterschool program has given me a bit more freedom in the projects we do as well as allowing more input from the group.  Every few weeks we briefly discuss and plan what we would like to do next as a group.  I throw out some ideas to kick start the discussion and students submit ideas as well.  The first week we met, we started the club in that way and one of the first request I received was to create minions.  I happened to be working with Model Magic in the younger grades so that medium came to

mind.  I also had a bag of plastic easter eggs that I felt might use as a form and cut down on the amount of clay we would need to use.  Each child was given a 5 oz bag of yellow to cover their egg to create the body of the minion.  We used blue, grey and black for the other elements and students used a model of a toy Minion for inspiration along with their own experiences and observations.    We used one bag of white (5oz), 6 (5oz) bags of blue and the large bags of both gray and black.  A few smaller bags of black and gray would have been sufficient but I was unable to find the small bags locally.   The eggs had been purchased at the end of the season a few years ago for 5 cents a bag.  We took photos for Artsonia immediately and the students took these right home with instructions to allow them to dry before they handled them too much.  The project took about 40n minutes and the kids were thrilled.

Oh, after I came up with the plan and purchased all the materials,  I found a minion kit by Crayola at the local Michael's store.  It was around $7.00 to make 2 small minions.  All total, 14 students created minions for about double that cost.