Dragon's Halloween Chap. 2

Dragon is invited to a Halloween party and can't decide what costume to wear.  He ends up with a pumpkin splatting on his head and the scariest costume of all.   Here Kindergarten students model mask for their imaginary participation at the party with Dragon.

Day of the dead

student work

Scratch art paper was the medium of choice to create these sugar skulls for Day of the Dead.  The focus was on symmetry.  We started by reading this new addition to my bookshelf by Lisa Bullard titled "Daniela's day of the Dead".  I really enjoyed sharing this book with my students.  It presents a little historical element on each page to help you introduce dia de los muertos to students in a fun informative way while the fictional story makes for an enchanting read.

student work

student work

student work

What can we stack?

Lots of pumpkin expressions

First grade students learned about stacking this week.  We started by reading a favorite fall chapter book by Dav Pilkey.  This is a great book to introduce a number of skills to kinders.  I read one chapter a week and they have an accompanying project.  Chapter one tell how Dragon stacks six small pumpkins to create a scary jack-o-lantern.  Students are introduced to the concept of stacking in art by using a small pumpkins stencil.  They discover the proper placement of the stencil each time to create the stacking.  Compositions are completed by each student individually to show a spooky theme.  For Chapter 2, students create a symmetrical mask and for Chapter 3, color mixing is used to create a picture of a pumpkin.

These are projects from Chapter 1.

This one is a bit more haunted with the skeleton

This is a great composition for 1st grade

Once in a blue moon

Such wonderful detail

I love the moon in this one

Hanging on to fall

Almost all the leaves are gone from the trees in our area.  Third grade students hung on to a bit of the fall beauty with leaf prints today.  First several leaves were stenciled onto a page creating a contour of the leaf.  Immediately, more leaves were printed overlapping the first group by using watercolors.  The prints are striking on their own but students suggested we extend the project by turning them into tree compositions next week.  I'll post new photos next week to fill you in on how they turn out.  For now, I really love these!

The vein work is beautiful on this one

Heavier paint made a a more solid print

the viens on this one are beautiful too!

This student chose to only use red for the texture printing

The composition is so interesting and flowing

I have my whiteboard!

My white board was installed today....It was the best day ever!  Seriously, I ordered it a year ago and it has been sitting in a box in my classroom ever since.  I had given up hope of ever seeing it on the wall and never thought I'd be able to use it.  Doesn't it look great?  I didn't write on it today because I wanted to appreciate the splendor of having it hung!

She was very busy spinning her web

 Kinders enjoyed a reading of Eric Carle's The Very Busy Spider this past week.  The repetition of this book makes for a fun reading as students soon catch on and recite along with the book.

With a focus on line and shape, students then created a web using a white crayon.  Vocabulary included horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and angle.  A black crayon was used to create the spider with circles that are colored in slowly around the edges to become dots.  The magic of the lesson occurs as a liquid watercolor wash is applied over the compositions.  The students were delighted with their busy spider creations.

The Very Busy Spider

Valupillars

Okay, that's not really a real word but it is what I have chosen to call this value project recently completed by fourth grade students.  I was given a large quantity of white model magic that had been around for a few years.  It was beginning to become a little stiff so needed to be used.  I decided to turn this into a lesson on value, primarily tints.  With a little blue model magic and a larger piece of white model magic, students started by dividing their clay into 5 approximately equal pieces.  This would help them as they began mixing so they would be able to budget clay use.  The first ball was a small blue one, then white and blue were mixed together to make an only slightly lighter ball of clay.  Each ball of clay became progressively larger and lighter ending with a large white ball of clay that became the head of a Caterpillar.  Thus, the name, Valupillar.  Not only were the students totally engaged in the color lightening process to create the tints of blue, I also had comments that this as the best project ever!