Creative Inspiration

I am always saying that Art is an emergent curriculum in my class. This morning a student came in with the beautiful Fall leaves Poinsettia that you see below and a Fall leaves Christmas tree she had made at home. It immediately got the kids VERY excited and INSPIRED!!!

When they get this way, it means lesson plans go out the window and we direct the class towards the inspired ideas of the students! We went outside and collected handfuls of beautiful leaves and they went to town!! Everything in these artworks is made out of leaves with a few crayon embellishments

I don't usually do "Christmas" projects in November, but that is where their little creative minds lead them, so some of their artworks were adorned with holiday decor!

Pop Up Turkey Card

I made a template for this project so that we could do it in one day. I am not a fan of templates unless we are time crunched

most of the kids used oil pastels to outline and then smear into the middle for value

first you color and cut out the turkey. Then fold it in half

fold up the little flaps

put glue only on the flaps and line up the fold of the turkey with the fold of the card and stick him in the middle

We used a half of a painted piece of paper for the feathers. We folded them in an accordian fold and cut the top so it was rounded like feathers

Then place the feathers all folded with glue on both ends  inside the card while it is half closed and close the card tight so the feathers stick  

like this

then they will fan out when you open it

kids drew the blue willow china around the turkey, with oil pastel and then smudged it with their finger

and GOOBLY EYES!!

some students made their own feathers with white paper, oil pastels, crayons and texture plates. They were SO creative!

this is a "DJ" turkey

I love how this student put peas and carrots on her plate

And I will close with another gynastics accident inspired artwork!! Hello Kitty

Looking forward to next week when we study the artwork of New Orleans!!! See some of our past New Orleans inspired artwork here and here!

Lego Group Whole School Mural

Every Year we try to do some sort of All School mural in the beginning of the year. This year we did a Lego theme. Each student made a lego self portrait. The fifth graders made giant Legos, and decorations for the background. Some of the teachers made one and the students have had so much fun looking for them. 

 I gave them all this template, but they could cut off the arms and legs to reposition them as they wished. They used markers, crayons, fabric and paper scraps to decorate them.

You can see the PE teacher with fabulous sparkly shirt, sparkly shoes, and there were some cool shiny pants but someone swiped them! YIKES!

Kinder-1st Color Wheel Turkeys!

Get excited people!!! We're making TURKEYS!!!!

Fall Leaves Crayon Resist Paintings

Every Year I do some kind of project with Fall leaves. This year I went for the simple, but beautiful crayon resist paintings with my favorite liquid watercolors!

First we watched a video and talked about Fall. Then we put together a Fall Leaves Color Wheel so the kids could see the intermediate colors as they gradually change!

Here's a short video with LOTS of BeAuTiFuL Fall Leaves Images that we watched

Then they drew their leaves with crayons. Make sure your students press very hard with the crayons to make the crayon resist. They used yellow and light green to make their leaf drawings. We made sure to look at EVERY tiny line and detail and draw them just as they are.

I gave them only 4 colors of liquid watercolor; red,orange,yellow,and green

IF the leaves had spots, broken edges or holes, we drew those too. I LOVE the leaves that have ALL the fall colors in them from green, yellow-green, yellow, yellow-orange, orange, red-orange, and red!!

They had the option to add a background, but if their leaves were really bright, their background needed to have some brown and dull colors, to make the leaves POP

We also used OVERLAPPING in our Fall foliage