Big Art Day and other happenings

 Thursday was Big Art Day in Texas.

Big Art Day is an art happening to raise awareness of art education and art as a creative force in our communities on a BIG statewide scale. It is an attempt by the Texas Art Education Association (TAEA) to engage all art educators, their students and communities in a single day art event.

In our classroom we used Skype to connect with another art room! 
We shared our class pets who had been "decorated" for Big Art Day!
Bunbun got some rainbow chalk highlights!

In other classes, we finished our clay hearts,

this one says," I'll love you till Earth is Venus." The artist who made it LOVES science! I asked him what his Valentine meant and he said,  " If the atmospheric conditions continued to add more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere the conditions of Earth would become like Venus...but it will never happen." 

We added ribbon and students took them home

Kinder is using watercolor pencils to draw the Van Gogh sunflowers and design a frame with gold paint pens on black paper!

3rd grade made camouflage 3D chameleons using oil pastels! They did so good, that you can hardly see them!!

Happy Valentine's Day

I'm not getting paid to endorse Crayola, but I LOVE Crayola Watercolor pencils! Have you tried them? 

This project is fun and easy for one class period. Just color cool colors on the outside of the heart and warm colors inside, then paint with water and listen to the kids OHH and AHH!!

Simple Clay Rose Hearts

So, if you read my blog, it is no surprise that I am going to do a project with hearts for Valentine's Day. If you look on the labels on the right side of my blog you can find other "hearts
 blog posts! We also did a clay rose project for Mother's Day last year you check out under "roses" on the label bar to your right! It is definitely my favorite shape! I have been playing around with some ideas and today I figured out a very easy way to make a rose to adorn a heart shaped slab. I have posted clay roses before but this technique is much EASIER for making tiny roses. My daughter who just turned 4 made this today! 

Begin with a coil and pinch the top of the coil from one end to the next. When you pinch the top of the coil, let the clay squeeze out and form a little ripple at the top. 

Slip, score, and use a little extra slip to attach the rose since you cannot press the top or you'll squish it! We used a paintbrush to apply the slip

 You can use a letter stamp to write a sweet note in the middle or personalize it

My daughter was addicted to making roses, and ended up spending 2 1/2 hours making roses and clay hearts!

 She used some old jewelry to stamp the wings, and some stamps for texture in the middle. I added holes at the top for ribbon.
I can't wait to get out all my red and pink and white glazes for these!!

Finished Heart Sculptures

Today the kids finished their super awesome Valentine's Heart Sculptures! You can see how we made the armatures and added paper mache and plaster craft HERE and HERE

They painted with tempera paint and acrylic paint. Some students wrote poems on their heart with paint gold pens.

 Splatter painting was popular with this class!

 I LOVE this eye ball with heart shaped pupil! I love when they think outside the box!

Some kids put Mod Podge on their sculpture to make it really glossy like the "Be Mine" below

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!