Finished Day of the Dead sculptures, Christmas Break and What's Next?

I hope everyone had a fabulous Winter break! Ours was wonderful, restful, awesome, blessed, need I say more?! I got a brand new baby nephew for Christmas that I am so proud of (and took tons of pictures of)!! We did lots of art and came up with some fun stuff for the rest of the year! We celebrated Bunbun's 1st birthday and my girls had a blast making party hats, decorations, and a carrot oatmeal parfait for the party!

so handsome! 

The girls left cookies for Santa, but Shrimp and BunBun left carrots and seeds. Of course he ate them and left lots of treats! Bunbun really liked the gingerbread man!

Happy Birthday, BunBun!! 

 My 4 and 6 year old created artwork at home everyday! Here are a few of my favorites!

My daughter created this paper plate version of Shrimp and thought it would be a great idea for a class project!! Thus was born the idea of winter Shrimps and friends! Students will be creating their own bird complete with a winter hat made from tissue paper prints!!

Here's the steps! Just draw with marker, paint marker with water, make the tissue prints, then use a template to make the hats and yarn for pompoms

My second graders are starting their family portrait paintings. I LOVE this project! I am trying to teach them to draw big and overlap. Usually the family picture looks like tiny people all lined up. I wanted them to group the people how they would look in a real family portrait. There would be small people in front and tall in the back. We have just begun drawing them out on watercolor paper and I am very pleased with how they are turning out! LOTS of overlapping! 

Third graders are working on all kinds of parrot related artwork. Mrs. Taylor's class is creating GIANT alligator paintings with parrots on their backs! 

 Now last but not least, here are some of our finished Dia De Los Muertos Sculptures! This was a very fun project. The easiest way to do it is to paint the animals with acrylic paint NOT spray paint! Then use white acrylic for the bones giving each student a print out of their animal's skeleton from google image. Then use neon paint and sharpies to decorate. And of course add some bling!!

I have gotten a little behind on blogging some of our projects. You can see in November we made our Day of the Dead Dia De Los Muertos animal sculptures and I wanted to post some of the finished ones! They all turned out fabulous! Our next adventures involve Self portraits, family paintings, and some super fabulous still life drawings!

Foil People Sculptures

My fifth graders are learning about human gestures with foil sculptures and then personalizing them into things the students like to do. This project is very easy and SO much FUN!

First we made our sculptures, then students used a variety of materials to give their sculpture personality!

Here are a few finished sculptures!!

Directions:

1. Begin with a large rectangle of heavy duty foil

2. Draw one line at the bottom with a sharpie a little longer than the length of your hand

3. Then draw two lines at the top the same length

4. Cut on the lines

the two bottom flaps will be the legs. Gently roll them into a cylinder form

don't squeeze them yet. Remind kids when they begin to squeeze the arms and legs to do it VERY VERY VERY VERY gently because if you squeeze your sculpture tight it will become brittle and will break and will not be able to stand on its own

  Gently squeeze the legs a TINY TINY bit

 5. join the two ends of the middle together and join them by rolling them together (just the tips of the ends)

6. Now roll the arms into a cylinder just like the legs and gently gently squeeze but don't squeeze all the way

 Now Roll the top of the head down and every so gently pinch in the sides so it makes a ball, (don't squeeze the head too tight or it will be tiny and fall off)

Bend the feet, Hands, knees, and elbows

Then decorate!!! Have fun!!