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!

Winter Scenes and Olaf feet!!

The past two weeks have been jammed packed with winter fun! I taught the kids how to use three shades of green oil pastels to draw a Christmas tree and create an interesting background like a forest or bricks. The kids loved drawing these and got VERY creative! I was able to photograph a few today, but most kids took them home already! We had Santa in the sky, elves peeking through windows and doing silly things in the room!! 

They added sequins for ornaments, which added a sparkling touch!

Kinder and First grade have been making Olaf feet ornaments! I printed all of their feet with white tempera, laminated them,

then added bows to the top on the girls and bow ties for the boys, pipe cleaner arms, and googly eyes.

Pine Cone Trees!!

 The past two weeks every grade level has been creating some fabulous winter artwork. One of my students, who is very interested in photography brought this fabulous horse to school and asked we could take a picture of Shrimp riding the horse. She spent a few of her recess periods creating the perfect backdrop with butcher paper and some of the glittered pine cone trees! It turned out fabulous as ever!! I love when my students come to school inspired!!

She set up the perfect backdrop for the perfect photo! 

You can see directions here:

Pine Cone Trees Directions

Third grade has had a blast using broken jewelery to create these snowy winder trees full of sparkle and bling! We painted them with green tempera, doused them in modpodge and covered them in glitter! 

After the glitter dried, I poured plaster paris on paper and stuck the trees in the plaster. When you mix up the plaster it is very liquidy, you must wait about 15-20 minutes for it to thicken so the tree will stand on its own in the plaster.

 Shrimp supervised from his easel and chirped orders at the kids!

                                                       We put a tiny star at the top

DeSHRIMPber

We have a new friend in the art room this month! Students have been working on bird drawings and we have a special parrot visitor! Shrimp is my parrot who has been visiting each day to inspire creative minds and model his beautiful birdliness for our project!! 

The kids LOVE him!!