Color Wheel Cows-Third

I just finished all color wheel cows with all my third grade classes. This by far is one of my most successful art lessons. Students just love to experiment with color. I enjoy hearing them think out loud "okay blue and yellow make green...and if I add more yellow it will make yellow green". I also have found a lot of color smart board activities, so I like to incorporate those before we get started.

The lesson for this project is here. These are some final results from this year. Super cute and colorful! This year  I let them use all the primaries in their background how ever they wish. The could mix, keep separate, use one only, etc. I love the eyes! I emphasize big shapes, fill up your space, leave little background, BIG is BETTER!

Kindergarten Pattern Zebras

This is one of my favorite lessons of the year. I got the idea from artsonia. I have created my own template of shapes the students cut out to create the shape of the zebra, except the head.  I pre cut those out of colored construction paper. This lesson requires some work before hand. Such as precutting shapes for head, stripes in two sizes for body and legs and yarn for mane and tail. My classes our 50 minutes, so it took two days. The first day we talk about pattern, I read them a book and we do a smart board activity together on simple patterns, Ab, ABC, AAB, ABB, etc. We used small beads for nostrils, for more of a mixed media look. 

Neon Animals Adaptations

This has been one of my favorite art lessons since I have been back. We have been talking all about NC zoo animals in art and how they are able to survive in their particular environment. I found a little lesson idea about animal adaptations, on the NC Zoo Website, that I used to start off with. See Lesson plan and attached worksheet I did. For more information about the North Carolina Zoo please go to:
http://www.nczoo.org/. Info about the activity analyzing animals on their site:  http://www.nczoo.org/education/EducatorResources/AnalyzingAnimals.pdf

I did get the idea for using Neon Colors from Smart Class blog, one of my favorite sites for teaching inspiration. Here is her link. http://elementaryartfun.blogspot.com/2011/11/zebras-tigers-and-giraffes-oh-my.html

This lesson I created. I takes about 4 days. In my schedule I see the same fourth grade every day for a week, so this lesson takes about the entire week. Here is my lesson plan.
https://drive.google.com/a/jcsnc.org/file/d/0B0zDrpd0xD7Tcm9uUDlBX19LcWs/edit?usp=sharin

After we discussed and completed out worksheet/group activity students began their own animals drawings. I decided to open up the lesson with any animal, including zoo, farm, and pets. I did have several photos of animal portraits from the internet printed for students to look at. I was very particular about the animals, and chose only ones I thought would be easy to just draw the head of that would fill up an entire space with.
Here are just a few examples.

Panda

Fox

Cat

horse

tiger

tiger

lion- Please ignore flip. Blogger just wont turn it. 

Zebra

giraffe

tiger

giraffe

Mixed Media Owls-Second Grade

This lesson was done with my Second Grade classes in September. I usually read the book "Little White Owl"

This a wonderful story about being unique and accepting others no matter their differences. I like to start the year off with this story and I save it for second grade. Each year I try a different owl lesson. This time we used different materials and made a collage.

I always review lines with my first lesson, k-2. We reviewed lines and how they could be used to create a pattern to decorate our owls. This was done with oil pastels and water colors.

Next class time the owls were cut out, and collage was discussed. We used different materials for the background such as brown bag paper, tin foil, poster board, oil pastel, and black constrution paper.

The owl was glued last.

These look grade in our school hallways. I love the size of the owls, and the contrast of the bright watercolors,  dark background and shiny foil.

I beleive students enjoyed using different materials with the lesson, and understood a mixed media process.

Animal Pinch Pots

 These cute little animals were made using a pinch pot. My third graders had a lot of fun chosing their own animal and building it with clay. I had a chart on board of several types (maybe 15?)of animals they could choose from. I had several that created an animal off the chart, like a penguin, bird, which was great!! These were glazed with cone 4 speed ball glaze. The bowl above is a bunny, which was made before Easter, I call it her bunny bowl.

 Puppy

 Frog

 Horse

 Pig

 Tiger

Turtle

 These are examples before fired in the kiln. I use low fire clay, cone 06