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

What's been going on the art room in February!

I take tons of photos on my phone during class! However getting them to my blog is another story. Here are some  super fun things some grade levels have been working on the past couple of weeks.

Fourth Grade: Circke Weaving on coat hanger. A NEW WEAVING PROJECT FOR ME! Great idea from Mrs. Picasso's Art Room. Her blog has a great directions on how to make the loom and get started. 

Don't let the pink shirt fool you. This is boy! He and few more fourth grade boys have  proven to be my best and fastest weavers!

Two classes hung on wall waiting.....to be worked on. Not done yet. Great way  to store  in between class times. Kids just pick them up as they walk into room. 

First Grade student working on Clay heart. This lesson was on Jim Dine. These are done actually. Ill post finished pics later. 

Add caption

Third Grade Gyotaku lesson. Student's inking and rubbing their fish. These are done too. More pics to come soon. 

Second Grade Japanese Bridges. These student's are dabbing away with quick  prints to capture Monet's brush style. One more day to wrap these up! Ill post more finished pics later. 

Glass and Glaze

 Have you ever melted glass in your kiln. Fabulous idea that I know most art teachers do, especially my fellow art teachers in my county. I tried it this year for the first time and the results are amazing. The student's were amazed and thought these looked beautiful. Especially these second grade slab bowls. By far one of the best projects I've done all  year. I purchased the glass flat beads, large and small from the dollar store. I had to visit there a lot because we kept running out.

 These are in display in the case outside of my art room along with lots of other stuff. As you can see some glass did not make it all the way across some of the bottoms. Which is okay. Each piece I thought was unique.

 Side ways view from bowl at top. It's hard to see but the sides were stamped before these were put on the mold.

 I really like the free form of this pottery. I encourage the students to lay the slab (after they rolled it out) on the mold and to NOT cut it in a circle.

 These are ready to be fired in the kiln. You can see they each picked out three colors of glass. Just enought to melt all the way across,on most.

 Bone dry bisque and ready to be fired in the kiln.

 Great pic of stamped sides and bottom. These slabs were laid on a styrofoam bowl, as a mold. We used slab sticks, rollers to get the correct thickness of clay. Then they were stamped with various stamps I made last year. Then they were carefully picked up and laid on mold. They were to gently push down slab to form it slightly around mold (bowl), but not to much. Names were put on these last with needle tool.

 Fourth Graders even picked one piece of small glass and put inside their face pottery for a pop of color. I like to do this lesson with clear glaze.It shows the details in the clay better. These student's could choose clear if they wanted, if they didn't want the color inside.

 Glazing with three coats, time for a glass bead!!

North Carolina Lighthouses

I love this collage project. I have done it for the past two years for 4th grades Art by Me lesson. They look great on their magnets and the things the families order.

Three day lesson.

One Point Perspective Interiors

A couple of weeks ago I posted a video from U tube on one point perspective. This is the lesson that went along with the video. It was one of the hardest things I've taught but I think the students really enjoyed its complexity. Most of the results were great like the ones posted. Excellent lesson on space and how to draw a three dimensional space on a two dimensional sheet of paper. I showed the classed "School of Athens" for an example of one point perspective.

After we watched the video I used my document camera and step by step we did the directions from the video. Using a direction point (vanishing point) the rooms were set up. This took two days. The first day, after the video, we drew the back wall, two side walls, floor and ceiling. We also added two doors, windows, and frames, etc on the wall.

The next week we added details to the floor and lights on the ceiling. Then it was traced in sharpie. The creativity came next. Students needed to decide what kind of room they wanted to create using details inside the frames, outside the windows, textures on ceiling, walls, what was on the back wall. I did show the classes how to write a word or their name on the wall in perspective. All this was also drawn in sharpie.

The third day on a separate paper they drew a self portrait from elbows up with sharpie and colored it in with crayon, colored pencils. A large size was needed because we were to be the biggest part in our room because we were in the foreground.

The last day the rooms were colored in with crayons and colored pencils and self portraits were glued in the foreground.

Furniture was not added except if it were on the back wall.

This project took about any where from 4-6 class times to finish. Some students still need to finish, but will have to make it up later. We have already moved on to our NC lighthouse collages.

I got this idea from another art teacher on her blog, but can not remember what site.