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

Rene Magritte Self Portraits

Rene Magritte was a Belgian Surrealist artist. "The Son of Man" is one of his most famous paintings. It is believed to be his self Portrait. It depicts a man with a apple unnaturally in front of his face. It makes the veiwer want to know what the man's face looks like. 5th graders created their own portraits with an object of their choice in front of their face. We discussed the life and work of Magritte and how he adds mystery to his paintings. Lesson plan included.
Artist Info:
https://drive.google.com/a/jcsnc.org/file/d/0B0zDrpd0xD7TdWlucGVqQjJUUHM/edit?usp=sharing

Lesson Plan Unit:
https://drive.google.com/a/jcsnc.org/file/d/0B0zDrpd0xD7TRjd1dEw2VGc2V0U/edit?usp=sharing

Mister Sea Horse Collage

This is my first post of the year! I had a baby and have had much time away from teaching. I am starting to now re blog with some lessons we have done already in the art room. This is one is a staple to my first grade curriculum. I love reading to my first graders, especially Eric Carl books. Not only is he an author but an artist. This is such a great lesson on color, as I introduce warm and cool colors. See my attached lesson for details:

https://drive.google.com/a/jcsnc.org/file/d/0B0zDrpd0xD7TaVhjS3FrMU9QWlU/edit?usp=sharing

Over and Above Portraits

 In a search for a lesson for fifth grade that involved an American artist, portraits, and personal voice I found this one about the artist Clarence Carter (1904-2000). http://learn.michenerartmuseum.org/2011/02/an-over-and-above-lesson-for-students/

I had never heard of Clarence Carter (the watercolor artist) and thought his over and above paintings where interesting.

Over and Above by Clarence Carter

 I used the lesson from the above website and changed it a bit. We first looked at a few of his Over and Above paintings on the smart board and discussed. I later revealed his inspiration for these.  More info about Carter look here, http://clevelandartsprize.org/awardees/clarence_carter.html

 Each student was to draw a self portrait of themselves peering over a wall. We used mirrors, pencils and sharpies. For the color I gave them a choice, oil pastel, marker, color pencils, watercolor, crayons or a combination of several. 

First however we discussed the pro and cons of each. I wrote those on the board. 

• Ex, oil pastels are bright and colorful and resist water color. However not a lot of color choices with those and they smear. 
• Markers are also bright and colorful, but they bleed when used with watercolor. 
• Color pencils can be used different ways, light or dark. However they involve a lot of sharpening. 

So with this they made there own choices for color. They loved this!

On a separate day we looked quickly at the work of Fred Babb and how he uses words for inspiration and his own voice in his work. Student were to use their own personal voice and write a quote about art, music, life, etc. I had a sheet with several examples of my favorite quotes, and of course they could write their own (which several did) 

 This lesson was a total success and involved so many objectives from my fifth grade art curriculum.
Next time I will encourage them to draw their heads bigger, write bigger and bolder, and keep the bottom of the paper cleaner. However it was hard to do with pastels and water color.

 I love her background!

Second grade Impressionistic Painting

 Second Graders had fun learning about the life and work of Claude Monet and looked at several of "Japanese Bridge" paintings. We discussed En Plein Air, and how to paint like an impressionistic artists. Student's looked one of his paintings on the smart board, and mixed and used similar colors (blue, green, light blue,yellow) by quickly dabbing the colors. Bridges were made first with painters tape. See pics below.

 The next class time tape came off and we studied what water lilies looked like in real life and how differently Monet painted them. They were carefully painted with a palette of red, purple, pink and green. The last thing was to add a shadow on bridge with gray paint.