December Faculty Art Class

Our December faculty art class was a hit!

This month, we painted our own canvasses. I have an abundance of 8 x 10 canvasses, so I pulled these out and let the teachers play!

I set out liquid watercolors, acrylics, tape, pans with marbles, stamps, etc. Here are the end results (beautiful, as usual!!!!):

Stay tuned! Next month, we will be making coaster sets! Pin It

Tall Tales- The Remarkable Farkle McBride

Today's book was The Remarkable Farkle McBride by John Lithgow. None of the students had heard this book yet, so it was fun reading it to them for the first time.

Our first project of the day was building a drum out of recycled materials. The parents were asked to bring a cylindrical container for their child. We had coffee cans, juice containers, milk jugs, oatmeal containers, etc. The children used the materials that we have accumulated over the last 4 days to decorate their drums. Some of them even added to the inside of their drums so that they could not only be drums, but be maracas, as well.

The next project was one that I have seen multiple times- Kandinsky's circles. The children folded their paper into 8 sections. They used oil pastels to color and add circles. Some of the children decided they didn't want circles and they added hearts, stars and other shapes. 

Our last project of the day was an emotion painting. Each student had a canvas (11x14). There was a selection of acrylic paint, brushes and small sponges on the tables. They were asked to paint using their emotions. There was also music playing, so they were able to use the music as inspiration. The novelty of having their own canvas was inspiration enough for some of the children!

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First Grade Starry Night Cityscapes

 This became my favorite project that the first graders did this year! This was a 2 part project. We started by reading the book City Lullaby by Marilyn Singer. As we read, we talked about the different sights and sounds in the city.

Then we made our cityscape by printing with white acrylic paint and recycled tools (corrugated cardboard, tape rolls, toilet paper rolls, blocks, etc).

The students needed to start their city at one side of their paper and continue over to the other. We talked about how the buildings could be different heights and how they should have windows, doors, etc.

The next week, they created the background with a black piece of construction paper and oil pastels. Each table had a selection

oil pastels that had been rubber-banded together (2 or 3 colors together), and they made their swirls starting from one side of their paper all they way to the other side.

They cut out their cityscape and glued it onto their background.

To give it a little bit of sparkle, I let them glue sequins onto the sky for their stars.

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Tall Tales and Art- Only One You

 Today's book was Only One You by Linda Kranz. I have always wanted to work with this book and I finally got the chance.

I read the book to the children and as we always do, we broke into age groups.

The younger students (ages 3-5) created a watercolor fish. The inspiration for this activity came from: There's A Dragon in my Art Room.

They started by drawing their fish on white paper and tracing it with black marker. Then they used liquid watercolors (many of them had never used these before and they LOVED the vibrant colors that they were able to use for their fish).

They cut out their fish and glued them onto a background. We had some turquoise paper which worked nicely for an underwater scene. Then came the decorating. Glitter, foam shapes, tissue paper, sequins and GLUE were all made available to the children for their fish.

The next age group (6-8 yrs old) created Gyotaku fish prints. The inspiration for this activity came from That Artist Woman.

 They painted the fish (we did not use real fish for this, but I have heard that you can... we bought the rubber fish for this activity) with acrylic paint. The students then created 1 print on a piece of paper. This pulled most of the paint off of the fish. Then they used a piece of muslin to create a second print, pulling the rest of the paint off of the fish.

The last group of students (ages 9 and up), painted river rocks. I bought river rocks at Home Depot. The children were able to choose the rock that "spoke" to them. Some looked for a certain shape, others looked for certain coloring. It was interesting to see how they searched for their particular rocks. They used acrylic paint and created their own individual rocks. Since I had made sure to have plenty of rocks on hand, some children went home with 5-6 painted rocks.

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