March & April 2024
WE MADE IT! We made it through Fine Arts Night! I can feel a giant weight lifted off my shoulders to finally send things home with the 5th Graders. I can only hope that we can make it through this last month in one piece.
Just a quick highlight from our mugs, a mistake that I surely will be careful not to make again, I accidentally MELTED two students mugs... I accidentally set the kiln to a Cone 6 instead of a Cone 06 which is about 400 degrees hotter... So let me introduce to you deflated frog and melty horse.
I felt SO BAD when I opened the kiln and found this waiting for me. Luckily the students understood and were able to make new ones just in time for Fine Arts Night.
I am very lucky it was only these two (and a test tile I had) in the kiln and not a full kiln load full of projects. I think I would have cried if we lost that many projects.
Students that finished their mugs worked on their weavings if they hadn't already. For those students that did finish they were able to start on the linoleum carving project!
I love printmaking and I do it every summer with my summer school kids. For this project I went to the hardware store and picked out over 300 paint swatches (I confused a lot of employees that day). The students had to pick a paint swatch based on the name of the color (if they couldn't draw the name they should pick something else, even if they liked the color)
The linoleum was the same size as the paint swatch, they carved out their drawings and we printed right on top of the paint swatches! I think they turned out very cool with the color in the background.
I spent a good amount of time teaching the students about carving tool safety and so far everyone has been responsible with the blades with only a small amount of nicked fingers in the process. (Hands behind the blade and carve away from yourself, always)
It was great to talk to so many of you during Fine Arts Night, I started tearing up with Ms. Retzlaff during the concert when she reminded me that we wouldn't have these guys running around the building next year. I'm not ready to say goodbye just yet.
February 2024
We finished up Still Life and transitioned to clay!
The students were just as excited as I was for this project and they are looking amazing so far!
I am very glad I had the forethought to make templates for this project for the students to use because this project had the ability to either be extremely fun or super frustrating. I made 3 different sizes for mugs for the base and walls but after those were cut out from clay and assembled the students could add anything they needed to make their mug look like their animal and I am so pleased with the results so far!
Even if these don't end up being someone's favorite hot chocolate mug, they make outstanding pencil cup holders!
Most students are still in the construction stage of this project so next month I will have more photos of in progress painting/finished pieces!
January 2024
Our sketchbooks are finished! I would definitely modify the project for next year to cut down on time regarding the letters for the impression (Mrs. Miller and I agree that they got kind of “lost in translation” and some of them ended up backwards because of this, so next year we are going to stick with foam and texture plates only, no beads). Thank you again for sending cereal boxes and any extra supplies with your students for the front and back covers!
I know last month I said that we were going to finish up weaving but I decided we were going to use that project as a “fallback” of sorts. I wanted us to get back to our still life paintings and I now have students in different places where they are finished with those paintings so I will tell them to work on their weaving. I love the weaving project and it has come in even more handy that it is something that can be long term and worked on between projects without much assistance from me since it is very easy to get the hang of.
Our still life paintings are going to look just a touch strange because they are using analogous colors (colors that are neighbors on the color wheel). I think this is a good challenge for the students because it forces them to think about where to put shadows and highlights.
Some students are starting to finish their weaving projects and I am so excited to finally teach them finishing techniques with making handles and weaving in loose ends. I am even going to offer the option to make an embroidered patch!
I haven’t advertised this very much but the project we are going to do after still life is clay! We are going to make animal inspired mugs and I am very excited about the mug I made as an example. I have never run a glaze fire in the kiln before so I will be doing some tests before I put your students' projects anywhere near the kiln, so I am keeping my fingers crossed that my own cat mug survives this round of testing!
December 2023
We are finally wrapping up papermaking and our sketchbook project! This project has definitely been a favorite of mine so far!
We are going to get back into weaving and get that finished up hopefully this month!
November 2023
This month we FINALLY finished up making our monograms (much to the relief of the students and myself, the other art teacher Mrs. Miller and I are already making modifications to this for next year).
While students were making their monograms they were able to work on their weaving projects. THEN I was asked if the 5th graders wanted to design artwork and submit them for the yearbook cover. The students were so excited and I was blown away by the amount of creativity and talent in my art room and am so proud of what the students accomplished in such a short amount of time.
Congratulations to Coralyn from Mrs. Kahn’s class for being voted as the winner!
We started papermaking and as stressful as this whole process is for me in terms of the mess, the students have had a lot of fun so far so it’s worth it!
I imagine we will be working on papermaking for the majority of this month so see you then with the results!
October 2023
We did so many things in the month of October during art class!
I was lucky enough to have some of your artists on our early release day and we did a fun mini project of chalk marbled paper. This is a fun project you can do at home with some cardstock, a container of water, and sidewalk chalk! The chalk dust floats on the water and then you just dip the paper in! After the paper dries it can be used as normal! (Ignore their bored faces, this was after they got back from a field trip so they're a bit tired 😂 I promise they had fun!)
Each class earned a reward this month and they each got a chance to vote for what they wanted to do and one class chose to do a free choice art activity, another voted for free choice seating for the day, and the third got to play my Bob Ross Bingo game! I was so excited when they got to play the game I made and some of them even got some prizes out of it, a pretty good deal if I do say so myself!
Our Halloween project was making black cats out of paper and tying in printmaking to this process by adding on ink leaves and then oil pastel leaves! They all turned out so great!
We are putting a partial pause on our weaving projects so we can make our sketchbooks. Thank you all so much for sending supplies in for this it is very much appreciated, and thank you so much to those of you who sent in extra supplies!
We will use the cardboard from the cereal boxes for the front and back covers, and then we are building Monograms of the first letter of our names that we will use to press into when we… MAKE PAPER! I am so excited to get to do this project, I’ve never made paper before and I have loved getting to test run the process and refine it before teaching it to your artists.
After we make our sketchbooks we will go back to our weaving and then FINALLY we will get back to our still life paintings. It was just last month that I decided on that project but it seems like a lifetime ago now!
Time is just flying and I can’t wait to show you what we get up to next month!
September 2023
We had sooooo much fun in art class this first month of school and we did so many things that I hope you've gotten to hear about from your artists!
We started this month off by coloring an "About the Artist" sheet and everyone drew a picture of themselves before getting to color in the rest of the worksheet. I hung everyone's up in the hallway!
The start of the school year was a little more chaotic than I would have liked it to be while we wait for our supplies to arrive but your artists have been so adaptable and understanding and I couldn't be more grateful!
Our original plan was to create Analogous Still-Life Paintings (A new term for our artists). Our 5th graders will have so many choices for this project and I can't wait to see how they all turn out when we circle back around to this project. We took turns picking items for our still-lifes (up to 3 items) and they set up their displays how they wanted before they took their own photos! Once all of the photos were taken I edited them to be black and white and will print them off.
The next project we started was making our own Rainbow Scratchers! The artists used oil pastels and created abstract designs to cover their ENTIRE half sheet. The oil pastel will protect the paper from the layer of paint that will be applied over top. We will save this project for a 'rainy day' when we might need some time to relax or might not have enough time to work on our long term projects.
Now, our first long term project is going to be a loom weaving where we are making our own bags! I couldn't decide between teaching a tapestry project or making bags so I left the decision to one of my classes and they decided on making bags. I believe that everyone will be excited to do this project since it's fun to make things that you can use!
The most difficult part of this project will be 'warping the loom' (the process of preparing the loom weaving threads). I have been so impressed by the patience and willingness to learn that your artists have shown me so far, with so many students in each class I can only be in so many places at once and the students who were able to grasp the concept first were outstanding in their abilities to help out their peers, this show of teamwork does not go unnoticed!
We are collecting supplies to make altered sketchbooks with our 5th graders, this was a decision made across each of the elementary's seeing as they've made sketchbooks every year now and we wanted to mix things up a bit.
We are using:
-Cereal boxes, carefully flattened
-Newspaper and/or tissue paper
-(optional) glitter, dryer lint
If you have not already sent a cereal box to school with your student please have your student bring them by the end of the first week of October. Thank you!
Here is a progress photos of our weaving, I will try to get better at taking photos during work time and I thank you for your patience!
No comments:
Post a Comment