One Teacher's Adventures

I've done this project now with two different classes, and I absolutely love how it turns out!   We began this art project during Earth Week this year.  We looked at images of Banyan trees and researched where they grow.  After the students had some background information, we set on creating our own.   I encouraged the students to pull their branches off the edge of the page, and fill in the background with bright colours to highlight the silhouette of the tree.  We talked about negative space and how we could bring the tree to life by colouring the backgrounds. My students used chalk and oil pastels for the colours, and tempera paint for the tree itself.  I suggest drawing out the shape of the tree first in pencil, filling in the background, and then painting as the last step.  This will prevent any smudging of the black paint. They are colourful and bright and add so much to our classroom d...

My Grade 4's have been learning about perspective in our art lessons.  Last week, we completed a project looking at one-point perspective.  This is a project that I've done before, and the class next door was working on at the same time (coincidentally).  I think it stands up as an art lesson because it is simple, but effective.   Students start with a vanishing point in the middle of their page and draw straight lines out from that point to the 4 corners of the page.  As the images get closer to the middle of the page, they get smaller, creating the illusion that they are getting further away. I let my students decide which media to use.  Some used markers, others used paint, and some used pastels.  I think they turned out beautifully.

It's been awhile since I've posted, I know!  Here's a post I meant to write three weeks ago! My Grade 4's were busy at the beginning of December with this winter art project.  Their task was to show a snowman in two different ways.  We talked about perspective before they began, and I modelled some ideas to get them started.  I brought in a stuffed snowman, as well, for them to manipulate and move around.  I asked them to think of what it would look like from a bird's perspective, a worm's perspective, from behind, from the side, from far away, and from really close up.  I let them choose which medium they wanted to use.  Some painted, some used markers, and some used oil pastels. I love the images that they created.  Here are a few examples.     What do you think?  Let me know in the comments!

Some nights I have trouble sleeping.  I lay awake, staring at the ceiling.  A few months ago, I experienced one of these nights.  I couldn't sleep, so I decided to tidy and organize my craft supplies.  I found an old box of overhead transparencies.  My school has transferred over to document cameras, rendering the transparency paper pretty useless, so I thought about what I could do with stacks of clear paper.  I used a bunch a few weeks before to make protractors and other math manipulatives for my class, but I still had several dozen.  Then I remembered an art project I had seen years before while I was student teaching: Collage Portraits. I had nothing else to do at 1:30 in the morning, so I decided to create.  This is what I came up with: Here's how I did it: Step 1: Find a picture to use a template.   I don't have any artistic talent for drawing faces.  I can muster a pretty good cartoon stick man, but that's abou...