Full-Day Kindergarten Create Snowman Collage

The full-day kindergarten students spent the last couple weeks creating snowmen by gluing a variety of materials together. We started our lesson by reading Lois Ehlert's book Snowballs. After reading it, we discussed some of the things she used to make up her snow people. Using paper, sticks, pom poms, sequence, foam shapes, etc., the students made some very interesting artworks!

Kiwanis Club Christmas Contest Winners

The Kiwanis Club of Danville put on their Christmas Art Contest again this year. We had three winners from Danville North Elementary. Hallie, Madison, and Elizabeth created artworks that were full of Christmas spirit. Congratulations to the the artists!!! Thanks to every student who entered the contest. There were many great ideas and everyone worked hard. Keep up the hard work!

1st Graders Warm Up

In 1st grade we are working on creating patterns. Since it is winter time a great thing that we see with a pattern is a mitten! After reading the book The Mitten by Jan Brett, we started to create our mittens with pattern. Next week we will finish up our mittens by stapling them together and wearing them!!! Check back next week for more mitten details.

2nd Graders Give Back

All 2nd graders students are giving back this Christmas!!! We are currently making Winter/Christmas cards for patients in local Danville nursing homes. Each student will be making two cards; one for themselves and one for the nursing home. To help make two cards quickly we are using printmaking as the way to make our art. Printmaking let's us make a couple of the same prints. Students will be experimenting with different colors of paper and ink. Students will also be learning so new vocabulary words like brayer, barren, and ink. If these words are new to you here is some help: brayer- a roller used to put ink onto the styrofoam plate, barren - a handheld tool that helps the artist rub the paper onto the plate so that all the ink is transferred, ink - it is kind of like paint but is stickier. I hope you have a great winter season and fantastic holidays.

December's Artists of the Month

These six students created some awesome artworks. The first grade students created monochromatic self-portraits using blue, after studying Pablo Picasso's Blue Period. The second grade students and one kindergarten artist made "wild things" based off of Maurice Sendak's book Where the Wild Things Are. They used different kinds of texture in their artworks. Another student made a wire sculpture of a monster after studying the works of Alexander Calder! Congratulations to all the artists of the month!!!

2nd Graders Give Back

The 2nd grade students are starting to create Winter/Holiday cards for patients in local nursing homes. We are creating our cards using a printmaking technique. Each student will be making two cards, one for the nursing home and another for themselves to give away. We started the project by coming up with four different ideas. The students tried to keep the drawings big and simple because the type of printmaking we are doing needs those two things. After the sketches are finished, we started drawing on a styrofoam plate and then carving into the plate. Next week we will begin printing the plates. The ideas and sketches are looking very creative. Here are a couple samples!

We have some wirey students!

This week the first graders and kindergartners are learning about the artist Alexander Calder and his wire sculptures. Calder loved bending wire into different things. Some of his favorite things were animals and the circus. After looking at Mr. Calder's work, we started our own wire sculptures. The students could chose any subject matter they wanted. There was a wide range of sculptures. Shown below are sculptures of a penguin, glasses, a basketball hoop, necklace, handcuffs, a zebra that stands on its own, hula hoop, and a bug antenna to an imaginary bug named "Hawk Screecher!"

Kindergartners Go Wild

We read Where the Wild Things Are in all full day kindergarten classes. After reading the book, we talked about the different body parts the wild things had i.e. claws, horns, tails, etc. We then drew our own wild thing. The students were very creative. We then used crayons and texture plates to color our wild things. Here are a couple examples:

New Contest: Kiwanis Christmas Contest!!!

The local Danville Christmas/Holiday Contest has begun. This is a cool opportunity for all Danville North Elementary students to create artwork. While this will not be a project we do in class, I do encourage any student who would like to participate to ask me about the contest! A couple things to know about the contest: Any student who enters must get papers signed by a guardian, there are prizes if you win, winners get their artwork displayed in the downtown Art Gallery on the Square. For more rules and information I am putting up pictures of the entry form. If you have trouble printing these forms, please email me at mailto:msmith@danville.k12.in.us.

I can email forms or your child can pick them up in my room.

All entries are due no later than November 25th.

GOOD LUCK!!!

Where the Wild Things Are

In second grade we read the book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. After looking at Mr. Sendak's illustrations we created our own wild things. We also looked at different textures and started applying texture to our wild thing! Here are a couple examples!

We had a blue day :)

The first graders started painting their self-portraits blue. We looked at Pablo Picasso's self-portrait from his blue period. We learned that when you paint in one color it's called monochromatic. We also learned that the light blue is a tint and the dark blue is a shade. Here are a couple examples!

November Artists of Month

Each month I pick six artists out of the three grades as Artists of the Month. These students created some awesome artworks! Congratulations!!!

2nd Graders meet Mondrian

In 2nd grade we are making a quick one-day project based on the work of Piet Mondrian. Mondrian was one of the most famous abstract artists. He created artworks using lines and basic shapes and colors. He mostly used primary colors like in his painting Broadway Boogie Woogie. Here are several students' artworks!

Pablo Picasso Gets Blue

All first graders have been studying the artwork of Pablo Picasso. The last couple of weeks we looked at his painting called Weeping Woman. This is a very colorful and kind of crazy artwork. Now we are studying Picasso's Blue Period. Pablo Picasso has a time in his life that was very sad and he painted blue pictures because of it. One of his paintings was a self-portrait which is a picture that you make of yourself. We are making self-portraits and we will be coloring them blue. We also learned that when you color something just one color it is called monochromatic! Here are some of the first drawings as examples:

More Picasso Inspired Pumpkins

Pablo Picasso Pumpkins

It's harvest time and the pumpkins are ready to go! Some of my first graders are ahead of schedule so they get to make an extra project. Since we've been studying the artist Pablo Picasso and his painting Weeping Woman, our project was to create a colorful, and kind of crazy, pumpkin. We used oil pastel and watercolor paints to create some awesome artwork. Here are a couple examples.

New Art Contest

Sharpen your colored pencils, take pen in hand, and squirt some more paint on your palette! The 2010 River of Words Indiana Contest is in full swing!

Each year in affiliation with The Library of Congress Center for the Book, River of Words conducts a free international poetry and art contest for youth on the theme of WATERSHEDS. The contest is designed to help youth explore the natural and cultural history of the place they live, and to express, through poetry and art what they discover. The contest is open to any child in the world, from 5-19 years of age. Older student must have not yet completed high school. There is no charge to enter.

River of Words is an excellent opportunity for science, art and literature classrooms to strengthen their skills and make connections between the watershed theme and their artistic talents.

The deadline for contest entries is December 1, 2009. Entries are first judged in the international RoW contest and winners are announced in April 2010. The Indiana state contest is sponsored by Indiana Project WET , the Environmental Education Association of Indiana (EEAI) and the Indiana Center for the Book. All Indiana poetry and artwork will be judged at the state level in May and winners will be announced in June 2010.

Entry forms and complete contest guidelines can be found at www.riverofwords.org/contest/index.html.

While I won't be doing this contest in my class, I would be glad to talk with your child about their ideas, drawings, or paintings for this contest!

More Crazy Faces in Progress with our artist Pablo Picasso

More Gradation with 2nd Graders and our artist Peter Max

Kindergartners fly away in a bubble!

This week all the kindergartners were lucky enough to meet the Bubble Farmer. This incredible farmer grows bubbles. The students really enjoy her presentation. The Bubble Farmer inspired our latest project. I posed the question to my students that if they could go anywhere in the world in a bubble where would it be? They gave answers like the park, grandma's house, Disney World, and the beach.

More Pablo Picasso Inspired Crazy Faces

1st Graders Start Making Crazy Faces

All my first grade classes started the week by looking at a painting by Pablo Picasso called Weeping Woman.

The students came up with lots of interesting ideas about "What's going on in this painting?" We talked about the different colors and how Picasso liked to make things a little crazy. We then began making our own crazy faces like Pablo Picasso. Each student picked out a colored sheet of construction paper for a background. Then they drew each facial feature on a separate small white paper that they could cut out and glue on their construction paper. They have come up with some very creative crazy faces so far.

2nd Graders Start Fall Leaves with Gradation

All my 2nd are starting a project this week about the color change that happens with leaves. We talk about the different colors and how they change slowly. A slow, gradual change from one color to another is called gradation. We looked at the artwork of Peter Max who is a master at gradation. Here is Peter Max artwork:

This is a picture of what our final project may look like:

And this picture shows a couple of students painting their gradations using the wet-on-wet watercolor technique. The students really liked using a soaking wet paper to paper on. It presented them with new challenges and a new idea of what paper can do. Who knew that you could soak a paper and not ruin it!?

1st Graders Make Monoprints inspired by Helen Frankenthaler

The 1st graders created monoprints after studying Helen Frankenthaler. We used watercolor paints to make a colorful image on the table. After checking to make sure every color was good and wet, we took a piece of watercolor paper and pushed it down on the paint. All of the paint soaked up into the paper in a very interesting way. The students really enjoyed seeing the "magic" involved in this kind of printmaking.

Kindergarten Creates a Pumpkin Patch

The last two weeks with full day kindergarten have been spent creating a giant pumpkin patch. Through the exciting medium of printmaking we've created this vegetable garden. The kindergartners first created a practice pumpkin on paper. Then they copied their own image onto a Styrofoam plate. From there they cut into the Styrofoam plate with their ballpoint pens, just barely "carving" into the plate. The next week we rolled ink onto our plates with a brayer and then printed the pumpkin on a large black piece of paper. This is always one of my favorite autumn projects. Here are some student examples!

2nd Graders Finish Klee City

After a couple weeks of oil pastel and watercolor our cities inspired by Paul Klee are done. Here are some student examples: