Reading Across America

Our 3rd-5th grade art club members illustrated dictionary pages to display in the library during March. We used oil pastels, colored pencils, and markers to illustrate a single word on the page. Love these results and it was fun to display our art in a different place in the building. 

Spring Break Coding Camp!

Not art related, but those who know me know that my other passion is science. I am happy to announce that Camp STEM will once again be working with VolState Community College in Gallatin. We will be having a Coding Camp this spring break, March 28th-April 1st. I am excited to be teaching this camp and I would love to see a lot of Gallatin kids there! This camp is for students in 3rd-8th grade and registration is $125 for the week. Check out the registration page for more information and I hope to see you there!

Art Club String Art

Another lesson from Cassie Stephens, you can see what she did for dot day here.  We started by painting a cardboard square any way they like. I need some of that awesome neon paint that CS has in her room!

After the paint dried, we started stitching. We traced a coffee can lid then drew on 12 dots. Instead of using a template, we discussed how a clock was arranged and drew the dots the same way you label a clock. 

Then we used a bamboo skewer to get the holes started so that we could run a plastic need through them. 

I showed them 2 techniques: rotating squares and radiating lines. After that, it's just experimentation. I did something similar with my summer art camp at the Frist last year too. Always a successful lesson. 

Sunflower Weavings

This was a lesson inspired by Cassie Stephen's circle weaving project.  She also has a few videos of how she teaches this lesson. I used her vocabulary and it was very helpful for them to understand the steps. We started by painting our plates with warm colors.

The next week, we added the warp lines.

After that, we added the weft strings, or the "circlely bits" as we called them. No matter how far they got or even if they missed a couple of strings, these still turned out nice and look great in the hallway. Is it spring time yet?!

Monet's Bridge

1st grade created their own take on Monet's Bridge paintings. We started by using glue and paintbrushes to apply tissue paper as a background.

After that dried, we cut out the bridge, lily pads, waterlilies, and other plants from paper to add to our drawings.

Love these colorful results!