Needle Felting with Cassie Stephens

Photo from Cassie's post you can find here.

I went to a workshop at the Frist Center last weekend to learn how to needle felt with Cassie Stephens. If you haven't seen her blog, Cassie Stephens, you should check it out. 

Apparently, needle felting is the easiest thing to do ever. I made a postcard, a pencil pouch, and a pin. 

I would recommend any workshop by her. Can't wait for the next one!

This Week in Art 5

During the second week of our Greek Art unit, we continued our projects by adding more detail and construction paper mache sculptures.

1^st grade painted over their oil pastels for the second step of their scratch art paper.

Using crayon in the back before painting to make a crayon resist.

2^nd grade painted a paper to be the background of their Parthenon collage.

3^rd grade continued adding tiles to their Greek Mosaics.

4^th grade constructed and paper mached their Greek vases.

5^th grade added paper mache to their mask forms for their Greek theatre masks.

Finishing these next week!

Kindergarten Apples

September 25^th was Johnny Appleseed day. Since we were practicing cutting and gluing in kindergarten, I decided to change the lesson for my class that day to incorporate what they had been studying in class.

We drew an apple together. I gave them a red piece of paper, and white, black, and red crayons. We looked at a picture of an apple while we drew. We started with a big circle. Then we added a “smile” where the stem goes. After that, we looked at highlights and shadows, something I didn’t think kindergarten could understand, but Mrs. Creasy at Wish Upon a Paintbrush inspired me with her fantastickindergarten apples that you can find here.

After adding highlights and shadows, we used a red crayon to add lines that gave the apple some more depth. 

Then we cut a brown stem and a green leaf from paper scraps.

Once it was all cut, we glued our apples to green paper and decorated the backgrounds.

I loved how these came out and I hope the parents love having them to decorate for the season. ^_^

This Week In Art 4

The benefits of having your own porch, right?

This week in art we began our Greek Art unit! This kids are very excited about this one, they recognize so many of the artworks and buildings we've been looking at. 

1st grade is creating a Greek vase using scratch art. This week we used oil pastels to color the base of our scratch art paper using either red, orange, or black pastels.

2nd grade is making a Parthenon collage using marbled paper. This week we used shaving cream to create a sheet of marbled paper that we can cut into our Parthenon shapes.

3rd grade is creating Greek mosaics using paper scraps.

4th grade is making paper mache Greek vases. This week we watched videos on paper mache and sketched out what we wanted our vases to look like. It was important to make notes about what each feature would be made out of so that we could get right to work next week!

5th grade is creating Greek theater masks. We looked at Greek theater buildings and many mask examples. I wish I could find a good Greek theater performance video for them, but I can't find anything! Recommendations? We sketched out our ideas so that we can get started right away next week!

Whirled Peace

Since we are on a 6-day rotation for some classes and a 5-day rotation for others, I need some filler projects for some classes while the others finish up to avoid getting a huge spread between my grades. Those who finished early with their Prehistoric Art projects either created something for World (Whirled) Peace Day or for Dot Day. 3rd-5th Graders created pinwheels for the Pinwheels for Peace project. I was very impressed with how responsible they were with the stick pins. So happy no one got hurt...except me. 

For more information on the Pinwheels for Peace project, visit their website here. 

Dot Day 2015

My second graders finished their Prehistoric Art projects early, so they created a painting for Dot Day while other classes finished up. We started by watching The Dot on YouTube because I think it is more effective than me reading to them. Plus there's no "MRS. MOORE I CAN'T SEE THE PICTURESSSSSSS" from anyone. 

Then we drew a large circle by tracing a coffee can lid (thanks to all my generous parents for your coffee can donations!).

After we had a dot, the kids could choose to color the inside or the outside, but not both. We used tempera paint and q-tips to make our dots. 

ALSO I want to share how awesome this find is. Dollar Tree has cupcake holders. They are red and have 9 cupcake spots. They also come with a top for if you actually want to transport cupcakes, but they are perfect paint holders if you use portion cups for paint. They're plastic so they will be really easy to clean up if they get too dirty. I bought one for each table and I love them. :)

The hall space was all taken by our Prehistoric Art show, so these never went on display. :( Next year, we'll make it a school-wide event. ^_^