3rd and 4th Grade Jen Stark Contemporary Paper Art

Have you heard of Contemporary Artist, Jen Stark? She is great! She creates amazing paper sculptures and her ideas come from the sophisticated and intricate designs found in nature that incorporate repetition and organic shapes. We learned all about her through a powerpoint and a quick video before tackling our own paper sculptures.  Each student made 2 paper sculptures to add to our hallway display.  They began by drawing a small geometric or organic shape on a piece of construction paper, then cut it out and glued it down onto the corner of another piece of paper with a glue stick.  Then, using scissors they cut around their shape, replicating it.  They kept doing this until their paper was no longer large enough to fit their shape.

The students were really into this project and their finished pieces turned out more amazing than I ever expected!

5th and 6th Grade: Keep Calm And...

This was a great lesson that focused on problem-solving and graphic design.  We learned about the history of the very first Keep Calm and Carry On poster from this awesome video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrHkKXFRbCI) and then discussed the story and also the art occupation of graphic design.  Students had to come up with their own Keep Calm slogan, including a creative and effective logo or symbol that represented their slogan. They did 4 sketches, chose one, and used stencils to trace and cut their letters.  Then they drew and cut out their symbols, composed their poster, and glued it all together. 

5th Grade Folk Art Landscapes

Winter Snowmen

4th Grade Lady Liberty

After learning about Peter Max and watching a short video about the history of the Statue of Liberty, we drew our portraits step by step with pencil and outlined in sharpie. The next day I showed students some tips and tricks for coloring with chalk pastels. I played a slide show of Peter Max's work while they colored.

Happy Vday!

My heart has been stolen by this guy. How can you blame me? I'm really planning on posting some of the awesome art lessons my students have been creating this year SOON! It's just crazy how much spare time I used to have to post... Until then... Happy Valentines Day!

1st or 2nd Grade Value Pumpkins

 

Thank you to Katie Morris here for this fun and beautiful lesson!  Students loved it and the results are wonderful. :)  I had students choose blue or purple background paper and gave them each a blue permanent marker.  (I get a lot of "my mom and dad don't even let me USE permanent markers at home!" at that point. :))  I begin by drawing the center oval and then they do the same, then we draw the stem, and add the other sections to the pumpkin.  I let them add leaves, and vines if they wanted to.  I just love love love the vines they add on.  They really go crazy with those!  Then we color in order from top to bottom with construction paper crayons. I try to get them to overlap the color to make it look blended, but it doesn't always happen.  The order of coloring is white, yellow, peach, orange, and red-orange.  Some of the classes we had time to add the blue shadow at the bottom.  Then they color the stem and leaves and voila!   Cute little pumpkins!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here is one more little pumpkin I must introduce! ...And the reason I haven't posted in about a million years!  I've been quite busy spending most of my hours with my little baby boy, Wyatt! :)