Only One You Rock Garden

This year, we are creating a rock garden in memory of a wonderful teacher, Susan Griffith. Each person in the school will eventually contribute. Right now, 3rd, 4th, and 5th, are working on their rocks. We primed them with white acrylic paint first, gave them a coat or two of colored acrylic paint, and now the students are decorating them with paint pens. (We tried to paint designs in one class, and that didn't go so well!) I highly recommend paint pens for the small details. I also highly recommend Mexican Beach pebbles to paint. Most other kinds are WAY too rough and bumpy to have a good painting surface.

Before we started, we were given the book, Only One You, to read to the class. I liked showing the Youtube video below, and used the book for examples as to how to decorate their fish.
Here's the link to the youtube video below!
 Only One You YouTube

It has really good advice for being yourself and making the world a better place. 

Here's how we created ours!

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2nd Grade Charley Harper Raccoons

Today, 2nd grade will be starting their Charley Harper inspired Raccoons! This project came from the fabulous teacher, Cassie Stephens, and you can find her original post here!

Here's how we will make our own!

Kindergarten Line Sculptures take II!

This week, kindergarten is learning about lines, and creating a line sculpture! I like to do this lesson each year with these little ones, because it's so fun and they learn a lot! We not only learn about lines and sculptures, but other important things to like how to use a glue stick, fold paper, and follow directions! I originally saw this lesson on the awesome Cassie Stephen's website! Her video tutorial shows you exactly how to do it!
Cassie Stephens Line Sculpture video

Here's the link to my first post about this project!

Kindergarten Line Sculpture

Here's some examples from this year's Kindergartners!

Welcome to the Art Room! Bienvenidos a la clase de arte!

This year, I wanted to incorporate a little more color and pizzazz into the art room!I also wanted to celebrate 2 Spanish Immersion Kindergarten classes being added to our school!

 So, I upcycled some party decorations my sister and I made (me-the cacti, Rebecca-flowers) to jazz up the place!

After I added the cacti, I thought they needed something so I printed out little cactus inspired sayings to liven them up as well. You'll also notice the "papel picado" or cut paper, above the doorways, bulletin boards, and back wall, really add a pop of color too! 

Frida Kahlo is our art spotlight, and the kids have really been recognizing her, thanks to the Disney movie Coco, and the Netflix series, "Who was Frida Kahlo". 

It's definitely a work in progress, but I'm pretty happy with it so far!

 Hope you enjoy this view into our little world of art! 

Y'all come back now, ya hear?! ;)
Pics below
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1st & 2nd Grade Self Portraits

At the beginning of each year, I like to do self portraits with the kids to see how much they remember from last year, how much they know if they're new, and see how much they've improved since the last time we created them. They're just so cute too! 

We start out by doing a "before" that they do without any instruction or reminders. Then, we do an "after" with me! We do kind of a directed drawing, where I go over what shapes to use, and where to put the features and hair. 

After that, we trace them with Sharpie markers, and color them in. 

Here are some 1st and 2nd graders hard at work!

Back to School! Collaborative Mural

WE'RE BACK! Seems like just a few days ago, I was posting about the end of the school year! I don't know about y'all, but Summer just flew by! It was so wonderful to spend all Summer with my sweet babies, and I'm missing them something fierce, but my "babies" at school are making the transition a little easier! 

We have been priming rocks for our rock garden, but while we're waiting for more supplies to come in, we got started on a new project! (That's the life of an art teacher, y'all!) You've got to be flexible, and just roll with it! 

I found this project last year, while scoping the web for some new fun things for our kids to do. His site is called Shine Brite Zamorano, and he's an art teacher based in California (Their art teacher of the year to boot!) I also saw posts about this from the Tennessee Arts Academy, and thought, "It's time to try it out!". Thanks for the inspiration and sharing your awesome program! 

Here's how we created our own version! I'm going to do this with 3rd-5th. This should take about a day to do! Great project to kick off the start of the school year, and have a beautiful mural to display when they're done!