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!

↓↓↓↓↓↓↓

1st grade ocean scenes

For the next couple of weeks, 1st grade will be working on their crayon resist ocean scene, to go with their writing they are doing in class! We started practicing our fish yesterday, and they are doing a great job! We looked up images of fish and other ocean animals online, and then I demonstrated how to draw them using lines and shapes. 

Next time, we'll draw them onto Sax 90 lb paper, trace them with a marker, use Crayola Construction Paper Crayons to color, Crayola Artista II watercolors to paint the background. 

Here's a time lapse video of me, creating my example. 

Kindergarten Matisse Inspired Goldfish

This week, Kindergarten started their Henri Matisse inspired goldfish bowls. Here's the painting we got our inspiration from! 

2nd grade Matisse Goldfish

2nd Grade 

Matisse Goldfish Paintings

 For the past couple of art classes, 2nd grade has been learning about the artist Henri Matisse, and his painting, The Goldfish.

The students first practiced drawing 3-dimensional looking containers, and practiced drawing the goldfish bowl, that they liked best. We drew the room, bowl, table, and details together, and then they traced and colored with oil pastels. Finally, they used liquid watercolors to add the final pop of color. Here are some of the finished examples!