3rd grade James Rizzi Cities!

Last week, 3rd grade started their first art project of the year, and they did a great job! We created our own version of James Rizzi's cities! I was first introduced to the art of James Rizzi through the amazing art teacher, Cassie Stephens. She has her own James Rizzi lesson here. James Rizzi was an artist who lived in New York City, and was inspired by the city and people around him. You can view more of his art by clicking on his name!

Here's how we created our works of art!

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!

Surprise Creatures For the LAST ART DAY!

It's that time of year, when the art show is complete, and each class has about 1 more visit to the art room! What do you do for one class for 45 minutes?? Here's what we're doing! I found this neat little project on Instagram, from @Mrs_lynes_artists & @artwithmrs.e, and I wanted to try it out with my students as well! I'm going to try this with every grade except K & 5th. 5th could totally do this, but they have rocks to paint! 

As of now, 1st is going to do aliens, 2nd is going to do fish, 3rd can choose a trickier animal or person, and same goes for 4th.

Here are some little short videos, showing how we created ours!