Messes & Masterpieces

It has been a wild month of learning and working in the art room! I absolutely love all things pumpkin, when it comes to art! We finally finished our Art to Remember fundraiser projects and sent them off to the company. In the next month or so, order forms will be brought home. I will send out an email with more information once the fundraiser begins, explaining everything!

I am so excited that cooler weather is finally on the horizon.. maybe it will get down to... 6-7*?!? (I've made that joke to my husband enough times, I think he's going to lose it!)

The biggest thank you to the families who purchased items from our wishlist! You are amazing! Thank you!

Kindergarten has spent the last few weeks working on some super fun exploding pumpkins!

We reviewed proper painting techniques and used fun glitter paints to create our pumpkin base. We used yellow, orange, and red and watched how the colors blended together to create different shades of orange! Once we finished painting, we learned how to trace and then cut out our pumpkins. I was so impressed with the kids ability to take their time and work hard to cut evenly.

Then the real fun began. We added crazy pumpkin faces and lots of amazing crazy jewels, beads, and sparkles to our pumpkins to make it look like they were exploding glitter!

First grade has been studying our first famous artist of the year, Yayoi Kusama! Kusama is an incredibly popular and fun Japanese artist who loves bright colors and polkadots. We listened to a story about her life and viewed many images of her artwork. After studying Kusama pumpkins, we created our own! We learned how to draw realistic pumpkins before using different patterns and materials to fill our pumpkins with exciting color! Check out our fun read aloud below! We still have work to do, to create a background and get the pumpkins patterned, cut out, and glued down, but I am so proud of how beautiful they are!

Second grade is having a very messy time right now and loving every second of it! We have started our unit on 3D sculpture, beginning with pumpkins! We learned about armature (the skeleton of a sculpture that provides shape and support) and then created pumpkins out of foil. Once our pumpkin armatures were created, we spent two class periods covering our pumpkins in plaster so that they will dry nice and solid. These guys are going to last forever!

Our last step, once totally dry, will be to add some color, stems, and leaves to our pumpkins. Some students may decide to add a face to their pumpkin, but I leave it up to the artist to decide! This project is their first real experience with 3D art that isn't clay, and it is so fun watching them explore the new materials and make a giant mess!

After finishing up their adorable fundraiser "Animals in the woods" project, Third grade dove straight into Veteran's Day. I chose third to create beautiful artwork to display for our Veteran's Day ceremony and concert. They always show such attention to detail and felt like the perfect group to really understand the importance of the event. We worked together to draw different images that help symbolize our country and the sacrifices of our military. We started with beautiful bald eagles we will be putting on a red and blue backgrounds, flags, abstract star art, and different military symbols representing the different branches!

I look forward to sharing our artwork with the Veterans and our school when I display them in the halls. If you come into the building, make sure to check them out. On display together, they create such a beautiful vision!

Okay, don't be mad at me. I don't have pics of Fourth Grade this month. Between practicing for their concert, assemblies, their field trip, and going to training, I haven't gotten many pics! I don't even have pictures of my own Fourth Grader! Just field trip pics! 🫢

Fourth grade has kicked off their portrait lesson for the year. We are studying the Director and Artist Tim Burton. We learned all about his history as an animator and illustrator, and his love for all things spooky. We studied stop-motion claymation and got to see many examples of his work on Nightmare Before Christmas. It always blows the kids minds to learn about stop-motion animation and how different it is to standard filmmaking. We took a look at many different examples of Tim Burton's styles and how it has changed over the years in different animated films, like Frankenweenie, as well as his regular films, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Alice in Wonderland!

We use his work as inspiration to create our very own stylized portraits. The kids work hard to mimic his bizarre style of drawing, while incorporating their own individual flare. We then dive deep into the world of Value to add shading and highlight to really make our creations pop!

I love teaching the kids about careers in art, especially animation and film making! See below for more information if you are interested! I love Stop Motion Animation! I am hoping to get the kids into group to create their own animations soon!

Sorry I don't have fifth grade pics this month! We were apparently having too much fun.

Fifth grade finally finished their zentangle hands. They turned out so beautifully and the kids worked so hard to create patterns and then added lovely color using metallic and bright colored watercolor paints. Now that our fundraiser project is finished, I am so excited to get started on some fall themed artwork! We will be creating some amazing pumpkin Batik. Batik is a very traditional kind of artwork used to create stunning fabrics. In countries like Indonesia, wax is used to create hand drawn patterns on fabric. Then dyes are used to color the fabric. Once heated, the wax melts off the fabric and leaves the beautiful patterns undyed beneath.

We will do an altered version (kid-friendly) of this project together! Rather than wax, we create drawings and designs of pumpkins or fall leaves using glue. After it dries, we will use permanent paints to fill in the gaps and "dye" the fabric. Once everything dries, we will remove the glue and it will leave behind a beautiful altered Batik! These will definitely be worth framing! This photo is an example of a finished piece! Can't wait to share more pics with you as the kids finish!

This art wishlist is full of amazing items that Ms. Block and I would love to add to our classrooms. Any items purchased from the list will be shared with both rooms and all students. Thank you so much for helping support our art program!

I always try my best to have students wear aprons when working with paint, or other messy supplies in the art room, however accidents and messes do occur! Please see below for tips and tricks I use to get art stains out of all of my clothing (because I am the messiest of them all!)