In the Art Room: Radial Relief by Fourth Grade

I love a project that leads right into another. I also love a project where there is zero waste. 'Tis the reason I'm totes lovin' this Radial Relief by the Fantastic Fourth Grade!

If these look familiar to you, that's because these were our printing plates we created a couple of weeks ago! You can read all about that lesson and see video demos here. 

For that project, I ordered cardboard pizza rounds (we used 14" but in the future, I would def use something smaller) and self-adhesive foam stickers. Michael's seemed to have the best deal in town on those. I love that Michael's and JoAnn's offer teacher discounts and take competitor's coupons as well as their own...unlike some craft megastores (not naming names...but their initials are H.L., ahem). 

This really proved to be an effective lesson in teaching all about radial balance!

 And resulted in a ton of colorful prints.

For the second phase of this project, we used spray adhesive, extra wide rolls of foil from the Dollar Tree and Sharpie markers. Just before the kids came, I took their printing plates outside, sprayed them with adhesive and slapped a piece of foil on top. 

From there, they trimmed the excess foil off, folded it around the backside and started adding color to their designs. We reviewed our study of radial balance, the elements of art and chatted about the principals of design. 

I love that we were able to create something beautiful from their printing plates. And they really enjoyed this process.

Of course, we did have a coupla dudes enter Emoji-land. Who can blame them? Emojis are rad. 

 By the way, the patterned papers you see in the background are what all of my early finishers have been creating. They will be used in our upcoming What Lifts You mural that I'm super stoked about.

But I really love the backdrop they create for these pieces so I just might have to make them apart of the hallway display if we have any extra!

Have y'all used this technique with your student's printing plates? I'd love to know if you have and what spin you put on this project idea. 

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In the Art Room: A Henri Rousseau-Inspired Mix Media Collage

Currently, my eyeballs feel like they are made of broken glass and are just barely staying open. However, I'm thrilled to say that pulling those close to 12 hour days at school this week has paid off: All of my students 400 Henri Rousseau-inspired masterpieces are up and on display for our Open House! Whew! If you follow me here, you've seen my students progress. We've all learned about the artist and created a tiger-tastic work of art (side note: our school mascot is also a tiger and we have a Tiger Run coming up next month. So now the halls are decked out for that occasion as well!). I'll be sharing each of the projects here over the next coupla weeks so stay tuned! Today, I present to you the work of my fourth grade artists!

 To conquer this Jungle-tastic Project, we used the following supplies:

*  Model Magic by Crayola
*  Sax Versa Temp paint
*  Chalk pastels
*  Oil pastels
*  9" X 12" painted construction paper
*  9" X 12" poster board to back the construction paper

This project began on the very first day of art when, after covering the rules and such, we set about making painted paper. This idea of painting paper on the very first day came from my good friend and art teacherin' genius Laura Lohmann. 

My Monday and Tuesday classes painted a variety of green papers for our jungle-y projects (used mucho by my third graders for their project, details to come) while my Wednesday and Thursday kids painted orange papers. My fourth graders ended up using these as the background for their collages.

We painted, we scraped with texture combs, we tried out different paint application techniques. 

We pulled prints which we thought was just about the coolest thing ever and that was it for our first day! On our second day of art, we learned more about the artist Henri Rousseau and studied his jungle paintings. I even created a Jungle Lounge in my art room for the occasion!

Complete with Clean Up Gong, of course. Over the next two art classes, the students were allowed access to a ton of books featuring photos of tigers and information about their habitats and eating habits. With that in mind, they were given about golf ball size of Model Magic to create their tiger. I did show them some simple basics but really encouraged them to experiment, look at the visuals and come up with a creation of their own. 

The following art class, those were painted. I thought the students would spend about thirty minutes painting but they were so excited to do detailed work on their tigers that they ended up using the entire 60 minutes to paint!

They might have been a lil influenced by this guy hanging out in the Jungle Lounge. 

The kids have been spending the first 5-7 minutes of each class in the lounge sketching in their newly created sketchbooks! They love this area. I can't wait to create some more seating for them. 

Creating the background took the kids another 60 minutes. They were allowed to pick any of the textured and painted papers they created on that first day to serve as their background. Then they could use either all warm or all cool colored chalk for their sky. Once the sky was complete, the kids could create the land portion of their work with any colors they liked. 

We talked a lot about the habitats of tigers and again studied the visuals. The kids created lakes, rivers, jungles, mountain ranges, you get the idea. I was so impressed with their diverse ideas. 

I mean, check out this: I was informed by the artist that her tiger was jumping from a rock to the top of a tree. This is her ariel view. 

Once the chalk portion was complete, the kids were allowed to add more plants with oil pastels. They also used some remnants of the painted paper to create plants, trees, suns or moons and whatever else they could dream up. 

Once both the background and the tiger were complete, the kids brought their tigers to me and told me where to hot glue them to the work. I also hot glued their work to a pieces of poster board as the construction paper was not strong enough to support the weight of their tiger. It was a little bit of added work on my part but I didn't mind. We were just so happy with the end result! 

Have y'all used Model Magic before? I'd love to hear about your projects, I'm always looking to steal, er, borrow new ideas! 

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In the Art Room: The Art Show Part 2

A wall of third grade masterpieces. It makes me so happy to imagine this work now hanging on refrigerators in the artists home.

Well, we've sent those kids packing to embark on their summer adventures. It still seems surreal to me that the end of another school year is here. And it was kinda a hallmark year for me as this was my fifteenth year teaching (and they've not fired me yet, ha!). It's so strange how time does fly. Except that last full day of school when I still had kids in the art room. That was the perfect example of time not flying. Oh no. In fact I do believe it moved backwards.

But it's summer now and I couldn't be more excited...for the new school year! So many parents, students and coworkers have been asking what my theme will be for next year and I'm already brimming with ideas. Of course any thematic ideas from you would be much appreciated. Hubs is convinced I need to go with an "Art in the Future" theme...but my themes are usually a place so I'm not quite sold on that idea. I'd love to hear of some successful themes you've tried as well.

Until then, here's the second installment of our art show! Last week I shared what the halls of the kindergarten through second grade showcased. Today you're lookin' at my amazing third and fourth grade artists. I do hope you enjoy and if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

I think this might have been one of my favorite new projects this year. You can see the full details of this lesson here.

We had so much fun printing these Eiffel Towers...and maybe a little too much fun with the chalk. Just how we went about this Parisian printing project here.

For every art show, I like to have a photo of the kids working in the art room. I also have them write an autobiography each year which we call the About the Artist sheet. Maybe I'll share that with you in the future. The suitcases with passports in the pocket were created at the start of the school year as a part of our travel theme. You can see the lesson here.

This project was a lot of fun because it was a sneaky way to incorporate literacy into our art...even if it was of the foreign language variety. We all agreed speaking French made us oh so fancy. Silhouette lesson here.

Another favorite project this year was creating gnomes and gnomettes. I've never used toilet paper tubes in art before and this year, we used them in three separate projects: The Hot Air Balloons over Paris, The Totally Tubular Castles and these here Gnomes.

Didn't my awesome parent volunteers do the best job hanging the student artwork? I love the variety in which each class was hung. The trick is to actually get the work to stay on the walls. We've tried it all and here's what works best: Blu Tac and 3M Double Sided Sticky Tape. And even then, I was on Rehang Duty each morning.

This display of fourth grade Pieces of Paris makes them look a little like quilts, don't you think?

One of the questions on the kids' About the Artist sheet is "What is your favorite art activity and why?" For almost every artist, it's either weaving or working with clay. I'm so glad they enjoy weaving as much as I do teaching it. Last summer I created a blog series on teaching weaving with Part One here.

Another view of a fourth grade wall.

Putting those tubes to use: Totally Tubular Castles.

One of my fourth graders sweet dog sculptures. You can check out more of their animal sculptures here.

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