Hey, y'all! Today I saw a couple of fourth grade classes for their second day working on their Faux Stained Glass Winter Scene project. I was so impressed with their beautiful work that I thought I would share and let you take a peak at how these 12" X 18" beauties are turning out. In case you missed the demo video, here it is:
On our first day, we sketched out our ideas, enlarged our favorite onto our 12" X 18" piece of paper and drew the lines in either black glue or puffy paint. I decided to change the size of the artwork to better accommodate frames. I have had parents tell me that when we do odd shaped artwork, it is difficult for them to frame. I really love the idea of them framing their child's work so of course I'm going to make some changes to have that happen!
Today we watched the second half of the video and dove right into chalkin' it up. I stressed the following: no more than three colors per shape; colors had to be analogous; keep your fingers clean by washing and drying regularly.
About 1/3 of the kids finished today, some used glue today (because they were absent last time) and others are still in the middle of creating. Yay! That should be real fun to coordinate all those finishers/almost finishers/no where near finisheders. Such is art teacherin' life. I plan to provide some open ended projects for those wrapping things up as that will be our last class before break.
One of the half dozen freshly-glued designs from today. We dry these on our messy mats on the floor. I found that placing them on the tilted drying racks causes the glue to run.
The partially finished pieces really stole my heart. These kids were serious about taking their time and doing their best. I love this Hershey Kiss tree!
This one is really so stained-glass-esque.
This artist got a big warm hug from me. So stunning!
And this artist, ah! I was so concerned when I saw his glued design as I thought, that is gonna take him forever! I was worried that he wouldn't have the patience to fill it in the best he could but he really is rockin' it!
And this one says Paul Klee to me! Please feel free to give this project a go in your art room! I'd love to see the results if you do.
My fourth grade classes have been all over the place, y'all. With snow days, holidays and my jury duty-in', I've got some classes light years ahead of the rest. To try and get everyone back on the same page, I threw this lil Crayon-tastic Collaborative into the mix. The kids are currently creating papier mache crayons and pencils for an installation. I thought this little project would be a nice intro to composition, teamwork and value all while bringing everyone up to speed.
This project took my students an hour and a half (that'd be one and a half art classes). We spent the first 30 minutes of the first day priming our papier mache creations and then jumping right in to the crayon composition portion of the project. To best explain it, I created a video that you can view and share with your students if you'd like. My apologies for the fact that my hairs kept swinging into the demo portion of the video. Note to self: invest in a hair-tie!
Really, youtube? This is the photo you pick (well, they actually give you an option. Sadly, this was the best one).
I have about 20 kids per 4th grade class. To pick the groups, I randomly called on a student to pick a partner. Then I allowed that partner to pick the next and so on. My students are very sweet to each other so there wasn't any weirdness, thank goodness. I did step in when one group was assembled because I knew these particular kids would do more chatting than working. But other than that, the teams did great! Our first half of the day was spent plotting out the composition.
Which looked a lil like this. I gave the kids a stack of templates because I wanted their focus to be on composition, teamwork and learning to create value. I know some folks are anti-templates but not me. With limited amount of time and the lesson focus on other elements, I like to remove as many hurdles as possible. Because, let's face it, why make the struggle even more real when it already is.
Once the team was in agreement about the composition, the tracing started. That was a pinch tricky as the kids had to think about overlapping.
From there it was the drawing of the paper. This was also tricky as the kids had to use curved lines to create the illusion that their crayon was three dimensional.
Once the crayons were all drawn, the kids cleared the messy mats off the tables and picked a table on which to work. I was fairly certain my custodian friend would not have loved chalk pastel all over the floor. We watched this video before diving in (I love Scratch Garden's videos!)...
This helped us review monochromatic and value. The kids were to share the same pastels for one crayon. Meaning, if they agreed on a blue crayon, they had to use the same set of chalk. If they didn't, some of them ended up picking different tints and shades of blue resulting in slightly mismatched crayons.
This group only wants blue crayons. So they are having to come up with a variety of blues.
After the crayons are complete, the kids are to outline with white chalk. As y'all know, chalk is super messy so the final step was to clean up any smudges with a kneaded eraser. Side note: kids go BANANAZ when introduced to kneaded erasers.
I was walking around the room once everyone had started to check on them. This was my chatty group that I looked in on last...my mistake. They'd forgotten to agree on crayon colors and got 'em all mixed up! After correcting MOST of them, they requested to leave one mixed up because, in their words, "we are kind of crazy." Can't argue with that!
Since it is Read Across America week, we have all been decorating our doors with our fave books! I decided upon The Day the Crayons Quit since it seemed to tie in with our fourth grade project! For this, I simply had my first thru third grade early finishers cut out a crayon and shade it in a similar (albeit more simplified!) manner as the fourth graders.
I loved having the kids help me (read: do most of the work) and that it tied in so well with what the older kids are creating! I hope y'all have a Crayon-tastic week! Until next time...
