It's the time of year, my very favorite time of the year: fall! We are gearing up for some fun fall art makin' stations and I thought I'd share a bit about that as well as my favorite fall lessons. Many of these links include videos for you to share in your art room. Let's start with this one, a fourth grade favorite: Spooky Starry Nights!
Now I just mentioned art makin' stations which has become my new favorite thing of late! With 30 minute art classes, it's been a fun way for my students to really roll up their sleeves, move around the room and explore several different art makin' activities. You can find out how we did stations for Dot Day here and here and how we are doing it for learning the elements of art LINE here and here...all with videos for you to share in your art room and some videos that are just my tips and tricks for YOU! Here's a blog post about the stations I did on Halloween in my art room here. I plan to do a week long stations this year so all of my classes can experience the fun. The above pumpkin prints is one I will be adding to the mix. I can't wait!
Monsters are always fun to do during this season and my students LOVE creating them! This lesson, with video, is one I know your students will love!
This one is fun for all ages especially if you want to introduce color mixing, painting, printing and collage. Another lesson with video right here!
Speaking of fall trees, check out this amazing weaving lesson! If you've never woven with your students, I recommend doing a short paper weaving first before diving into this activity. I would give this a go with fourth grade and up if students are new to weaving. Lesson and video here!
Wanna do printing with your students but don't want to deal with the mess? This leaf printing lesson with just markers and water is sure to be a hit! Here's more.
Before Gelli-Plates and the like, we had to make our own sort of gelatin printing plate. 10 years ago, I posted this lesson and it's still one of the most visited on my blog. However, I no longer make the stinky gelatin (not to mention, it's not vegan friendly...I'm not a vegan, but I don't like using it) so you may want to try the same method but with the longer lasting plates. Here's the details.
Another super popular lesson that always yields amazing results is this one! I've done a variation of this type of lesson with students of all ages. More info here.
A lesson that I was sharing a lot of images from on my Instagram got a whole lot of love and questions this year and that was this Monsters in the City project! After learning about the artist Kudu-Lah, my students began by designing their cities and creating a series of monsters. I thought I'd share some images from our project but also create a video to walk you and your students through. Because these works of art were going to be apart of our Glow Gallery, I'll be sharing my favorite glow products from Pacon. With my students, we used 24"X36" sheets of paper for the cities and 12"X18" paper for the monsters. I'll be working half that size for the video. And my paper of choice is Pacon's Mixed Media paper. Here you go:
If you are doing this at home, try using a permanent marker to draw your cities and monsters with. Then add color with crayons, markers, colored pencils or paint!
In my thirty-minute art classes, my fourth graders spent two days drawing their cityscapes.
The following day we used fluorescent oil pastels and watercolor for the sky.
Then we created TONS of monsters! I had them make as many as they could to really loosen them up. I love the variety they achieved!
We used our fluorescent paint to make them glow!
Then we cut them out to add to our cities! We used a little bit of foam and cardboard glued to the back of the monsters to make them pop up from our cities. For a sneak peak of last year's glow gallery, check this out:
