4th Grade Poinsettias

 

4th graders poinsettias - learning to draw and observe 3D objects along with the shadows they make. It was quite difficult, but most really liked that it was so difficult :) They used complementary color schemes.

Fall Leaves

Two examples of 2nd grade Fall Leaves; The students used leaf templates and traced them in a pattern. They had to have at least 5 leaves on their papers. Then we explored the color changes between yellow and red. Today, I even added gold glitter paint to the mix! I love the outcome :)

 1st grade example - this one and the next one are my favorite 1st grade examples :)

A New Year

During our first week of art this year, I emphasized the idea of making mistakes. Even professional artists make mistakes! Even professional artists don't like everything they create! As art students, it's OK to make mistakes and not like everything you make too!

We read the book, MoMA Make Art Mistakes: An Inspired Sketchbook for Everyone. The students sat on our new tiger striped rug. They each had a white board and marker. We explored a few of the activities in the book. At first they wanted to know how to draw what the activity was asking them to draw, i.e., "take a dot for a walk" - making a line. (Some had a dot and then a line squiggling out from it. A few drew a dot, then a lasso around the dot and a little stick figure holding the other end of the lasso, literally taking a dot for a walk. So fun!) I refused to give them any direction aside from repeating the sentence from the book.
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The really amazing part of using this awesome book, is that the students really incorporated the lesson of making mistakes into their art all year. When a new student joined us and made a big deal out of a mistake, the students who had the make mistakes lesson would tell them about the lesson and show them the book, which was kept on the easel all year. It was really cute to hear students who used to make such a big deal out of a mistake teaching others that it is OK to make mistakes.

We also read The Dot (1-2 grade)

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 and Ish (3-4 grade)

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then continued the discussion of making mistakes and just doing our personal best. It's OK if we're not as good as the professionals. And, in fact, some of the professionals even look to children's art as inspiration for their own art!