Beyond the Shore

Somewhere beyond the sea, in a small elementary school, the students on my campus have been enchanted by the underwater ecosystem in our saltwater aquarium. This inspired an even larger aquatic unit than usual, with second grade taking on close up paintings of our new fishy friends. Here is a look at the our finished products.

Day One: was all about drawing and painting the water.

Day Two: was detailing our fish. Each class voted on a different one.

Day Three: was creating the environment. Classes painted coral, seaweed and topped it off with some bubbles!

We are slowly transforming the entire art wing in to an enormous aquarium!

Just Keep Swimming,



Just Keep Swimming,

Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming...

What do we do?

We Swim!

Swim!

Swim!

The Bottom of the Big Blue Sea

Just finished a swimmingly, sweet project with my little 1st graders that was inspired by a song and the Blue-Green Chromis schooling fish in our aquarium

Day 1: Students started with a gradiated sea. I assigned each class a different color. We started with white paint and added a drop of our paint color, till we reached the true tone.

Day 2: We added fish, using different cool colors.  I wanted the students to practice perspective, changing the size of the fish as they got farther away. 

Day 3: We finished up with some overlapping silver fish and bubbles!

"I don't want to be alone, I want to be a stone

I wanna sink to the bottom of the ocean

And lie there with you til I'm gone

At the bottom of the big blue sea

Just you and me." -Bob Schneider

Happy Friday!

Sugar Skulls

Dia de los Muertos came quickly this year as other projects took longer than projected, that I almost decided to let it go. But it's my favorite and instead decided to focus on Calaveras, or Sugar Skulls. Here is what my amazing kiddos accomplished in three classes.

3rd grade worked on paintings...

Day 1: consisted of the shapes it takes to make a skull and laying down the first layer of color.

Day 2: we painted a black outline, focusing on traditional symbols, such as flowers, hearts, crosses and spiderwebs.

Day 3: was the fun day, adding the colors. We discussed how these skulls needed to look like they were made out of candy, and to decorate them like a cake or cookie, with delicate touches.

4th grade followed the same schedule, only their first day consisted of paper mache' and ended with glitter! Perks of advancing in art skills each year, evolving in materials!

Aren't they sweet?!

Happy Monday!

Art Rocks!

So this year my classroom theme was Art Rocks! We hit the ground running with a very elaborate project in 5th grade, bring on the life size electric guitars.

The students started by learning the anatomy of a guitar, and drew it at a 12 inch scale in their sketchbooks. They later enlarged their drawing to be a true to size at 36 inches.

The students then painted on cardboard and with help cut them out. We collected boxes and bottle caps school wise for the guitars and knobs.

Now that we are done I decorated the whole hallway with them. It's like a 5th grade teacher Battle of the Bands! 

The results were so amazing,  we celebrated with an Air Guitar Competition this afternoon!

Happy Halloween!