We Love Our Queen[s]

Just in case you're not getting the reference:



Today's a definate Sex Pistols sort of day, as I've been hanging up our queens and it's running through my head.  Two classes have finished their Queen Elizabeths, and some are just downright AWESOME:

Skinny marker for the face was our final step.

Love her use of leftover paper doily on the sleeves!

If you missed my earlier post on this project, you can find it here.

Some more Maiden Queens:

This class wanted fur, so I let them use
a donation box of cotton rolls leftover
from some dentist office.

She looks so smug, but I guess I'd be smug too
if I were the Queen of England.

We did a classbrainstorm session to come up with items for her to hold symbolizing power, beauty, and intelligence.  Some of the things students came up with were sceptors, roses, books, a globe and many of the boys chose to make swords for her to hold:

Beautiful AND is powerful enough
 to rule the whole world!

I like how this student
chose to do the flower, but maybe
I should've spent some time on
thumb/hand gluing placement.

In case you can't see it well enough, it says:
"Queen Elizabeth Diary".

A shot of about half of our hallway display (so far):

Tomorrow, my last 5th grade class will finish their queens.  I'm on the lookout for more hallway display space and enjoying all the comments from students and staff.

What is the Queen without her crown?

Kindergarten Gets Heart Smart

New lesson alert!!! I'd seen something on Pinterest a while ago that I'd filed away in my memory bank and pulled out for this lesson:

On Pinterest, it was a baby/toddler printing with a toilet paper tube, cut lengthwise and taped into a heart shape.  I made 75+ of them (yep, super fun times!) and had kindergarten print rows of hearts with tempera paint. Because most of the students finished before art was over, I then gave them a 6 x 9 sheet of white paper and told them to draw themselves in PE doing something fun.  If they had time, I let them color their drawings with marker.   The next time they came to art we used construction paper crayons to color the rows of hearts into a PATTERN (such an important concept in kindergarten).  I only let them color 10-15 minutes before I stopped them and we did some exercises, feeling our hearts after different activities (jumping, running in place).  We talked about our hearts being a muscle, how PE and playing helps all of our muscles.  I then gave them a strip of paper with the words "I keep my heart healthy and _____________." The students realized the missing word was STRONG.  I wrote it on the board for them to copy on their papers. Here are some more of their pictures:

This is his drawing of the long jump!

Just love the self-esteem oozing out of this drawing!

I was so impressed by her careful printing.

This is a great example of her coloring patterns,
although she did run out of time.

My state's fall conference is fast approaching (we have two, a fall and a spring) and I'm taking these to "Drag-n-Brag" which is like a lesson free-for-all in a salon gallery type of setup.  I love kindergarten because they keep me on my toes, I always feel like I have to have the next 4-5 lessons ready to go because they very well could barrel through the day's lesson and demand "What's next, Mrs. Fresia?"

Color Wheel Clown Fun!

Yesterday, my first group of first graders finished their clowns, and they are sooooo very adorable.  See?

This was the lesson I got pretty recently from Sharon (who I student taught with 13 years ago) at a conference.  We painted the color wheels together, I gave them a circle to trace for the head.  The rainbow hair was on the bottom of our color wheels.  The arms were supposed to be cat stairs, but I made a last-minute decision to make spring arms.  Pants are just a 6x 9 construction paper with a triangle cut out.  I really like them, and will do them again.

For your viewing pleasure, a few more:

Love the attitude of this clown!

Faces are just marker.

OK, how awesome is the hump-back look?!

Love it!

In the future (like, next year) I'll stretch the put-them-all-together day instead of rushing them and have them write a little story about their clowns or what they learned about color mixing.

For now, they're going to go up in the hall for all to see and enjoy!

Half Person, Half Animal, Half Crazy

In the lazy days of summer, I forget how hectic the school year gets.  Case in point: we got home (my sweetie and I) from a full week of school last Friday, and the thingamajig fell off the top of our vertical blinds.  It's only decorative, and it's fallen before, but when I went to put it back I realized the clips that hold it on were broken.

The cover part of this is what I'm talking about.

I was busy, so I moved it away from the door
and "out of the way".

And there it stayed, all weekend.
Until yesterday, in fact.

Being the art teacher that I am, I couldn't bear the thought of throwing it away. It has to be good for something, right?!  So last night I decided to cut it up and make a class set of scrapers.  Scrapers for paint, printmaking, clay. whatever:

It made 29, roughly 3" x 3 1/2".
Now, let's hope I remember to use them!

Home is the crazy part right now, as I feel like I have no time to get anything done (like send out the thank you cards from Sweetie's birthday nearly 3 weeks ago).  At school, third grade has been finishing up their Catal Huyuk people.  In the ancient town of Catal Huyuk, images of half person/half animals were found, and no one's really certain what they were.  Here's some of our versions:

Students folded their papers,
drew the top half of a person
(from the waist up), gave it to me
to draw lines to give the next person
a starting spot, then traded with
someone who drew the bottom half
of an animal.

When completely drawn, students
traced with Sharpie and colored with colored
pencil.  The person who drew the person
is the owner of the artwork.

 

I really like the background
 on this one.  But as usual, I
 can't figure out how to make
 it go right-side-up in this blog.



When their half and half was fully
colored, they created a background
on construction paper with
construction paper crayons.



So those are our half person, half animals, and I only feel half crazy.  Now to find something else to cover my sliding glass doors, something a little nicer than those dumb vertical blinds. . .

God Save the Queen (Punk Rock Version)

'Cause Lord knows, if she saw these, she'd need it (jk).  This is a 5th grade project I got here, except I changed it a little (don't we all?).  We make her hair with Model Magic or Cloud Clay (have to be sure to glue it well and paint it the same day) and use a variety of things for her dress and embelishments (whatever I have a lot of).  They're not finished, barely started actually, but this is what they look like right now:

They could choose her hairstyle from a scrolling Power Point
of Queen Elizabeth I portraits, and this student hasn't added the
paper doily collar yet.

Arms will also be added, and she'll be holding some symbols of power.

What would this blog be without a
sideways photo EVERY time?

Another sideways one.

I'll post some finished photos when we're done.  They're fun.  We compared portraits of Queen Elizabeth I to Washington Crossing the Delaware.  Our queens are supposed to look "large and in charge".  Love them!

And because I just love posting just-started projects, first grade is painting color wheels to make into collage clowns (thank you, Sharon Williams for this lesson).  We did primary colors and two secondary ones:

I hope our rainbows are large enough to make clown hair.

Little mix-up with making green on this one.

This is my first time doing this project, fingers crossed it turns out well.
Something great about a post with the maiden Queen of England and clowns . . .

Speaking of Sixth Grade. . .

Sixth graders are deep into an Asian Unit.  We're currently studying Japan, and making artwork in the Japanese style (we're kind of using Japanese artworks as a jumping-off place).  As I shared yesterday, we made some suminagashi or marbelized papers (as a born-and-bred Midwesterner, I don't even TRY to say that word!).  Those papers will be the backings of our scroll paintings, some of which currently look like this:



Drawn, not yet traced and OF COURSE
turned the wrong way.



This is a talented student, he used one

of my "How to Draw" books that
I always have available.



A student who's already added ultra-fine Sharpie. 
We'll add color via Watercolor Pencils and Metallic Pencils next.



The first art project we did about Japan was origami.  Simple paper cranes, but we added them to a collaborative piece from over the years.  It now hangs in our health room (used to hang in our main office but was removed to make the area "less cluttered" which I totally understand.)

 

This is an idea that I totally ripped off from one of our local Starbucks:



Theirs is made of magazine paper, which is
awesome looking and very cost effective,
but a little difficult for my beginning origami makers.