Oil Pastel Autumn Leaves! 1st Grade!!

To celebrate our first cold front of the season, our first graders got to explore the medium of oil pastels! They are so bright and vibrant and so much fun! We discussed the colors associated with autumn leaves and the different shapes leaves can come in. The students then traced each leaf shape and filled it in with beautiful fall colors. Then, they painted the backgrounds with blue and purple watercolor paints! We've been talking about indigo and how to mix it, so it was perfect!!!

Just check out the awesome finished products!

Mouse Paint Color Mixing with Kindergarten!

This year, I decided to jump right into color mixing! My eager kindergartners were super excited to be painting for the first time in Art class! To start out this exciting lesson, we read the super fun book, Mouse Paint by Ellen Stohl Walsh! After learning about color mixing, we set to work drawing and painting our own mice. Together, we used just red, yellow, and blue to create orange, green, and purple!

Here is my example:

 And here are some wonderful student examples!

Russian Matryoshka Dolls - 2nd Grade!

For the past couple of weeks, our 2nd graders have been creating mixed media paintings of Russian Matryoshka dolls! These are the fun dolls, usually made of wood, that have smaller versions of each one inside one another. I actually collect Matryoshka dolls myself, so this project was extra fun and special!

First, the students drew out their dolls and designed them with a bunch of beautiful patterns. Then, they created a background for the dolls with watercolor paints. Check out some of the wonderful projects below!

Piet Mondrian Collages - 1st Grade!

Our first graders created some fabulous collage paintings as an hommage to the great Piet Mondrian! We've been learning about primary and secondary colors and this was a great opportunity to put our knowledge to work to create an amazing piece of art!

First, the kiddos put in the black lines by cutting strips from black construction paper. Then, they filled in all of their spaces with red, yellow, and blue watercolors. Amazing work!

Japanese Koi Fish - 5th Grade!

Our fabulous 5th graders just finished their koi fish project! We learned about the history of the koi fish and all of the different variations that are out there! We also learned a new technique: watercolor painting with markers! Check it out:

There's No Place Like Space! - 3rd Grade

So, our 3rd graders are currently learning about the solar system in science and I came across this wonderful project idea from What's Happening in the Art Room? . It was our first experience using my brand-new liquid watercolor paints! The kids loved how all the colors would smudge together and still keep their original hues, it was awesome! Then, they got to splatter paint their space background using white paint in a spray bottle! So much fun! And the cherry on the sundae was getting to put their very own face in the space suit of the astronaut!

Here's the example from WHITAR:

Here's what my students created:

(the blobs over the faces are just to follow our photograph rules, but I assure you, they look great!)

I think the overall favorite part might have been cutting up all of the "space junk" and gluing it on! :)