Snow Globes - 1st Grade!

This week, our 1st graders are making paper versions of one of my favorite holiday decorations! Snow Globes! The kiddos today had a blast making these and they turned out just great!

Silly Sock Snowmen - Kindergarten!

In Kindergarten, we've been learning about mixing our drawings with cutting and gluing. To ring in the colder weather, we made some lovely snow men and snow women with silly colored socks!

These look awesome!

~Ms. Carney

Drawing the Grinch - 1st Grade!

This week we learned how to draw the Grinch from Dr. Seuss' wonderful Christmas tale, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The kids have been having an awesome time with this project. After we finished our drawings, we all sat together and read the story. Here are some of the finished projects below!

 These kiddos did a magnificent job! Happy Holidays, everyone!
~Ms. Carney

Kicking off the Holidays!

The holiday spirit is in full swing here in the art room! All the decorations are up and our special friend from the North Pole is back again this year!

This is our elf, Peppermint! She watches over all of the boys and girls throughout the day and reports back to Santa at night. When she comes back in the morning, she's in a new spot! What a trickster! Here are a couple of pictures of her sneaky spots!

I'll keep you posted on all her elf antics throughout the next couple of weeks! 

~Ms. Carney

Artist of the Month

Head on over to the Artist of the Month page, the November artist is up! ~Ms. Carney

Harvest Corn Drawing - Kindergarten!

We've been practicing the lines and shapes we've learned about in Kindergarten by learning how we can make pictures of other things by putting all these shapes and lines together! Since November is already upon us, I thought it would be nice to create a picture of a lovely colorful corn stalk!

Like our Wobbly Birds, we discussed what other colors we could use for the sky instead of blue. This class chose purple and light turquoise!

Wobbly Birds - Kindergarten!

This is our first drawing project in Kindergarten! We used all the shapes and lines we've been learning about to create a picture of some silly-looking, wobbly birds!

We also learned that skies dont always have to be blue! For this picture, we made our sky look like a sunset with orange and yellow!

Statues of Liberty Collage - 4th Grade

Our 4th graders made some patriotic artwork too! We created pictures of the Statue of Liberty with torn pieces of paper we found in magazines! First, we sketched out the shape of the statue, then we got to work finding all of the colors we would need to fill in the statue. We learned about collaging and how its better to tear the paper, than to cut it.

At the very end, we outlined the statue with a black oil pastel to add some extra definition.

Drawing with Scissors - 4th grade!

In 4th grade, we talked about Henri Matisse and how he used collage techniques and scissors to cut out different shapes to create a piece of art! My students really loved the idea of getting to be spontaneous with lots of different and unique papers and a pair of scissors!

This one is awesome because this student made theirs into a low-relief paper sculpture and it turned out great!!!!

I had a decent collection of old scrapbook papers of some that I had gathered myself and some I was able to get from the Center for Recycled Art Teacher Warehouse. They have a sale once a month for educators to come and explore all of their recycled materials. Each paper bag full is only $5! Whatever you can get in the paper bag, you get for just $5! It was a really great experience and I cant wait until the next sale!

Figure Drawing Pilgrims!! - 1st Grade

November is here! and that means cooler weather (hopefully!) and the wonderful Thanksgiving holiday is upon us. I like to use this wonderful opportunity to introduce figure drawing to my 1st graders and teach them a little bit of history too!

We always draw a boy pilgrim and a girl pilgrim so we can discuss the different clothing styles from back then compared to the ones of today! This is a super fun drawing project that our 1st graders always enjoy!

Patriotic Line Art - 3rd Grade

Our first project this year in 3rd grade went along with our school's patriotic theme for the year! We learned about different types of lines and how repetitive lines can really add interest and a cool 3D effect to our artwork!

This one's not quite finished, but I can already tell its going to look awesome!!!

Patterned Pumpkins - 2nd Grade!

Our 2nd Graders have been working on a still life drawing of pumpkins! We learned about using a lighter color to add a "highlight" to what we're coloring! We also learned about how adding patterns to a drawing can add interest to our artwork!

Picasso Monsters - 1st Grade!

During the first couple weeks of October, our first graders got to make mixed media monster faces after learning about Pablo Picasso and his unusual portraits of people. They really had a lot of fun cutting all of the pieces out and putting them together. This was another great idea from Mrs. Picasso's Art Room! Here's how they turned out:

I think the most fun part for the kids was adding in all the hair, bats, and pumpkins. Some of them even added in caves and the moon! How creative!

Pop Art Experiment - 5th Grade!

Our 5th graders just finished up their first project of the year, Pop Art!!! I felt this was a wonderful starter project for the year because it was a nice introduction to blending colored pencils (which is an essential skill to have for middle school art), it was a nice introduction to digital art, it involved photography (my favorite!!), and it didn't require a bunch of drawing.

Before we started, we looked at a bunch of examples of Andy Warhol's pop art pieces that involved repetition of the same image, but all of them are different in some way.

Then, the students were able to pick 4 copies of 5 pre-selected photographs to work with. They had to follow certain color guidelines for each of the 4 copies:
1) a set of complimentary colors (red/green, purple/yellow, blue/orange)
2) the primary colors (red, yellow, blue)
3) the secondary colors (orange, purple, green)
4) any colors

(Sorry about the glare,  I laminated these to be able to hang in the hallway) :)

When they were finished, I had them glue the edges together to create one big giant piece of art. I think the kiddos thoroughly enjoyed this project!

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! :)

Official First Post!!

Welcome to my lovely little sparkly art blog!!! Here you will find the projects your kiddos have been working on and find out what we've been learning about in art!!! I look forward to posting about all of the lovely artwork that is created in my class!!! 

Have fun!!!

~Ms. Carney