Bawk, bawk, bawk! Chicken Little came to Art and Book Club

The November meeting of the Lil' Knights Art and Book Club was lots of fun! We read Chicken Little by Rebecca and Ed Emberly and created paper collages of our favorite characters. Families were surprised to find Chicken Little in place of Mrs. Hull, their usual hostess. Parents and kiddos created some exciting pieces of artwork and even incorporated some onomatopoeia into their artworks! For those of you that don't know what onomatopoeia means...it is using words like bonk and buzz that imitate the action that they refer to. A great example of this can be found in most graphic novels where sound words are shown in word clouds or bubbles. I can't wait for next month! Here's a hint....Aaarrrrrg! You can't catch me!

5th Grade Goes Renaissance!

5th Grade Artists traveled back in time to the 1300s and the birth of the Italian Renaissance! The learned about the significance of the Italian Renaissance. This is the time that people started to question the universe and their place in it. World exploration took place during this time. Books were printed and available to the masses. Architechs and mathmaticians studied the ancient Greek and Roman societies. Medical doctors studied the human body, creating the first anatomy textbook. Artists started glorifying the human body. Michaelangelo created the David during the Renaissance. Artists started painting things the way that the human eye sees them, adding shadow and depth to art. Perspective showed distance in artwork. 5th grade artists explored one-point perspective drawings. They first practiced in sketchpads, drawing shapes and objects in one-point perspective. Everything must go towards the vanishing point. They also practiced drawing a tiled floor in one point perspective. Once they were comfortable, they were able to start on their final art piece. The rules for this piece were...each artwork must have something tiled, 3 or more objects in one-point perspective, and imagination. They added color with prismacolor colored pencils. Boy are these pieces full of creativity!

2nd Grade Artists Visit Mexico

2nd Grade Artists are exploring art from around the world this year in art. The first stop on our trip around the world was Mexico. 2nd Grade Artists discovered the Mexican Folk Art Mirrors. These mirrors are created in many regions throughout Mexico. Countless artists create these Folk Art mirrors in many different styles. Our 2nd Grade Artists created a work of art inspired by these well loved mirrors. 2nd Grade Artists started by exploring the concept of radial symmetry. We viewed several Folk Art mirrors and determined whether or not they had radial symmetry. 2nd Grade Artists used compasses to create circles on art paper and then used what they know about pattern, design, and line to create a mirror frame that had radial symmetry. They then traced their designs with colored sharpies and painted them with watercolor. After cutting the frames out and gluing them to a black background, they started work on the mirror. Of course, it is not just any old mirror! We added some pizazz! 2nd graders used heavy gauge foil and tooled in designs that went with their mirror frame. They used colored sharpies to add color in some spaces and attached their mirrors to their frames. These are so colorful and bright. Enjoy!

Kinder Artists Fly Away!

Kinder Artists have been learning about lines! Lines, lines, everywhere...Kinder artists started this unit by learning a song to help them remember horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines. Ask you kinder kid to sing it to you! After reading a book about the very first hot air balloon ride (it was a partially true story...) kinder kiddos drew their very own hot air balloons. They used slick sticks to draw different kinds of lines in their balloon. Once they were finished with the lines, they explored using watercolor by painting their balloons. Oh my, the paint slides right off the slick stick lines! We made a wax resist painting! Kinder kids sponge painted a sky background and cut out their balloons. After glueing thier balloons onto their backgrounds, they attached a basket and used those horizontal and vertical lines that they learned about to create a basket pattern. These are absolutely beautiful! I would love to go for a ride in one of these hot air balloons.

3dr Grade Artists Explore Mexico

3rd Grade Artists have spent some time exploring the art of Mexico. They first spent some time in the region of Oaxaca (pronounced wa-HA-ka). Here they learned about Oaxacan wood carvings. These carvings are fist carved out of green Copal wood. The carvings are usually of animals, most of them showing some sort of movement. After the wood is carved, the artists paint them using bright colors and detailed patterns. 3rd Grade Artists used these Oaxacan wood carvings as inspiration. They drew their own animal, filling in the shape of the animal with detailed patterns and designs. We learned about creating balance in art while working on the patterns. The patterned animals were then traced with colored sharpie and painted with watercolor. The animals were cut out and glued to a black background. To finish the piece, 3rd graders created a patterned border using oil pastels. These are stunning.

Next, the 3rd Grade Artists visited Mexico City. Mrs. Salas, our student teacher, grew up in Mexico City and shared the art of Dia de los Muertos with them. They explored the art of Papel Picado (perferated paper- beautiful tissue paper art), sugar skulls, ofrendas, and calaveras. 3rd graders are working on creating their own calavera using paper mache. Talk about messy! After they build a human form, they started applying layers of paper mache. When this dries, they will paint the forms to represent a skeleton. The finishing touches will involve adding accessories that represent someone that they care about. I can't wait to see the finished products!

Kandinsky Kids - 1st Graders Explore Lines

First grade artists are exploring the element of line. They have learned about horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines. They also experimented with making various types of lines like zigzag, wavy, dotted, patterned, squiggly, loopy, and many more. After learning about the artist Vassily Kandinsky, 1st grade artists used some of his abstract works as inspiration for their own abstract line art. They drew lines with black sharpie to cover their pages. Thick lines, thin lines, short and long lines, lines that crossed, and the list keeps going. They then used colored sharpies to add a bit of color around their lines. In these pictures, you see the final step of filling in the spaces with watercolor paints. These are truly works of art!

4th Grade Artists Travel Back to the Beginning of Art

4th Graders are learning about cave art! 4th Grade Artists traveled back through time. We went back 30,000 years to when the first art was created! 4th graders explored the Lascaux cave and learned about the oldest art ever discovered. The noticed that the art found in these caves depicts animals, hunters, and handprints. We discussed what this tells us about the people that created this cave art. 4th graders practiced drawing animals using contour line drawings in their sketchpads. They then drew their animal shapes on posterboard to create stencils. They used their stencils to stipple their animal shape onto a slab of clay. They used glazes to paint their cave art animals, black to represent the charcoal that cave artists used, and other colors that were found in cave art. After they finished the details on their animals, they used their handprints (very shrunken handprints) to sign their work. These turned out just like the cave art from so long ago.