Winter Greeting Card Contest

Every year our school district has a Winter Greeting Card Contest. There were over 200 creative entries, and I can tell students really tried their best! From Madison school there were 3 winners and 3 runners up. I also chose a winner from my 4th grade class at Pleasant Lane. The winners get their cards printed, displayed, and sent out around the district, as well as their winning design displayed on the local tv station (videos to come)! Runners up won the chance to get their cards printed out to take home and give to family members. Congratulations to all of our winners, and thanks to all who participated!

Here are some of our winners!

1st Grade Matisse Collages

      1st Graders had a lot of fun during this project. We took a look at the artist Henri Matisse, and focused on his cut-out artwork.

Our class learned about collage, and had a blast using this technique to create some beautiful Matisse inspired masterpieces.

What a creative collage! Some of these organic shapes look like something Matisse would have created!

Do you see any familiar shapes?

Look at all those geometric shapes!

Here is a little video of Henri Matisse putting together one of his collages!

1st Grade Fall Folded Trees

This was a fun, simple, and quick project with 1st grade on symmetry! The whole project was made by creating one side of the painting using tempera paint, and then folding the painting over while wet to create a mirror image on the other side. We had fun looking at all of the fall trees outside to decide what colors to use on our own trees! Madison students can see these works of art hanging up in the 1st grade hallway.

Starry Night City Scratchboards (1st Grade)

            1st grade started of the school year learning about one of my favorite artists: Vincent Van Gogh! As a class we played a fun "I Spy" game with Vincent Van Gogh's painting "Starry Night". First graders had fun taking turns identifying the different images that Van Gogh painted: "I spy a house! I spy a tree! I spy a church!" During out game we started to notice other things about "Starry Night" such as the color, movement, and setting of the painting.

Students came to the conclusion that Vincent Van Gogh painted scenes that he might have seen. We talked about how he might have painted "Starry Night" from a scene he saw right outside his window! This inspiration was then used to create our very own "Starry Night" scratchboard made of the things we saw every day in our own city.

To Make the Scratchboards:

• Color an entire sheet of of paper with crayons (leave no white space). Since this project can take a little bit of time the paper we used was 7x10". Students could color any design keeping in mind the color and movement that we saw in "Starry Night"
• Mix black tempera paint with a tiny bit of dish soap and cover the entire paper. Painting in one direction worked the best! 
• Scratch out the design using anything with a sharp point. (We used pencils for most of the project.)

Here are some of the results!

I love all of the movement in the sky just like "Starry Night"

These are some very tall skyscrapers! 

Kandinsky School Mural

My first project of the year was done with help from all of the students at Madison School! On the first day of class students were given a blank 4x4" square to decorate. My only guidelines for the project were that each student had to include: their name, hobbies or interests, and shapes. I mentioned that we were going to collaborate with other classes to create an "all-school painting". Every class was excited to see how the painting would be put together to create their own giant mural! We briefly discussed unity, and how we wanted the result to look good, while still allowing for individual creativity. In order to solve this problem students used shapes just like Wassily Kandinsky did in his painting"Concentric Circles".

Kandinsky "Concentric Circles"

 Students then incorporated their interests by either writing or drawing them in their shapes!

In my example I chose to stay with circles. I made sure to emphasize that their are no mistakes in art. Even Kandinsky didn't make perfect circles in his painting!

After drawing out their designs students learned about the "resist" painting technique and colored in their squares by using crayons and watercolor paint.

The best part of the project, other than getting to know all of my new students, was to see everyone's reaction after our mural was officially installed!

Here is a look at our finished project: