Eric Carle Inspired Neighborhoods

Kindergarteners were very excited to discover that one of their favorite authors is also a wonderful artist! Eric Carle uses painted paper to create all of his famous illustrations. Using watercolor paint, shapes, and warm and cool colors kindergarteners created their own neighborhood in the same way that Eric Carle creates his illustrations. They all turned out great!

We painted paper using warm and cool colors. Later the paper was cut into  4 pieces and became ready to use in our artwork!

We used squares and triangles to start building our neighborhoods.

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!

Kindergarten Mondrian Collages

Kindergarteners have been focusing on famous artists, and during this lesson we learned about Piet Mondrian. The class learned about vertical and horizontal lines, as well as primary colors. We watched this great video about color, and will watch it again when we learn about the secondary colors!

We made our project by using black paper to create our horizontal and vertical lines, and then coloring in the shapes using the primary colors.

Here is a look at our Mondrian inspired project:

Kindergarten Van Gogh Inspired Shape Sunflowers

Kindergarten's first project of the year was inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" painting!

At the beginning of class we zoomed in to the painting to try and see Van Gogh's thick brushstrokes, details, and shapes. Next, kindergarteners created their own version of "Sunflowers" incorporating some different shapes. 

Can you find the hidden shapes in our Sunflower paintings?

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: