Wednesday, October 29, 2014

The Art of Freedom- Exploring the work of Jasper Johns and America's History

This lesson was done my 4th grade students. I have not done this lesson in a few years and I thought this would be the perfect year to use my book and some of my history books for this lesson. 
Students brought in their own newspapers and cardboard pieces from home. 
We cut 3 sizes, small, medium, and large-pre-cut by the teacher.

Students modge-podged each cardboard piece with newspapers. Let dry, and then next class we painted the white stripes. The following class we painted the red, blue, and white stars. We then let dry, and used small cardboard squares behind each piece to make it 3-D and a relief similar to Jasper Johns work. 


This piece below is the work done by Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958 that we used as inspiration. We discussed symbolism, freedom, America, and what those topics mean to them.
We used this book by Bob Raczka as inspiration and talked about using America as a subject in a work of art and why artists have chosen to use America in their art work.




The Art of the Picture Book---The Cat in the Hat!

This year my library teacher and I are collaborating with our students and we are doing "The Art of the Picture Book" as our theme. We are using sketchbooks that students take to Art Class and Library to do different activites. I love my librarian, she integrates art in so many ways in her class and she has such great books!

My 3rd Grade students did observational drawing and we discussed styles of art looking at illustrators. We chose Dr. Seuss to start off. We used a tints and shades background discussing how to create various blue hues. We also added some red collage paper pieces as a border. I am so proud of these kiddos. They did such an amazing job!





Tuesday, October 7, 2014

SWEBS ticket mosaic murals!


In my elementary school we use SWEBS as our behavior management system. Students recieve tickets for positive behaviors and choices. Over the past three years we collected thousands of tickets from the kiddos which is a very cool thing. My principle and guidance counselor wanted me to possibly do something with the array of tickets collected. I figured what better pieces for a mosaic banner mural to be hung around the school made by all students! Here they are a work in progress!!!