Surrealism, cont. December 21, 2013

The 5th graders have finally finished their surrealism watercolor stories! We discussed many of Salvador Dali’s paintings, and guessed how he came up with some of his ideas.  They created silly sentences using words picked from a cup.  For example, what sentence could you write using the words ‘bunny’, ‘rainbow’, ‘sad’, and ‘jump’?  While painting, students had to incorporate 7 different watercolor techniques: crayon resist, wet on wet, wet on dry, dry brushing, salt, rubbing alcohol, and light/medium/dark values.  The results are great!  Watch out for these paintings and stories in the spring Morse School Art Show…

  

  

Healthy Advice December 20, 2013

The 4th graders just finished writing poems and illustrating pages for class books.  One 4th grade class voted on “healthy eating” as their theme.  Each student wrote a haiku poem about healthy eating, and then created a collage illustration to go with the poem.  The students created paper in the style of Eric Carle, and used the decorated sheets to build the collages.  They are super excited to share the finished book with their kindergarten book buddies!

A few pages from the book:

  

  

Sandpainted Suns December 19, 2013

The kindergarten students drew beautiful suns, and were so excited to learn how they were going to color them after I told them that markers, paint, and the other usual choices were out.  Instead, we used glue and sand to create textural color for the suns.  Inspired by suns seen in Native American art, students were challenged to draw an unusual sun with a variety of rays and shapes.   We also had a great conversation about why Native American sandpaintings did not include pink, purple, red, blue, or green colored sands!

  

  

Silly Surrealist Stories December 10, 2013

The 5th graders are busy with a watercolor surrealism unit, and the 4/5 spec. needs class just finished their own version.  We began the unit by playing madlibs, and creating impossible, silly stories.  Inspired by the madlibs, the students created their own stories.  Using pre-cut magazine images, the students collaged together unlikely people, places, and objects.  They wrote the sentences for each others collages to describe what was created.

    

 

 

Hidden Names December 9, 2013

The 2nd graders are currently working on Greek amphora designs.  Both scratch paper and sgrafitto clay techniques are coming up, but the 2/3 spec. needs class began the unit hiding their names in the designs.  Working in horizontal rows, the students wrote their names over and over, followed by coloring the letters with patterns.  After cutting out the amphora shape, the names are almost unrecognizable, and just beautiful texture!