8th grade Firefly Night Painting

8th grade students created a night time firefly painting as their last project of the year. I was inspired by a painting from Graffiti Paintbar .

Students practiced color mixing (shades and tints), layering and negative space to achieve this look.

Kinder Dandelion Painting

Kindergarten students created a painting with two different dandelions. First, we discussed what dandelions could look like, the colors, the smells and how you are able to blow the seeds off of the stem and make a wish.

We watched this short "music video" for the Five Iron Frenzy song "Dandelions" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmFyjfksXpw . We discussed how the song is about God's love, and a mother's love.

To create the paintings we used a few fun tools. The brown centers of the flowers were thumb prints, the fluffy white dandelion seed were made with an eraser stamp, the yellow/orange petals were made with a plastic fork. We used simple round bristle brushes for the stems, leaves and grass.

5th grade Prayer Flags

Students are working to create Christian versions of Prayer Flags. We studied the tradition and looked at a few examples.

We discussed different Christian symbols for each Prayer Flag color (blue, white, red, green, yellow). Students then completed a worksheet where they decided what image and what prayer they would use for each flag. 

Next, students began drawing and writing their prayers on the flags. We are using pencil first, and then sharpie. If the prayer is short, students will rewrite it until it fills the page. Students also had the option of creating their own prayers. 

Stay tuned for more updates on this project!

Crayola Grant MyPlate Mural

Mrs. Hynes (Health and P.E.) and I were approved for a Crayola Grant for the 2015 - 2016 school year! This year we will be creating a MyPlate food mural to replace the existing and outdated food pyramid mural currently on display. Mrs. Hynes will provide instruction and a healthy food tasting for students. I will facilitate the planning and creation of the mural!

We used our math skills today to calculate the size and dimensions for our plate. We measured the official MyPlate and enlarged our plate to be four times as big. 

 

We had to round a few figures. The students did a wonderful job!

7th grade Portrait of Mary

In appreciation of May, the Month of Mary, students are working on graphite portraits of Mary. We view artworks of Mary by Botticelli and other artists and discussed similarities and differences of how Mary is portrayed. Students chose an image of Mary to draw from. We used HB pencils to draw and begin shading, then 6B pencils for the darker values and finally blue colored pencil to add selective color to Mary's veil. Many students were surprised at how well their final drawings came out!

^^ using the smudging technique 

Drawing Badge

On Sunday I had the opportunity to help a local Girl Scout troop earn their Drawing Badge!

We did gesture drawing warms up that were fun and for our hands ready to draw. 

The final project was a "bug's eye view" drawing of a flower. We used oil pastels and many different techniques. The results and original and beautiful!