K – 6 Art

For over 80 years, the San Diego Museum of Art has held a juried exhibition of student art. This year’s show is all about identity. Young Art ‘The Story of Me’ is on display right now at the Museum at the Center for Community and Cultural Art. Learn more in this article.

Our school had a record 12 pieces in this year’s show. Congratulations to all our young artists! Here are all their fabulous projects, arranged by grade:

First Grade: Clay Self-Portraits

 First Grade: Royal Self Portrait

L. and her royal self-portrait

Second Grade: Super Hero Self Portraits

Third Grade: Heritage Self Portrait

Gavin’s heritage self-portrait, ‘Flag Face’, incorporates the flags of France and Italy.

Fourth Grade: CD Case Double Portraits

 Fifth Grade: Charm bracelets and dog tags

Mo’s self-portrait is a T-shirt and neck chain, with charms for skiing and Spiderman.

Bella’s self-portrait charm bracelet includes charms for Mexico, swimming, and Disneyland.

Jacob’s salute to his family’s military background includes a camouflage shirt and individual dog tags for family members in the service.

Well done artists!!!! The show is up until May 26, 2013. Hope you can visit!

Thanks to the fabulous art education team at SDMART for making Young Art happen. Our community truly appreciates all your hard work.

Enjoy!

Our first graders learned about artist George Rodrigue’s Blue Dog. They had a fabulous time creating their own blue (or green or magenta) dogs and dressing them up in paper collage. The George Rodrigue Foundation website has every resource you could possibly need.  I downloaded the Blue Dog PowerPoint slideshow, and learned the Blue Dog was inspired by Rodrigue’s late dog, Tiffany. The PowerPoint  has lots of  ’dressed up’ Blue Dog paintings, including a secret agent dog, hula dog and motorcycle dog. Of course the first graders LOVED that! I also showed students the first few minutes of this video from CBS Sunday Morning.

Now on to the art project!

Materials

• white sulphite drawing paper – 12″ x 18“ (or other white paper that is strong enough for painting)
• black crayons
• tempera cakes
• water cups and brushes
• glue sticks
• scissors
• colored construction paper scraps

Day 1: Students watched Blue Dog PowerPoint, then did a directed draw of the blue dog using black crayon. Next they painted the dog in a single solid color using tempera cakes. Amazingly, this took only 40 minutes thanks to the easy-to-handle tempera cakes.

Day 2: Students decorated their dogs using scrap paper and glue stick.   This was a popular and super successful project with easy clean up. I will definitely repeat next year.

Enjoy!

Bonus: FREE Blue Dog app on the iTunes store!

Blue Dog Books You Might Like:

Our 5th and 6th grade students did a quick 40-minute cut paper notan collage project. Our inspiration came from these beautiful notan artworks at the MiniMatisse blog. If you are unfamiliar with notan, it is a Japanese design concept of dark and light. Notan cut paper projects are great for teaching a lot of concepts including contrast, positive and negative space, symmetry, and geometric vs. organic shapes.

This was the very first time I taught notan. I found two really good resources that gave me confidence: 1) a great video that shows the notan process and 2) a great illustration showing single and double cuts.

Each student started) with a 6″ square of red construction paper and a white format (background) paper . The minimum assignment was to make four single cuts – one cut from each of the square’s sides. Double cuts were optional (about half the students tried them). Cut pieces could be geometric (hearts were popular) and/or organic shapes.

Our students really liked this project. Some made Valentines and wanted to take them home immediately. I think they turned out great. I also think that their second attempts will be even better. Definitely a project to repeat!

Fifth and Sixth Grade Results:

The next two designs contain cut pieces that were rotated incorrectly. But you know what? I consider the artworks successful. They are beautiful designs, even if they don’t fully fulfill the assignment. They still illustrate the concept of positive and negative space although they are in places asymmetric.

Although we did these red paper notans in honor of Valentine’s Day, they will look great displayed as a group any time of year.

I would LOVE to find an iPad app or interactive website that illustrates notan. If anyone knows of one, please leave a comment!!

Enjoy!

Have you even tried notan with your students?

Do you have any tips to share?

Are you looking for a fun collage project for kindergarten? This newspaper city collage project engages students with a discussion about their city, then lets them use their cutting, gluing, coloring and painting skills.

When asked, “What do you see in a city?” kindergarteners named all sorts of things:  houses, roads, tall apartment buildings, garages, and even boats in San Diego harbor. One girl talked about her recent trip to the city hospital, another about what she saw on vacation in New York City.

Materials:

• black construction paper
• newspaper
• scissors
• glue stick
• construction paper crayons, plus black crayon
• watercolor set

Day 1: Cut and glue newspapers. Emphasize shape: squares, circles, triangles, rectangles etc. Add details with crayon.

Day 2: Paint with watercolor.

Kindergarteners make cut paper city collages from newspaper, then color with crayon and watercolor. Allow two 40-minute classes.

Aren’t they wonderful?

New York City collage before and after crayons and watercolor. Do you see the Statue of Liberty?

As much as the kinders enjoyed the project, I would do things a little differently next time:

• Use smaller black construction paper . Students had difficulty filling the 12″x18″ paper we used within the class time frame. So this class took three 40 minute classes – I want to shorten it to two.
• Skip the front page of the newspaper!  It took extra time to eliminate inappropriate ads and articles. Next time I will try the white pages of a phone book, classified ads or financial/stock listings.

This lesson was inspired by this lesson by CCE Art Happenings.

Do you have a favorite collage project for kindergarten?

Give your snowflake project a colorful twist – ‘tie dye’ them! Sixth grade just finished their tie dye snowflake collages, made with coffee filters and painted with tempera cakes. This lesson was inspired by this post at A Faithful Attempt blog.

Sixth graders cut and paint coffee filter snowflakes, then use them in a collage. Allow two 40-minute classes.

Day 1:

We began by viewing all the excellent student examples on the Faithful Attempt blog. Next, we folded our coffee filter rounds and cut our snowflakes using this method. NOTE: DO NOT OPEN THE PAPERS AT THIS TIME! Students painted their folded snowflakes with tempera cakes, then clipped on a numbered clothespin.

Students were allowed to make multiple snowflakes, so long as the folded flakes could fit stacked up in a single clothespin. One student was able to fit three painted snowflakes in a single clothespin. I let the papers dry on a sheet of cardboard.

Label each snowflake with a numbered clothespin. If you have multiple classes, use a different colored number for each class.

Day 2:

The sixth graders carefully opened their papers. THEY LOVED THE RESULTS! They mounted the snowflakes on construction paper using glue stick (tip – glue down the center first and carefully work your way out to the edges).

I was going to stop the project at that point, when someone asked me if she could double-mat their work. Then someone asked me if he could make a decorative border. I pulled out the ‘fancy’ scissors and the scrap paper bin, and gave them free rein. Our snowflake project turned into a collage project!

Sixth grade results:

For more cool snowflake ideas, check out my previous post: Cut Paper Snowflakes Designed on an iPad.