An update on the completion of our community painting-

We finally finished our painting! I sure love walking up in the lobby and watching children and their families looking for their little personage-----so wonderful!!!

Our "coming together" painting!!

This year our school grew from about 250 kids to almost 500! I really want the children to feel the same, wonderful family environment that we created last year so the first few projects we are doing our based around our coming together. They need to know how special they each are and that all of us are a close community- new or old ;).

Over the summer I drew the front of our school building on a big canvas and I'm lucky enough to have a fabulous 4th grade student who worked over the summer to paint it (thank you so much Jordan!!). She is getting close to being done with the painting- I'm excited to see it finished!!

I cut out little pieces of canvas fabric and in my classes this week the children all drew themselves or something that resembled a love of theirs (one of the boys drew a monkey ;)). I talked to them about how art can "symbolize" an idea and that this collaborative painting would symbolize us becoming a close school family. I am hoping to get permission to hang it in our lobby for the families and visitors to enjoy. I know the kids will be really proud to see their contribution to it.

I am getting such a kick out of pasting the little "people" on the painting- they are SOOOOO cute!!!! It put a smile on my face all afternoon after I worked on it.

I sure love teaching these sweet kids!

Making ourselves into centenarians while reflecting on the 100th day of school ;)

Although I typically create my own lessons, I fell so in love with this one by Rama Hughes while reading one of my School Arts magazines (always a good resource for art educators!) that I couldn't pass it up. It also went perfectly in hand with what the kids were doing outside of the art room.

The week that we celebrated the 100th day of school our faculty decided to have our students dress up as if they were 100 years old. In the art room, we learned about what a centenarian is and we discussed what it might be like when we are 100 years old (interesting conversation! ;)). I had taken a photo of each student in the preceding weeks and printed them out as 8x10 black and white prints. I also printed out 8x10 photos of several centenarians that I found on the internet.

The students first traced their own picture on tracing paper. This is trickier than it sounds! I reminded them to see what the "real" shape of their eye or nose is....not just a circle or oval. Then they took their tracing paper and laid it over one of the centenarians photos. They traced the centenarians wrinkles, hair, moles, age spots, etc. onto their own faces and turned the drawing of themselves into a drawing of them at 100 years old. It was so fun to hear them explore what it might be like when they get wrinkled necks and can't see or hear as well.

I introduced what carbon paper is (they LOVED the carbon paper) and they transferred their tracing paper drawings onto thick paper. We discussed low lights and highlights on our faces as well as skin color. I gave them a few mixing color formulas for watercolor paints and let them experiment mixing their own too. They first painted in the low lights and then added the skin color. They painted their hair and backgrounds however they chose. We used watercolor pencils for details.

It was incredible how many skills and wonderful conversations we touched on in just one 2 week lesson!! It was also super adorable to see them come up with aging attributes they may have one day ;).

Collaged self portraits with painted papers

Here is a small sample of some of the self portrait pieces made at the beginning of the year (these particular pieces are Kindergarten and First graders). I wanted them to get good exposure on the basic techniques- mixing colors, painting, cutting, gluing and drawing) in our first lesson so I included them all.

We did a color mixing intro (I covered the tables in paper and let them paint on the table- that was a huge hit ;)) then we cut up the papers and used them in our collages. To finish up the piece they used oil pastels (for some of them it was their first time using these).

We talked a lot about the difference between a portrait and a self portrait as well as looked at
portraiture in art history......I think the paintings that interested them the most were by Basquiat :) (how could they not love him??!!). Looking at his work seemed to catapult the kids into getting more energetic and loose with their own self portraits.

I adored this lesson! It gave me insight as to where the children were technically and how they liked to work as well as let them "talk" about themselves a little since the work was about them.

Happy creating!!