2nd Grade Ceramic Leaves

 

Second graders created these ceramic leaves, learning about using the shape and texture of natural objects to inspire art.  Our native dogwood leaves, as well as a few viburnum and oak leaf hydrangea leaves, chosen for their easier (than oak and maple) shape and strong veins, were pressed, vein side down, onto clay slabs. Then the leaf shape was carefully cut away from the slab with a plastic knife.  Wet fingers were used to smooth the edges of the clay leaf, and the leaves were gently set into styrofoam bowls to give them a natural-looking curve before hardening.  After bisque firing, students applied glaze lightly to preserve the vein details.

3rd Grade Silly Sentences

Artwork by Amber

("The rich horse jumped over the hairy carrot.")

This quick lesson is a great way to have some drawing fun while reinforcing parts of speech and sentence construction.  It's also especially appropriate given this year's school-wide writing focus.  

After reviewing the definitions of various parts of speech, students randomly select two adjectives, two nouns, and a verb phrase from three different bags.  I have the three parts of speech on strips of paper in three different colors for help in constructing the sentences.  (If students are not as sure about which part of speech is which, they can still put them in the right color order to construct a proper sentence.  Either way, the order for our silly sentences is "adjective-noun-verb phrase-adjective-noun."  The different colors also help make clean-up go much faster.  Usually students are able to construct at least two sentences and create drawings to illustrate them in one 45-minute period. 

Students quickly see that the random selection of their parts of speech makes for some funny sentences.  For example, the student who created the drawing above picked "rich" and "hairy" for her adjectives, "jumped over" as her verb phrase, and "horse" and "carrot" as her nouns.  From these, she constructed the following sentence to draw: "The rich horse jumped over the hairy carrot."  Of course, the challenge is in how to draw a horse that looks rich or a hairy carrot.  The students always get very creative finding solutions to these drawing challenges!   

Artwork by Lily

("The big-eared scuba diver swam with the skinny snake.")

Artwork by Cameron

("The romantic book broke up with the gigantic dragon.")

Kindergarten Four Season Trees

Artwork by Landon

Since Kindergartners spend some time learning about the four seasons in their first year of school, I use this lesson both to teach them about drawing trees and to reinforce their season lessons.  After a quick review of the number and names of the seasons, I teach them how to think of the letter "Y" when constructing a tree.  (I show them how a tree can be a big "Y" with lots of little "Y"s attached to to it,  Using a piece of 12 x 18 drawing paper that has been folded into fourths, the kinders take a crack at drawing four of these trees, one in each rectangle.  Then we have a great discussion about what one tree might look like as it goes through all of the seasons, and I color my trees accordingly on the Smartboard.  Starting in one corner, the students then color a spring, summer, fall, and winter tree using oil pastels, and finish off their works by painting the background of each "season" a different color of their choosing.   

4th Grade Glue and Pastel Sea Turtles

Artwork by Sadye

This lesson introduced the 4th graders to soft pastels and the technique of tracing their drawings with white glue to keep their pastel sections separated (both physically and visually).  The works were finished off with a cool-colored wash of the liquid watercolors we make from our dried out Crayola markers.  

We also learned a little about the amazing, ocean-spanning migrations of the sea turtles that nest on our North Carolina beaches.

Artwork by Erin

Artwork by Maya

Artwork by Samiya