Let It Snow!

Have I ever mentioned on this blog how much I love when it snows? Well I do and it is supposed to snow tonight. Yay! To celebrate I bring you the oh so charming snowmen created by my first graders in December.

These guys are ready to play, right?



Oh and when one student discovered that you could mix all of the paint together and let it drip onto the paper to create the image below, how could I stop him? It's delicious!

Muraltastic!

Irving has partnered with CME for the last three years to clean and improve the school each spring. Part of this program is to create an addition every year to the mural at the 'T' hallway. This year I got to work with a group of sixth and seventh graders to design and paint the latest mural.
I don't know about the kids but I really enjoyed spending time in that hallway just letting the compliments flood in..

For our addition we decided to pay homage to all of the wonderful field trip destinations the students visited this year: The Children's Museum, The Field Museum, Millenium Park, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Shedd Aquarium, and The Notebaert Nature Museum. The finished piece is below. What a great job!

Middle School

We used another middle school class period for still life painting.
I brought in several fruits and several bags of chips and soda cans that used the same colors as the selected fruit. The students aranged them on the table (very well I might add) and painted them as they saw them.
Throughout this class period we talked about the difference in the two groups of food. We talked about colors, nutrition, space, and composition. Before they left the students begged me to sell them the chips and pop. I gave them their choice of what to take for free and in the end, took the fruit home. It's a work in progress.

Things are Pretty Wild in Art

First and second grade were really excited about the release of the movie that came from their favorite book, Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. The watercolor paintings that resulted scared up a lot of attention in the hallway!

Klee Fish in Fifth Grade

The fourth and fifth grade students flexed their creative muscles and thier knowledge of lines to create these watercolor paintings inspired by Paul Klee.

7th grade monochromatic trees

The seventh grade students learned how to mix colors with black (shade) and white (tint) and gray
(tone) in preparation for these winter wonderscapes. They really show the students' varied moods and styles in this fledgling attempt at painting. I am excited to continue painting with them this year as eighth graders!

6th Grade Alma Thomas Study

The sixth graders learned about Alma Thomas and ROV G BIV for this lesson and out of that came these beauties. I love laminating for preserving hallway art but not for fly-by flash shooting. For such simple painting this process really cracks the students' personalities wide open.