Amazing Scarecrows - A Collage

The second graders have been VERY busy as well.
They too worked on a two session project.

The first session was spent creating a background with rolling horizons and vertical field lines.
We talked about perspective drawing and how to draw objects up-close versus in the far distance.
The kids used colored crayons to outline the horizon and the fields, added a sun and some small details.
Liquid watercolor was used to fill in the fields and the sky and they watched how magically white clouds appeared after they painted their skies blue (we had used white crayons to draw clouds on the white paper).

This week they got to work and create their scarecrows out of colorful paper stock, wool, buttons and wooden coffee stir sticks.
A HUGE THANK YOU to Mrs. Beverly Ybarra for the donation of these beautiful card stocks,
to Starbucks for the donation of the stir sticks and to Teresa Lim & her mom for the donation of buttons and fabric scraps.
As you can see we put all of your goodies to GOOD USE! :)

After two completed sessions the kids have some super awesome cool (I am starting to learn the Elementary language very well :) scarecrow collages to show off.

Every respectable scarecrow must have a light saber!

This pretty lady has a matching hat to her flowery dress, the latest in scarecrow fashion!

This young man is rather stylish in his skinny pants and shirt.
I am sure flower-girl from above is eying him up :)

I am SO proud of these kids and their creations.
A room full of 8 year olds and it was so quiet and everybody was working so hard on their masterpieces.

LOVE IT!!!!

Scarecrow Art Attack was a HUGE success!

This project was inspired by one of my favorite kids art blogs DeepSpaceSparkle.
Thank you Patti for sharing and for the tutorial!

Pumpkins growing WILD

We are having WAY too much fun with the Halloween theme!
While the older kiddos are working on Scarecrows and glowing pumpkins the little peeps are going wild  and created their own AWESOME pumpkin patch in Room 17 over the last two weeks.

This was a two session project.
Last week the kids drew their pumpkins with black oil pastel, then filled in the pumpkins with RED paint.
They then applied YELLOW paint on top and turned their pumpkins ORANGE with some super cool color highlight effects.

We added BLUE to the mix and the kids colored their leaves in cool shades of green.
There were several lessons embeded into this fun exercise/project.
Again the kids learned abut primary and secondary colors, about shading, cutting is a big one and they mastered it VERY well and last but not least they had to assemble their collage on their own and added some final touches to make their own, unique piece of art.

This week they came back, super excited as always, and went to work to cut out their pumpkins and leaves and then arranged them on a black construction paper. 

We gave them green oil pastel and white chalk pastel to add vines, stars and a moon.

 et voila ...

Kinder Pumpkins in the Dark

The results are SO SUPER COOL and FUN to look at.

I'd love to cover all of the walls in Room 17 with these cute pumpkins but I know my little artists are super excited to bring these guys home to show them off to mom and dad.

Pumpkin Patch Mission completed in form of an orange Art Attack this time.

Glowing Pumpkins

Our third graders have been "playing" with oil pastels and chalk pastels, added some bling (gold crayon) and created some super cool glow-in-the -dark pumpkins.

We started with a black sheet of paper, outlined the pumpkin with black oil pastel and then filled it in with yellow and orange. Students then added a bit of gold on the top to give it some shimmer.

Next they outlined the pumpkin with a white chalk pastel and gently smudged the edges.
Last they used a while oil pastel and added a while zig-zag line around the pumpkin to make GLOW>
Add some stars and maybe a moon and you have some very amazing glowing pumpkins.

GREAT job guys!!!
Some of the best glowing pumpkins Milpitas has ever seen :)

GREAT fun with the 3rd grades and another successful super spookable Art Attack on Curtner Elementary.

Credit for this amazing project belongs to the wonderful Kathy Barbro from Art Projects for Kids .

Mouse Paint

Our Kinder kiddos tried themselves in primary and secondary colors and learned the basics of mixing colors.

We read the book "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Stoll Walsh and turned the story into a literature-art session.

The kids learned that mixing blue, yellow and red creates orange, green and purple ... and also
A LOT of fun :)

The little guys understood the concept of mixing very quickly but the attempt to create three flowers with the newly mixed colors was a bit harder.

BUT the heart of the lesson was not about drawing the "perfect" flower but rather to get hands-on experience with paint, mixing, cleaning your brush before dipping it into the next color and to make magic happen on your white piece of paper.

And that they did indeed!
Bravo to all of our Kinder kiddos!

These most beautiful flowers the world has ever seen!!!

A colorful Art Attack on the Kinder-kiddos was yet again VERY successful :)

Welcome to the CAVE

Our awesome Mrs. P had asked me to run a session for the social studies group for the 6th graders.

Topic: Prehistoric Art aka Cave Paintings

It took me a week to figure out how to go about making a lasting impression on these 11 and 12 year olds, which is NOT an easy task when you are competing with MineCraft, iPhones and so on.
It had to be BIG, COOL and FUN!

So this is what I did.

I set up the tables in a half-circle and covered all tables with drop cloths.

The  kids, I mean young ladies and gentlemen, walked into a pitch black room, ancient Aboriginal music was playing and I had used some incense to make the room smell a bit musky.

I had found a great report by a young lady online (click here) which explained the upper paleolithic period very well and we looked at some examples of cave art.

At first the kids thought that cave art was easy and looked like young children's doodles but once we chatted about living 40,000 BP, having no Michaels to purchase art materials, no online tutorials, no spoken language (at least as much we know), no electricity and no snack machine, in case you got hungry while "coloring", they started to appreciate these un-doubtfully amazing masterpieces much more.

To give them a little taste of how it felt painting in the dark, on cave walls, with little materials I asked them to grab some paper (we used brown paper bags), crumple it up, take a piece of charcoal and  move into the CAVE (aka under the tables).

We turned off the light to let them stare into the dark for a while and then dimmed the light so they could have some light to work with.
Again the prehistoric music was sounding through the room and all we could see were lots of legs and heard lots of giggles :)

After they had completed their charcoal drawings I gave them brown tempera paint thickened with baby cereal which had turned the paint into a paste like consistency and the students were asked to use their fingers to add some color.

The last step was to add some gold speckles to add contrast (and bling).

After they had completed their cave art we asked the students to leave their handprint (often found in prehistoric art, presumably as a signature of the cave artists) on a large piece of butcher paper.

et voila ... 99 amazing master pieces.

Mrs. Maria (our wonderful, always ready to help, assistant angel, and I spent Friday afternoon gluing  the students art work onto the butcher paper pieces (which we also crumpled up prior to the gluing to give it the cave wall effect) and then decorated the hall way with it.

This is one of my favorites! 

A very realistic looking piece of prehistoric art.

It was A LONG day in the cave for me!

I entered at 8:00 am and did not find my way out until 5:00 pm BUT it was so worth it and we had a BLAST!
I could hear the kids say "This is so cool!", "Awesome!" and "I want to do this every day!" and right there it was well worth all the effort!

THANK YOU to all CAP volunteers who helped transform the room and prep materials.
Again, THANK YOU Maria for your tireless efforts and help! I could not have gotten the project up on the wall without your help!

And last but not LEAST well done my dear Curtner 6th Graders!
I had a blast with you and can't wait for our next excursion into art history!

Coming up next, we'll have a little Powwow with our 4th Graders.
I just need to figure out how to turn 17 into a giant tepee :)

Cave Art Attack was a huge SUCESS!!!