My 3rd graders worked so hard on the Barn Dance quilts I thought they deserved to try something new and something they might find exciting. Keeping with the textile and design theme I developed a lesson that allowed them to design their own stuffed figures based upon their personalities.

I had a bunch of colorful felt I picked up at EXCL last year that I had stored away.  www.exclrecycles.org
All the materials used except for the stuffing were from EXCL! Awesome recycling project and the kids loved it!

Kindergarten Project - Jan Brett's "The Mitten" focus on Shape, Line and Color

We started the class by reading the story "The Mitten" about a boy who asks his grandmother to knit him white mittens. She's hesitant to make him a pair of "snow white" mittens, but finally agrees as long as he doesn't loose them. When the boy loses his white mitten in the snow a whole list of woodland animals move in to the abandoned mitten. The kindergartners love the story and Jan Brett's beautiful illustrations.  

Once the story is finished I ask the students if they could design a mitten that couldn't be "lost" in the snow. The challenge was to design their own mittens that would stand out against a white snowy background using shapes, line, and color in patterns and designs that were interesting and appealing to them. Students used mitten tracers to trace the shape of a mitten onto white card stock. They were then asked to design a mitten using basic geometric shapes and lines. They were provided with rulers to help create a geometric repeating patterns to organize their shape motif. The finished the mitten with bright colors from construction paper crayons.

This was an interesting project for the kids. The feedback from the kids was very positive. They were so excited about the book "The Mitten" and loved designing their own huge colorful mittens for display.

Kindergarten Student - The Mitten Project

I would first like to send a huge thank you to the McGurrin family for the donation of the wonderful wrapping paper sample books. I knew exactly what we were going to use them for when they arrived. The paper samples were colorful and bright. The kids had a blast selecting just the right colors and textures for their paper quilts. We love recycled materials in the Art Lab!

First graders connection with children's literacy and the visual arts began the year with Faith Ringgold's Tar Beach. I read the book, Tar Beach to the kids, and inspired the first grade students to create their own personal happy memory quilt square. To begin making their art, students drew a scene of their favorite memory from the previous summer on a 9X9" square piece of paper. They used black sharpies, crayola markers and tempera cake paints to create the work. The students attached the mixed media memory drawing to a 12x12" square. Next the cut out squares of wrapping paper and glued them around the perimeter of to create a colorful quilt like quality to the art.

Here's Faith Ringgold's "Tar Beach" Quilt...

1st Grade response to "Tar Beach" Quilt assignment:

All three 1st grade classes displayed in the front of the Art Room at Bell School...wow!

Third-graders from Marblehead's Glover, Bell and Coffin schools participated in a dance residency with well-known fiddlers and callers Jacqueline and Dudley Laufman from Canterbury, N.H.
Each third-grade class experienced four folk-dance workshops with the artists. Music, physical education and art teachers combined efforts and interdisciplinary work around the residency.
As a culminating event, each school held its own Barn Dance, where students taught their parents how to dance and have their student-made quilts grace the balcony spaces at Abbot Hall. For three consecutive Mondays, the Barn Dances was be held between 6:15-8 p.m.

These are the Bell School quilts from my four 3rd grade classrooms. The kids did an awesome job!!!!
It took about 4 weeks (4 classes to complete the quilts). Well worth the effort. Each quilt had it's own theme voted on by each individual classroom. The quilt squares were designed by each child to reflect their own concept and design style.

The art teachers of all three schools worked with their students to create classroom quilts to hang at the Abbot Hall during all three evenings. The work was beautiful and a great study on group design.

http://www.wickedlocal.com/marblehead/news/education/x780396723/Barn-dances-to-culminate-Marblehead-third-graders-study-with-visiting-artists?photo=0#axzz1fuLhlkPa

This is a great story about one of my students. Sooooo proud of him and his accomplishment! This is awesome. Way to go Jimmy!

http://salem.patch.com/articles/photo-mike-s-mural-gets-a-monster#photo-8580668

Second Grade Art - November 2011

The 2nd graders at Bell School just completed a unit study on Vincent Van Gogh. They focused on Van Gogh's landscapes and his use of texture and color to create movement and excitement in his work. They began their art project with a study of the life and art of Van Gogh. Students were looking at various landscape images painted by Van Gogh, but focused primarily on "Starry Night".
The kids began by drawing a landscape image on black paper with crayola gel black paper pens. They were asked to create lines that show movement in the sky and ground. They traced the original drawings with Elmer's school glue. Once dried (this takes about 2 days) they used charcoal pastels to bring color and texture to their art. The final projects are beautiful, colorful and wonderful representations of the student artists who created them. Here are a couple of examples:

 Miss Lilian - Grade 2

Miss Julia - Grade 2

These two will be on display at the National Grand Bank in Marblehead this winter!

First Post: How to get this blog up and running????

I have worked with so many fantastic art students over the years I wanted a way to showcase the amazing art they created so I developed this blog as an online gallery. I have also found some very creative lesson plans on other art teacher blogs and I really wanted to give back to anyone who might need one or two. Feel free to try out any lessons that might fit your curriculum.

I'm just getting my feet wet into the blog pool...so here it goes!

Art work by 3rd Grade Bell Student 2010.