The End Of My First Semester Blogging

Warning! This post is going to have quite a few pictures. 

Friday was the last day of the first semester. I have had a long list of lessons that I have wanted to catch up on posting, but after a weekend of thinking it over, I don't want to spend my whole break blogging. Instead I want to spend it with my kids. So, here is one post to tie up all loose ends. Of course I have a goal for the new year of not getting so far behind on stuff I want to post. Until then, here goes a whole bunch of stuff that I did not get around to posting.

At the beginning of the school year, 5th graders had the choice between two contests to create an artwork for and to enter. This is the piece that we sent off to  a bicycle contest.

 The other contest that 5th graders could choose from was the Fort Worth Stock Show art contest. These horse and farm works are a few of the ones we submitted.

Third graders created Mine Craft inspired self portraits. I got this idea from a post on the blog Shine Bright Zamorano. Here is the link, http://www.shinebritezamorano.com/search/label/minecraft

My third graders loved this. It was a lot of fun. However, I never thought I would spend so much time prepping materials for anything as I did cutting paper squares for this.

Notice the shoes in the picture. My students find it hilarious that I stand on the table to take pictures.

We have a special ed class at our school that meets with the third graders. They excelled at this project and loved it so much that they went back to their classroom and did their own version so that they could keep working on it.

Here is a Kandinsky assignment that kindergarten did as an intro to oil pastels.

They look pretty good hung together in the hallway.

Here are second grades paper weavings from this year. We usually have more time to work on these than we did this year, so they are lacking the pattern that I usually have the students add to their strips before weaving. 2nd grade paper weaving in my room is inspired by Kente clothe. We read The Spider Weaver at the start of the lesson. I had to cut the lesson short after many lost days at our school due to construction.

My fourth graders had a choice of four different ways to show value after creating value scales with pencil, oil pastels, and watercolor. These are from a class that lost the privilege to use oil pastels and water colors, but these three examples were some gems from that group. I hate taking materials away from students, but we have one group at our school that has been quite the challenge this year, and sometimes you have to protect the materials when students are damaging them so that other classes still have them to use.

This is another assignment that I got from Shine Bright Zamarano. It was a very quick assignment allowing students to work together a bit to create a very large work. I will have the whole thing assembled after break and post a picture of it then.

These are a couple of examples from a warm and cool colors assignment that Kindergarten did. We started by creating images with cool colors of things we like to pretend when playing outside. Later we created warm colored windows on top of our drawings with construction paper. This gave some more time for Kindergartners to improve their scissor and glue skills.

My last catch up assignment to post is from the last week of school. Some classes were moved around, and some students were held in their rooms by their home room teachers, so we talked about team work and students created large drawings as a team to portray a subject of their choice. Tips were given about sharing ideas and picking a bottom for their artwork. Also, after the first group, I realized the need to talk about ways to work to make the piece look like one, and not several different artworks on one large paper. These drawings were started by 1st graders, and worked on throughout the day by all other grade levels.

Overall, blogging this year has been an awesome way to reflect on teaching and the goings on of my classroom. Plus, it is nice to have a place to go back and look over what has happened. I haven't quite reached 1000 page views yet, but expect to before semester 2 starts. Thanks to all who have been following this blog and hey, Merry Christmas.

Students working together for an exciting message to their school

Our first completed project with my After School Art Class. This is my first year working with the After School Program. The goal for this group is to spend the year working on collaborative art projects to fill the halls and walls of our school with Art, large art. 

For our first project, we started with the students working together with a phrase that they wanted to hang in the hallways of the school, a message for our school. The students brainstormed as a group and decided upon "School Rocks Go Roadrunners." I helped them space out and size up their lettering with about two letters per page. Some pages had a connected line that connected to the words. They learned how to leave a letter sized space between words. 

After that, students  traced over their letters with their choice of two or more washable markers. 

We then divided our papers using about four lines, creating around 12 spaces to fill with Zentangle patterns. Students then filled their spaces with patterns using pencil to plot out their design and sharpie to finish it. 

Students had the decision to work on a page individually or with a small group. Almost all students chose to work on their pages individually at first, then after a few times of working on this realized that they could get a page finished faster with a friend, started teaming up. 

It did take some time to complete, but the students had a lot of fun. Some students stuck to the Zentagle patterns from the books I have, but others started creating their own patterns.

The group I have after school is made up of a mix of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. It was very interesting to see how they interact and work together with students of other grade levels. At this point they are starting to not really care about grade levels while working or choosing partners to work with. This really started to make for some fun conversations to listen to as the younger students try to impress the older ones, and the older ones try to help the younger ones. I hope to continue to see a healthy growth of social skills and team work.

 

 Letting the students take pictures of us hanging this long artwork on the hallway made for a few blurry shots, but hey, I am o.k. with it.

A few students who started with us latter made one for my classroom. Unfortunately it is so long, I can not find the space to hang it yet.

Hope you enjoy. Leave any comments you have with constructive criticism on the project, or my blog writing. Always searching for improvement.