Mrs. Edwards' Art Class

Oh Kindergarten...

In K-5 art we have so much fun, make such messes, and learn soooo many lessons! We have been discussing the color wheel, rainbows, primary colors, secondary colors and such... and this week we talked about cool colors! We celebrated the colors Blue, Purple, and Green by making beautiful peacocks!

Welcome Artists!!

Thoughts about K-5 Art...
I have a special place in my heart for Kindergarten. I did my student teaching with a group of the sweetest K-5 students! As much as I love these cuties, I have to say it is one of the most difficult art classes! There is so much that is new to them, that I often can easily get frustrated. Thankfully, for me, it's just easier (and way more rewarding) to laugh and pray in those times!! When I first started teaching art, my wonderful and perfect lesson plans for K-5 had to be thrown out the window. I started from scratch and got down to the very basic, and very FUN and exciting lessons for this group of kids. I realized this: What's more important? Teaching the kids to recognize a VanGogh or Seurat painting when they see it? Or teaching them how to appreciate art and get excited about it!? Obviously, at that age, most of them love art anyway... but I want to foster a love for art and desire to be creative in all of my students and it must start in that first year of art. That can't happen if I begin with lessons loaded with technicalities and projects too challenging to enjoy. If a student becomes frustrated to the point of giving up, I have failed as an art teacher! My goal now is to come up with lessons that "secretly" teach the principles and concepts of art that they will need later on! This way, students just see a really fun activity that leaves them craving for more!

Hence... rainbow hair!!! (The actual lesson)

Again, starting with the basics, I get the students excited about color, about the rainbow, and about the absolute beauty of creation- God's masterpiece! We go over the color wheel which actually is slightly different than the rainbow.

• Rainbow= "ROYGBIV" -this is a scientific breakdown of the color spectrum
• Color wheel= Red ,Yellow, and Blue are primary; Orange, Green, and Purple are Secondary.. so basically we don't include indigo.. (which is basically blue, right?)

Kindergarten art is anything but boring! We have learned so much this year! I wanted to share two fun projects that we have done recently. These projects can be used with children as young as two, so take notes if you are a stay-at-home parent who is interested in bringing some artful fun to your home!

String Paintings
Everyone really enjoyed this colorful, unique, and hands-on project! To begin, I sat out several different colors of paper, and several colors of paints. I chose the quiestest, best-seated students to go first. Each child had to pick a color of paint and paper. Together, we dipped a very long string (about 2 feet) into a bowl of paint. We made sure the whole string was coated. Next we laid the string down in the pattern of our choice, being sure to include lots of loops! On top of the string designed paper, I placed one more colored paper followed by a heavy-duty piece of cardboard and a heavy-duty can of paint. Next the students had to pull with all their might to get the string out from between to two papers. Most students needed help pulling that stubborn string out, but it was well worth the beautiful result! When you unveil the two papers, you will find mirror reflections of the string designed pulled out in a manner that resembles a flower. Some looked different than flowers, but all were unique and abstract! We had such a good time laughing and cheering for each new piece of art that was formed that day! Here is a sampling of what we did:


Stunning, One-of-a-Kind Masterpieces!

 Clay Day Snails
On Clay Day, students had a blast experimenting with 3-D art. When I first passed out the clay, I had students quickly form whatever object I called out. It was a race to create a tooth, flower, snake, balloon, bowl, and other fun objects. Then I let the students create anything they wished. It wasn't long before one student discovered how to make a nice looking snail! Soon after, many of the students decided to present a friendly little snail to me. This project helped the kindergarten practice their fine motor skills as well as learn about form and shape. Take a look at the family of snails from this fun day!


An exciting day ended with some snail pals!

 Well, I hope you enjoyed hearing about the wonderful artwork of our Kindergarteners! They have really grown in their art skills this year!

Welcome Faithful Readers and Brand New Visitors!

I have been waiting all week to share the exciting things we have been doing in art this week!! I wanted to celebrate Valentine's Day with each class, so this week was full of parties! I still wanted to incorporate a small addition to our study of possible careers in art. I chose to discuss the field of Culinary Arts!

We got to decorate cookies with lots (and I mean LOTS) of icing, sprinkles, colored sugar, and other things that will cause parents to shudder!! Before decorating, we played some awesome games and posed with our buddies in the Heart Photo Booth. Over all, it was an absolute blast! This is definitely going down in the top five most memorable weeks of art class! I

Now for a look at some of the fun we had:
(Click on any picture to make it bigger)

Kindergarten student, Gabe being a Culinary Artist!

 

Madelynne and Tessa in the Heart Photo Booth

Ashton and Cameron

2nd Grade boys get together.. We missed you, Alex!

Tomi and Skyler

2nd graders showing off their beautiful cookies!

Selena and Amy smiling big in the photo booth!

Gabrielle and Kaylyn- so sweet!

Some good-looking redheads: Levi and Grant

4th graders race to win the "Heart Toss."

Jacob, Isaac, and Luke cram into the heart photo booth!

Drew and Josh enjoying the Valentine Party!

If you're in the area, make sure you stop by the "Hall of Frame" to see even more pictures of the GCS art students having Valentine Fun!! Next week has even more great things in store! I hope everyone has a happy Valentine Weekend!

Welcome Friends!
As we continued our study of different careers in the world of art, we came upon the job of a graphic designer! Most graphic designers do their work on a computer, but plenty of sketchwork is done on real paper. That is why everything you will see from this week is not digitally created. Plus- getting the computer to do what we want it to do is sometimes a very hard and frustrating thing!! I prefer to skip the frustration of the computer for elementary students and get those great ideas out on paper!!

Kindergarten has learned what a logo is, how to design something that promotes your product (this includes pictures and colors that relate to the product), and how to make some creative lettering for the whole thing! So what were making logos for? Grace Christian School of course!!!

Take a look at these nice samples of student-designed logos! Pretty impressive!

Nice work girls! I love the creative letters and snazzy blue and gold color choices!! Go Soldiers!

And yet another snow day has delayed the blogging of GCS Art Students! Thankfully, we are back on track, and you are going to love what we created last week!!

In case you haven't noticed, January is all about occupations in the art world! First we talked about illustrators, then we learned about inventors, and last week we learned about fashion design. Fashion design is not limited to run-ways, crazy outfits, and deathly high heels!! We discovered that "fashion" is all around us, and that somebody out there designed it!

Kindergarten art students got a chance to design their very own shirt or dress. We reviewed symmetry and patterns and colors. We carefully planned out the design with our pencil, colored it with crayons, then presented each one to the class. Then we voted (by applause) on our favorite patterns that we would love to wear some day! What do you think of these future fashion designers?



Gabrielle - 1st Grade



Jonathan - 2nd Grade

 

Selena - 3rd Grade



Jenna - 3rd Grade



Josh - 1st Grade



Lilly - 2nd Grade



Today Kindergarten art students learned a new word! Resolution. We also learned that drawing pictures of "goals" is different than drawing pictures of "girls!" :) They are too funny! We also learned about illustrators and their job of telling a story with pictures. We all thought about some goals and chose one to illustrate. There were some really touching and sweet goals that they came up with! Take a look at these beautiful works of art!

Gabe- Kindergarten