Ready, Set, Art!

Sharpen your colored pencils, folks—it’s art time!

School started a month ago and my superstar art students have been hard at work/fun, creating projects.

My Kindergarten students are a delightful group. They have so many questions, so much enthusiasm. They love to share, and they give me things they drew, like this drawing by Jake.

He presented this to me after we drew jack-o-lanterns. It could be a happy face, it could be a jack-o-lantern, it could be a self-portrait, it could be a drawing of me (I’m flattered!), or it could be a portrait of Mr. T, complete with mohawk. Who’s to say? Art is in the eye of the beholder.

Anyway, Kindergarten began the school year by coloring butterflies. It felt like a good project because the kids could personalize their butterflies, and practice their cutting and gluing skills. Some are still four, and I have to give props to my young friends for what they made. Scissors are complicated when you are only four or five. I love this wiggly, energetic group of kiddos.

My first and second grade students also made butterfly art, but theirs are a bit different. I created butterflies from paper plates (you know I love a good deal, and paper plates are inexpensive and a fun twist on a flat piece of paper). If you want to try this at home, you will need 1.5 paper plates per butterfly. You’ll also need a stapler (or hot glue), a pipe cleaner/fuzzy stick and markers. You cut the paper plate in half to make the upper wings, and cut a plate into quarters for the bottom wings. Staple them together and watch them fly!

2nd grade

I wanted to hang the butterflies from the art room ceiling, like a colorful canopy of wings, but the fire marshal inspected the school last week and we are not allowed to hang anything from the ceiling. (How are we supposed to be artists if we can’t hang fun things from the ceiling? Sigh. I guess I’ll have to think of a different way to display these beautiful creatures. Maybe outside somewhere…)

My third, fourth and fifth graders have been drawing shapes and practicing shading. I asked them to make a variety of shapes on their papers and to try blending one color into another, within a shape. They were asked to blend colors on at least three shapes, but some kids shaded a lot more than three. The trick to blending is to do layers. Put your darker color on one side of the shape. Put your lighter color on the opposite side. In the middle, layer the lighter color first, and go over it with the darker color (but not at full strength). Try to make a soft blend. Some of the kids loved this project, others did not, but they all tried, and so I have promoted them from Beginning Blenders to Gradation Graduates.

Sixth and eighth graders created still life drawings with origami borders. The items in their still lives were everyday items (literally ones I had at home already, plus a few I bought at the 99 Cent Store). Art doesn’t need to be super fancy—just sketching an everyday object is a good way to learn how to draw things realistically. I asked the kids to put their items on a piece of origami, almost like a placemat, and to create an origami border around the edge of their paper to frame their work. I love origami paper for its wonderful patterns. There is so much you can do with it. It’s not just for making cranes!

In my next post I may include a few more still lifes. Some students did not finish this project before I needed to put this post together. It will be worth the wait, I promise. 

My seventh graders used metallic origami paper to create collages on construction paper. I told them they could pick their subject matter, which is always fun for kids. There were lots of meme references. I love that the kids came up with so many different subjects. Here are a few of them:

And so we are wrapping up our first month back at school. My voice is a little bit raw and my feet hurt, but my heart is happy to see all these creative kids use their imaginations.

‘Til next time, be safe, be healthy, and I’ll be back again soon with some silly and spooky Halloween art.