Got Summer Art?

Hello again! It’s officially summer and I’ve been in recuperation mode after the school year. Teaching is awesome but super tiring. For a few weeks after school closed, I honestly felt like I had staggered through one of those 100-mile ultramarathons--with an elephant strapped onto my back and no water to drink. In record temperatures. For nine months.

So, despite my intentions to post this in June, it did not happen. Therefore, I am rebranding this post as Art to Make with Kids This Summer.

In the spring my art students learned about the concept of tessellations, which are repeated shapes that fit together with no spaces in between.

The shapes can be simple or complicated. I explained the concept to my younger students as being similar to a puzzle, in which all the pieces fit exactly into their neighbors.

Here are some samples of my Kindergarten class’ cat tessellations:

Here are some examples from my first graders: 

Possibly a third grader's work: (I didn't make a note when I took the photo. Please see above explanation of my exhausted mental state from June!)

Fourth grader's creation of arrow tessellations. I showed two kids how to do this and they did a great job. I like how the arrows pointing down are a separate color from the arrows pointing up.

Fourth grade lizard and fish tessellations:

I asked my older students if they were familiar with MC Escher, a famous artist known for his interest in tessellations. Here is an example of one of Escher's work:

My seventh grade students all colored in fish tessellations, and I love the variety:

Another spring project my students tackled was learning perspective. This is one-point perspective, showing one vanishing point, where the lines of our road appear to meet.

My fifth-grade students also learned about perspective. Beautiful results with so much detail.

Below are my sixth graders' “Fuel Up” food-filled cars. This was an idea that I created. It came to me out of the blue, and I have to say, I think these rock! I drew the car shapes and I gave the kids a choice of six designs. They filled in each car with different kinds of food. 

1970s Gremlin!

1960s Chevrolet Impala

My favorite car--the 1957 Chevy Bel Air, with extra pointy fins.

This is a seventh grader's food truck. It was not a required project for seventh grade, but one student did it for extra credit, and turned out awesome!

My students did wonderful work this year, and I’m proud of them.

For now, I’ll sign off to go take another nap. But I’ll see you here later this summer, once I’ve finished recovering from the school year!