Pinch Pot Animals

These cute pots were a challenge for my third grade students.  I used to make pinch pots with first grade but found that I ended up doing most of the work.  Pinch pots have always been challenging for kids in my art classes.  The clay either dries out from them overworking it, they have trouble pinching and turning as well as getting all of the clay pinched at the bottom without thinning out the side to much.  I love pinch pots and they look so simple but they are definitely not.  The extra challenge with these were making them sturdy enough to add animal decorations to.  There was a great variety of animals created and they did an excellent job underglazing them.  If you would like to see all of our pinch pots visit our online art gallery at:  http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?project=1072481

Fun Way of Displaying Second Grade Owls

Love the way the owls look on these cut trees.  It makes for a great display of artwork in the library.  The second grade students did such a great job.  Love the way they look in a group.  If you want to see all of them go to:  http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?project=1046948

Storyteller Dolls

Fourth grade students looked at Native American Storyteller dolls.  We talked about Cochiti Pueblo potter,Helen Cordero and her clay figure that represents her grandfather telling Native American Tales.  We also discussed the connection Helen had with her artwork and grandfather.  I asked my students to make a connection with their artwork like Helen. The kids did a great job on them.  We used an upside down pinch pot for the body.  Below is a picture of a few finished pieces.  If you would like to see more go to our school gallery at http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?project=1035988
Each Student wrote an artist statement about their piece.  Here are a few quotes they wrote about their work.  

Artist Statement (what lily3425 said this about his/her artwork)

This piece is important to me because this is me and my dad watching football my dad and I bond over football because every night we play pass with a football every time the patriots get a touchdown my dog Autumn gets a cookie.

Artist Statement (what Nagy2 said this about his/her artwork)

This piece is important to me because it is my mom and I when I was a baby. The hardest part for me was the legs because even when you scratch and attach, they still break off sometimes.

Artist Statement (what Beaulieu1 said this about his/her artwork)

This is important to me because I like soccer. Because it's fun. It is fun because I keep the Jersey.

Second Grade Robots

This lesson is always a hit with the kids.  This year we did the background a little differently.  You can find previous years robots here. I really wanted the robots to stand out from the background so we used black paper and metallic paints to print gear-like designs.  I collected some found objects; Lego and Kinex pieces, cardboard and plastic lids.  The kids dipped the objects in the paint and pressed them onto the black paper.  They were the perfect backgrounds for these cool robots.  Here are a few of the finished products and you can check out the rest on Artsonia.

2D and 3D with the Quiver 3D coloring app

To start the year, second grade students were inspired by the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds and then able to see their two dimensional dot turn into a 3D sphere using the Quiver app for ipad.  It was a great first art class lesson.  The students were so excited to see their drawings change and the app was very quick and easy for them to do.  Check out some videos and see the magic!

Imaginary Animals

Second grade students combined real animals to create these fun imaginary ones.  The coloring was done with color pencil and we talked about layering different colors and lines to come up different textures for these creative creatures.  I showed them Carla Sonheim's book, 

Drawing and Painting Imaginary Animals: A Mixed-Media Workshop and talked about how she layered color to textures to her creatures. For the background we used watercolors and a palette to mix lighter shades.  This filled in the background nicely and let our animals stand out.  Here are some of the finished ones.  You can also see all of them on Artsonia.

Elements of Art Super Heroes

Fourth grade students did a great job creating these fun superheroes inspired by an element of art.  After reviewing the elements of art we brainstormed ideas.  I loved hearing all the creative powers they came up with.  We used sharpie to outline our drawings and then crayons and liquid watercolors to add color.  We also used the ComicBook! app on the iPads to create comic book pages sharing what our superheroes power was.  Here are some of the finished pieces.  You can see the exhibit on Artsonia here:http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?exhibit=934637