Slideshow Overview of My Earl Warren Elementary Student's Artwork 2012

Here's a slideshow overview of the projects my Earl Warren Elementary School students just finished.  Each classroom received 4 lessons.  The classes ranged from Kindergarten to Sixth grade.  Take a few minutes and check it out.  They did some awesome work.  I am so proud of them!

New Classes

I finished up the first four weeks of art with grades K-3 and then I had a week off teaching during STAR testing.   It was nice to have a week to try to catch up with all the things I've let go around the house.  Unfortunately I didn't make much of a dent in my "to do" list.  Being a teacher, artist, wife, mother and wearer of many other hats requires some juggling and at times it's difficult to keep all my balls in the air.  I tend to be an optimist when it comes to time and I always think I have more then I actually do.  When working on a project it's easy for me to be distracted by another project which makes everything take even longer.  I very seldom work on one thing at a time.  It's funny to me that I didn't realize that I'm a "type A" personality until a few years ago.  Duh. 

This past week I started teaching the upper grades and had all new teachers and students.  It's been awhile since I've worked with the older kids so that was new too.  It's always tough the first day with a new class, especially when I'm "art on a cart" and don't have my own room.  I'm happy to say that everything went well and I enjoyed working with all the classes.  I love the younger kids because they are so darn cute and I get lots of hugs but it's nice to work with the older kids because we can take the art work to another level.  These kids don't get enough art and they really love it.  They got so involved with their projects that they didn't want to stop....so we didn't.  At least we didn't stop on time and the teachers were more than okay with that.  I have extra time between classes now so I have more flexibility.   It's refreshing to be at a school that appreciates and supports the arts.   At some of the schools where I worked it felt more like it was just tolerated.

A Sampling of the projects from this week:

The fourth graders worked on Op art designs

 Fifth grade animal drawings for the Calabash Cat project

The third graders finished working on their Picasso/Matisse paintings

The First/Second grade class finished their Georgia O'Keefe inspired watercolors.  They are SO beautiful!

Georgia O'Keefe Inspired Watercolors

Today the first graders created gorgeous, Georgia O'Keefe inspired flowers using watercolors, watercolor pencils and black glue outlines.  I am so happy with the way these turned out.  I've done this project with first, third and sixth graders and I think these first graders rivaled some of the sixth graders!  It took some pushing and prodding but I finally got them to draw their flowers BIG so they filled the page. The kids usually have a hard time grasping the idea of keeping the paint wet and try to use it like tempera paint.  They also tend to blend everything into a not so lovely shade of gray but his group got the concept down in one lesson.  I love the black outlines contrasting with the vibrant washes of color.