eagle art crew 2015-2016

My small after school art club is up and running this year with 16 phenomenal little artists! We meet once every week for an hour and a half and create incredible works of art. Due to the small group, I get to do more interesting and in-depth art projects and techniques I wouldn't normally get to do with a large group!

I'm really excited for this year. It's my third Eagle Art Crew and I have learned so much over the past two years perfecting my program. I still have a long way to go, but this year's group is so talented!

Each year I provide my EAC members with a hardbound sketchbook and a baggy of quality art supplies to help them start off on their adventure as an artist. The sketchbook and supplies are for the student to use as they create and do their weekly sketchbook assignments and warm-ups! This is something my students always look forward to. It makes them feel special and like a REAL artist!

I always start off our year with a self-portrait project. The kiddos at this age are starting to discover who they are in our world and self-portrait helps with their awareness! This year's project is super fun and exciting.

We used the iPad to take "selfies" and printed them out. We only cut out the face!

We then created a big playing card using LARGE white paper and a smaller black paper. The faces were glued down and we started our zentangle designs in our Kings & Queens' robes. Students are allowed to add any personal and meaningful objects into their drawings. I have figures holding paintbrushes, basketballs, pets, and more! 

The EAC kiddos are really enjoying this project. It's a keeper! I can't wait for the remaining year where we make spirit guide ceramic vases and paper marbling experimentation with much much more!

2015 district-wide spring art show.

Howdy friends!

I am off on another adventure with my little artists. Many of my fellow art educators probably know the troubles of what I am about to talk about today: selecting artwork for district shows and displays. It's that time of year again where I try to rush my students to complete projects so I can choose the very best of the best to represent our school at our district visual art events. I'm required to select twelve (Only TWELVE!!) pieces of art. Do you know how many students I teach? Just around 800. Of those 800 students, each makes about 4-6 pieces of art during the school year. Calculate..calculate....Let's just say that it's a lot of artwork to choose from.

It's a very difficult process for me. PROCESS being the key word here. I'm a huge advocate for elementary artists to experience the importance of the process of creating a piece of art. The adventure and experience of getting to work with clay, paint, colored pencils, oil pastels, etc. while problem solving and making mistakes to get better and better each time they re-experience the medium. Often times I see majority of my students succeed, but other times I have upset and disappointed little artists. I find myself reminding them that elementary art is not always all about the outcome, but the process that my student artists get to experience.

Regardless, it is a requirement for me to select a total of 12 pieces of art. I go about my usual selection process of going by class and project and pulling artwork I feel best represents the quality here at our school. I'm really happy with my choices and outcome of my school's district display:

Fifth Grade

“Irish Chirp”

Papier-Mache 

Fifth Grade

“Spaingland”

Papier-Mache 

Fifth Grade

“Indigo Sunset”

Oil Pastel

Fifth Grade

“Heaven Skies”

Oil Pastel

Fourth Grade

“The Bully Reporter”

Digital Photography

Fourth Grade

“A Warm Embrace”

Digital Photography

Third Grade

“Mr. Nature”

Colored Pencil

Third Grade

“Mother Nature”

Colored Pencil

First Grade

“Rainbow King of the Jungle”

Mixed Medium

First Grade

“Roarbow Lion”

Mixed Medium

Kindergarten

“Three Little Cats”

Mixed Medium

Kindergarten

“The Cat's Meow”

Mixed Medium

I hope you all enjoyed this year's Spring Art Show selection! I am so very proud of each of my hard working artists and am so glad these select few get to experience what it is like to have their artwork in a matted gallery setting! These little artists even got to title their very own work! They are so creative with what they came up with!

Until next time (psst...it'll be all about my silent art auction pieces + my big FAMILY FINE ARTS NIGHT)!

fifth grade: cultural heritage masks.

For the past two years I've been developing a project for my fifth graders to help them get in touch with their family's ancestry and history. I talk to them about the importance of masks throughout history and how each culture would use a mask for a specific purpose. The masks my fifth graders create are inspired by their family's cultural background. They use a culture from their family and create a mask inspired by the facts they discovered during their research at home. The project is lengthy, but fun and informative. The important thing is what the artist takes away at the end of growing and gaining knowledge of their family and it's history. I love that my little artists get the opportunity to talk with their parents or grandparents about where they came from as a family. I feel the importance of this is so full of value. Living in the U.S.A. as a large melting pot brings together so many different people from around the world. It's so neat for my students to get to see that.

My cultural mask lesson is a papier-mache project. I took on papier-mache in my first year of teaching. Some called me crazy, but because I did this I was able to work out kinks and dysfunctional moments and create a flowing system that allows my students the most of their 50 minute art lesson.

My students go through a five step process to make their mask:

1. creating the mold or structure of their mask with newspaper strips and a gallon milk jug
2. constructing and building 3-D forms with news paper, paper towel tubes, and tape to make eyes, nose, snouts, ears, horns, etc.
3. adding paper-towel or white paper layers to preserve the new structures they built
4. drawing the design + painting the mask with cultural references (color, designs, etc.)
5. (optional) choosing to add extra material to the mask with reference to the culture

                                       (step one)                                                      (step two)

(step three)

                               (step four)                                                                    (step four)

(step five)

-teacher example-

I feel my students really enjoy this project and even though it is messy and lengthy, it is well worth all the effort to let my little artists experience a type of sculptural art. This project saves the art budget a lot of money as well since this is a recyclable materials project (milk jugs, newspapers, paper-towel tubes, etc.). It's a lot of fun to watch the vast majority of them succeed and grow while making a cultural mask in three-dimensional form.