Back to school installation

 I always like to begin each school year with a collaborative project. This year our students studied muralist Kelsey Montague. Kelsey is famous for her street art, particularly her painting of wings. For our wings, each student designed an individual feather. When all assembled our wings are super eye-catching, everyone has a new favorite selfie spot!

Halloween Hoopla

We had a few fun Halloween projects going on this year. First grade created colorful spiderwebs and Kindergarten painted their yearly jack-o’-lanterns. Fourth-graders had a different take on jack-o’-lanterns, they painted expressive pumpkins. Lastly our fifth-graders worked on spooky silhouette collages. 

Chinese Dragons

4th grade spent several weeks using paper sculpture techniques to create these stunning Chinese dragons.    I must say the students loved this lesson and so did I.  The colors were so vibrant and there was always some way to further embellish the dragons.  When they were all hung together everyone would stop and stare.  Unfortunately the pictures do not do them justice, the display was truly amazing!

Paul Klee Poetry

Fourth grade studied the Paul Klee painting "Once Emerged from the Gray of Night"

In his painting, Klee wrote out an entire poem in a grid. Fourth grade students each composed a Haiku, and then plotted it out onto their own grid before painting it. I think the results could be mistaken for Klee's original work! 

 

   

Paul Klee

4th grade is in the middle of a unit about Expressionist artist Paul Klee.  For our first assignment we examined Klee's work Castle and Sun

Students used a ruler to draw a geometric sketch inspired by Klee.  The sketches were colored with oil pastel.  Finally they were given a watercolor glaze to add a bit of texture.

Positive and Negative Space

4th grade completed a study on positive and negative space by creating a simple checkerboard collage.  In order to kick it up a notch and really challenge ourselves, students created a second collage.  For this assignment students had to create an insect in positive and negative space.  This assignment proved MUCH more challenging but we still had some nice results.