Weeks of 1/5/26 and 1/12/26 - 3rd rotation with UTK, kindergarten and 1st grade

 How is 2026 already!!?? Our youngest artists returned this week for their 3rd rotation!

UTK students painted their clay houses (that I fired in December) using acrylic paint. They also strung beads on a pipe cleaner so the houses could be hung. I absolutely love how these turned out!!!

Students also created artwork on canvases inspired by the work of artist Sheree Smith. We first looked at her works and had a class discussion about the colors we saw, the lines, what the artist may have used to make the art and how the works made us feel. We first wrote our name and room # on the back of the canvas with pencil. Students then placed their canvas landscape wise in front of them and created4 horizontal lines. They then divided each area using 2-3 vertical lines. Students colored each box with a different color paint stick, and then used acrylic paint to create lines inside each area to finish their work.

Kindergarten students looked at the sculpture of artist Ugo Rondinone and we had a class discussion about what we saw, why the artist created this work and how he could have created this. Several students were able to recognize this work as being in Las Vegas. We talked about the words "sculpture" and "stacking". 

Students then used a wooden dowel, cube and base and connected them using glue. They then stacked up pieces with openings and glued additional pieces to their work. The following week, once the pieces were dry, students used acrylic paint on their work to complete it.

1st graders returned to paint their clay owls that I fired in December. They too strung beads on a pipe cleaner so they could hang their work.

During the next class, students looked at the heart themed works of different artists, and we had a class discussion about how the works were similar and different. Students traced a heart on a 9"X12" watercolor paper, created 4 vertical and 3 horizontal lines with pencil. They then traced the heart and the lines inside using a black chisel tip Sharpie and filled the boxes with warm color twistable color pencils. Once done, they traced the lines outside the heart with the Sharpie and used cool color twistable color pencils to color the boxes in to complete their work.

Weeks of 12/8/25 and 12/15/25 - 3rd rotation with 4th and 5th graders

This week, 4th graders returned to create glue Batik bugs! I had implemented this lesson with 4th graders 2 years back and have been working on tweaking it so the final results would be better. 

Batik is a fabric embellishment involving a resist process that originated in Indonesia. Artists use hox wax to cover areas of white fabric, dip it in dye and then melt the wax so the areas covered with wax remain white while the other areas have color. This process is repeated with several colors until the desired effect is reached. 

In the past, I have had students use white glue instead of wax on cotton fabric and acrylic paint instead of fabric dye. The result was beautiful, but it was a lot of work scraping the white glue off the cotton handkerchiefs.

This year I had students used 12" white satin napkins with white glue and a brand of fabric dye called "Dye Na Flow" that my awesome colleague Ms.Kathi introduced me to. The resulting works had vibrant colors, and it was easy to wash off the glue simply by soaking the fabric in hot water for about 30 minutes.

Students created 3 sketches of bugs, selected one, traced it on a 12" white paper with chisel tip Sharpie, taped the fabric over it and traced it with white glue during the first class. 

During the 2nd class, once the glue had dried, they used a variety of colors with brush to paint over the glue and cover the entire fabric with paint. I soaked their works in hot water once the paint was dry and scraped the glue off by scrubbing the fabric and rinsing in clean water. The pieces dried QUICK in the drying rack!

5th graders returned to create teapot sculptures! I have been having our community donate yogurt containers since August and I finally had enough containers for all 5 5th grade classes to work on this lesson. 

During the first class, we looked at images of teapots and the different components - lid, handle and spout. Students stacked the yogurt containers in the order they wished to, taped them with masking tape and covered them with strips of tape. 

Next, they used cardboard strips with paper towels and covered them with tape and attached it to their teapot. They then rolled an index card, taped it so it looked like a cone and attached it to the teapot and also covered it with tape. They also added a bead/ glue stick lid to their teapot lid so it would resemble the part on an actual teapot that people lift to add water into the teapot.

Once done, students started painting their teapot using acrylic paint. Students will finish their work during the next rotation. They have worked so hard on this lesson, and I love seeing how the shape of the teapot, handle and placement, the spout and colors are all different.