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.