Week of 9/5/2022 - Self Portraits with 2nd and 3rd graders

 I began our first art rotation this week with 2nd and 3rd graders! It takes me a few weeks to get used to seeing the students in their new grades :)

2nd grade stduents looked at the content and pictures in the book "Just Ask" written by Sonia Sotomayor and illustrated by Rafael Lopez. They followed up by circling words on a paper that had adjectives to describe themselves. Students looked in a mirror and followed along with step by step directions on how to create their self portrait. They outlined their drawing and wrote the adjectives with a black Sharpie, matched their skin color to the Crayola skin color set and added watercolors to the background.

I had the opportunity to meet the brilliant Rafael Lopez in person, listen to him speak and watch his demo on how he simplifies images to create his abstract versions. I can't wait to show my students the below photos! 

2nd grade student working on self portrait!

 

Inspired by the work “Synecdoche” by artist Byron Kim, 3rd grade students started their first rotation creating self portraits. 

 

 

Students drew themselves, observed their skin color in a mirror and matched it to the 20 piece skin color set. They added colors to their hair, eyes, lips and watercolors to the background. 

Students were given a  survey that they used as a scaffold to add text with black Sharpie.   

 

Week of 8/29/2022 - Collaborative art

2022-23 school year is here! We had a heat advisory this first week and welcomed back students in 90 degree weather!

 

Students in grades 3-5 participated in a collaborative artwork inspired by contemporary German artist Thomas Heinz.

We looked at examples of his works and engaged in a class discussion about what we observed. Students noticed that there were different colors, the stems were different shades of green and were bending in different ways, the flowers were pointed in different directions, they were arranged such that they formed a square and that the stems were different lengths.

I gave each student a 6” black square and every class worked with a different color scheme. Students drew and cut out flowers from 3 paper pieces of the same color, and 2 from different colors. They arranged their pieces to explore flowers pointing in different directions before gluing them on. They added stems using metallic markers and glued their square on a 12”x18” black paper.

 

                                                                                              

I created groups of 6 12"x18" papers once 6 students glued their 6 squares on it as I knew from last year that this height would work best for the wall in our school auditorium. I taped the 6 pieces with painter's tape so it would be easy to see how and where they could be hung on the wall. I ended up having 11 columns of 6 12"x18" pieces and used t-pins and staples to fix the pieces to the wall. I added a gold border to go with the metallic theme of the works!

 400 student works were put together to create a 6 ft.  X 16.5 ft. display.

Weeks of 5/29/2022 and 6/5/2022 - Torn paper collages

 I had 2nd and 3rd grade as well as kinder and 1st graders for the last rotation for this school year and we worked on creating torn paper collages! I had so many paper scraps saved from this year and it was a great end of the year activity! I also showed students my paper collages as an inspiration :)

Kinders created ice cream cones incorporating cool and warm colors while 1st graders created sunflowers. 2nd grade created a mushroom while 3rds created a cactus. Students used metallic markers to add details! The focus here was to rip paper into pieces and embrace the beauty of torn paper using paper pieces that are different, layering and gluing pieces so that they are flat.

I differentiated this lesson for different classes by having them incorporate text using descriptive words for their artworks and creating line patterns for the background.

 Here are grade wise photos! 

 

 

Week of 5/22/2022 - 5th grade legacy mural

This week our 5th graders painted their legacy mural - we used flora from around campus as inspiration. Digital drawings were made, selected, reorganized by 5th graders and final design was voted on by 5th grade students and staff. We had a total of 15 flowers and a positive quote - "Every flower blooms at it's own pace".

I used a projector to draw the image on the wall with a thick marker and added dots so I could assign students to different areas of the wall. I had one 5th grade class paint each day for 20-25 minutes in groups of 6. I demonstrated the different steps to every group including safety procedures, using the paint brushes, how to make sure they paint a small area at a time instead of getting a large space done.  

It was great to see the progression made each day and how the artwork came together!  

This was my first mural with my students and I am so happy at how it turned out. Here are some photos :)

 

Week of 5/15/2022 - ICA San Diego's visit and Pop art

 The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), San Diego visited Zamorano to offer 5th grade students an interactive art experience called the Valise Project inspired by renowned 20th century French artist, Marcel Duchamp, who designed miniatures of his works and carried them in suitcases to share with others.

Each class picked a topic they were interested in and were introduced to the Valise pertaining to that topic. Below are photos from California Dreamin by Max Greis (where students created a book cover depicting something important to them) Real Image by Ruben Ochoa (where stuDents created an Alebrije) and Field Box by Alison Moritsugu (where students painted a landscape on a log).

This was a great experience, thank you ICA San Diego!

4th grade students this week created Pop art inspired by an onomatopoeia. I provided students with a variety of words they could pick from. Focus here was to overlap letters to create interest, use bright colors and change the letters to appear different so they could provide more meaning to the word(creating shadows/ changing line to ziz zag or wavy). I also wrote directions after demonstrating so students would have visual cues to look at.