3rd Grade Eric Carle Inspired Collages

 Eric Carle needs no introduction for any one who teaches at an elementary school. His children's books are loved by kids all over the world. Even at third grade, students love the illustrations and stories in his books. For this projects, third graders watch a great video narrated by Eric Carle himself discussing his writing process and his illustration style. We then painted paper to music to create a variety of colorful papers to chose from. Look at those gorgeous pages!!

 

After the painting process, the students cut and glued their shapes to create themed illustrations. Mrs. Nelson's class here created an insect theme. Other themes we've done include forests, jungles, African safari, farm animals, and flower gardens. The paper is so beautiful, even our recycle bin looks good!

Winter Trees

The third grade students made these fantastic trees this week using some new painting techniques. Starting with a brush they created the snowy horizon line. They then used a piece of flat cardboard to stamp and drag the white paint to create a trunk and branches for their trees. A thumb print in the tree makes an owl body, and the corner of the cardboard can be used for snowflakes. After cleaning up the paint and washing hands, the rest of the details, including the shadows and mood, were made with color sticks.

Something's Fishy in the Art Room

Why no October entries?? Well, for the last few weeks, the elementary students have been hard at work making "fishy" art work to decorate the lobby of our auditorium. The middle school put on the play "Little Mermaid Jr." and asked us to help decorate. Each class made a different project, and all were hung on the walls, windows, and doors of the lobby and down the halls. It's amazing how much space 400 pieces of art can take up!

These beautiful fish rainbow fish were created by each kindergarten class. After reading about author Marcus Pfister's "Rainbow Fish" had to share his shiny scales to make friends, each student made a scale from a paper plate and covered it in shiny glitter. We attached all the scales together to make a huge rainbow fish for each class!

The first grade students read the book "I am the Best Artist in the Ocean" about a very confident giant squid. Each student made their own squid, complete with long tentacles, and wrote a quote about what they are best at.










Second graders used liquid watercolors and white crayons to make these amazing underwater jellyfish scenes. We were inspired by this project I discovered on pinterest.

In third grade, we have been talking about unity and variety. To make these coral reef pictures, we used opposites: big and small, near and far, high and low, in front and behind, etc. The water effect was done with plastic garbage bags and liquid watercolor.

These beautiful fish were made by 4th grade students who first used glue to design their fish, and then colored with analagous and complementary colored chalk.

Finally, the 5th grade used watercolors to complete these colorful fish.

The display was hung by parent volunteers. What a great show of teamwork to show off our schools' talented artists, musicians, and actors!

Scarecrows

Third grade learned about 1-point perspective this week with these great scarecrow pictures! The lesson was inspired by these great scarecrows from A Faithful Attempt. First, we drew a picture of a scarecrow, thinking about all the things we would need from around the house to make the heads, bodies, hands, feet, etc. Then we used 1-point perspective to make a field. We first had to add a horizon line, find a vanishing point, and then draw the lines of perspective to make the field look like it went on for miles. We used colored pencils to color the details, and finished off the background with washable markers and water. 

Tar Beach

Tar Beach is a wonderful book written and illustrated by story quilt artist Faith Ringgold. In the story, Cassie Louise Lighfoot, a poor girl growing up in the city, dreams she can fly and that she owns everything she flies over. I read this book with my third grade classes, and then we created cityscapes of our own. First, the students created a skyline that they cut out of paper to use as a stencil. We used the stencils as a mask while using chalk to create glowing lights. The second class time, we used crayola color sticks (one of my favorite art supplies!) to create windows, streets, bridges, moons, etc. in our cities. The last step of our project was to write a short story about where the students would fly to if they could close their eyes and fly anywhere in the world. I love writing about art because it helps me learn so much about my students and what is really important to them!

     

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