First Grade Birdhouses

 

As soon as Valentine's Day is over, I immediately start dreaming of spring. Late winter in the Midwest is a dreary, gray landscape. Not like the winter wonderland of December! So by the end of February I'm ready to pull out the bright colored construction paper and get some color on the walls. The first grade students took two classes to complete these adorable birdhouses. We were inspired by the pictures here. The first class was spent making the shapes of bird houses and birds, adding patterns with oil pastels, and painting with watercolor. For the second class, we glued down white strips of paper to a colorful background and used black tempera cakes to make "wrinkles" on our birch tree trunks. Then we cut out our bird houses and birds and glued them in our trees. The really add a splash of color to our dull winter and help us look forward to spring!

Pop Art Perspective

The fifth grade classes have been learning all about SPACE during second quarter. We've talked about atmospheric perspective making landscapes, foreshortening self portraits, and then we applied the mathematical skill of drawing in one-point perspective. We discussed the vocabulary (horizon line, vanishing point, orthogonal, parallel lines) needed to understand perspective drawing. Then we had a chance to practice using squares, circles, even stars and the letters of our name! But the final project for this technique was this awesome Peter Max-inspired art. We created a landscape in the style of pop artist Peter Max and then filled the sky with geometric shapes. We used one-point perspective to make the objects appear three-dimensional. Finally, we used neon paint to really make our projects POP!

My Favorite Art Supplies: Tempera Cakes!

Today, I'm showcasing one of my absolute favorite art supplies, tempera cakes! If you've never used them in your art or class room, I encourage you to try them out. They are pretty mess-free and easy to store, plus they last much longer than liquid tempera. Here are two possibilities from BLICK art supplies. I have used both brands and have found that they both work well.


A tempera cake is basically dried out tempera paint that has been molded into a solid shape. They work like watercolor in that you use a wet brush applied to the paint to make the paint workable. Unlike watercolor, though, the colors can quickly go from transparent washes to bright opaque hues, and they are fun to mix and blend right on the cake itself. We use these anytime the kids need a variety of colors, when we want the brightness of tempera with the control of a watercolor.

I've experimented with lots of different organization techniques over the years, but this year I found a method that I really think is easy for me and the kids. By putting each color into it's own lined wrapper, they can be stacked in a storage bin in my cupboard. Then when I need to distribute them, I just put one of each color we need into a tray, and put one tray on each table. This way, the kids can grab the color they need from the tray. It makes passing out and sharing the supplies really easy!

 I just love how bright the colors turn out, and the kids love that they look like cupcakes! Here the second grade students are painting some Picasso portraits.