K/1s Make Bird Puppets

 Coloring the bird

Drawing birds

 Adding marker detail

 Cutting out the parts

 One finished bird

One more completed

As the K/1s begin their study of birds of the Northeast in their classroom, they worked on tagboard bird puppets with wings that flap in art class. After drawing and coloring their bird body and two separate wings they cut them out, fastened the wings on with brass fasteners, and tied a string on the back to allow the wings to move up and down.

4/5s Take a Stab at Origami

 Helping with the star box

Starting the flower

With two of the students acting as teachers, the 4/5s learned how to make an origami star box and a flower. The teachers and students did a great job!

2/3s Work on Comics

 Sharing a story

The story develops

While I was in Barcelona, Melissa Mendes, author of The Freddy Stories and daughter of Michele Ridgeway, taught the art classes about comics and how to create characters and stories. The 2/3s wanted to continue working on these this week, and so they did.

K/1s Study the Work of Jan Brett

 Beginning a bear

Mixing the right colors

 Working on the border

Checking the paint color

The K/1s are doing an author study of the author/illustrator Jan Brett. After reading and examining her stories and illustrations, the students designed winter scenes with border designs relating to their picture, just as Jan Brett does.

4/5s Learn from Ted Harrison

 Deciding on the colors

Beginning to paint

 Finished work

The 4/5s became familiar with the very colorful landscapes of Canadian artist Ted Harrison. Working with liquid watercolors, they emulated his style of separating areas with white lines and then adding distinctly different colors.

2/3s Paint Animals Playing in the Snow

Sketching in the snow scene

Beginning to paint

 Painting scenes

Painting a sunset

 What a sky!

Final details

 Rabbits under a kissing ball

 A rabbit on skates

Angry bears on broken sleds!

Inspired by an illustration on a Heifer International envelope of rabbits with goggles and scarves sledding down a hill, the 2/3s tried their hands at creating unusual and whimsical scenes of animals cavorting in the snow.

K/1s Paint Snowmen Portraits

Painting the snowmen

Going around the buttons

Filling in with white

A finished drawing

Going over the pencil with oil pastel

The k/1s looked at some portraits by Vincent Van Gogh to learn about different portrait views: profile, 3/4 view and straight on. They then drew a snowman, too large to fully fit on their 12x18 inch paper with a 3/4 view. This was then painted as though the snow was falling, something we're all waiting for this winter!