We Totally Heart Art

Mrs. Silverstein's Kindergarten class at Bayview worked on sequencing and making text-to-self connections using the beautifully illustrated, Caldecott award winning book  The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.  What a great opportunity for an integrated art and ELA project! Here is the brainstorming that Mrs. Silverstein's class worked on--after residing the story, students shared their own experiences, making text-to-self connections about how they spend a snow day.   The students'  experiences of how they spend a snow day are similar to Peter's snow day activities in the text, and many connections were made. The text-to-self connections are so vividly illustrated in the students' artwork.  They used collage, painting, and stamping to try out the techniques used by the author/illustrator.  There are snow angels, snowball fights, and snowmen being built, all beneath a colorful winter sky--wonderful visual expression of details based on what they read and their personal e

As a cross-curricular project with grade 5, we are exploring using NASA images of planetary surfaces from our solar system as inspiration for abstract pastel drawings.  Visit the website entitled "Art and the  Cosmic Connection" to view videos of artists showing various pastel techniques, as well as the NASA photos that we used. Elements of art such as line, color, shape, value, and texture are all explored in this lesson.  Lines on planets or asteroids show tectonic activity or wind or liquid flow, while shapes can show impact craters or volcanic activity.  Surface textures and dark and light values are created using color and shading.                     Excellent line quality and variety to show a river delta in Russia.                        Students are encouraged to used color in a creative way to                        emphasize  planetary features, such as these beautiful craters.          Pastels are an excellent medium to use when you want bright, saturated colors.

My fifth graders love to learn printmaking processes. This is their first foray into formal printmaking processes, other than using objects to print on paper in younger grades.  In this lesson, they make a printing plate using their artwork after learning about the history of printmaking, dating back to ancient China. An inked printing plate (right) and the freshly pulled print (left).   Students chose an animal that has either texture or a pattern.   Scales, fur, feathers, or some sort of stripes or spots all make great prints. The art element that we focused on primarily is LINE. I love the variety of the animals that the students choose for this project. Look at this amazing texture achieved using lines! Here is an action shot of a student rolling the ink onto the printing plate after he used the bench hook (the black tray) to get the ink onto the brayer (the roller).  Lots of new vocabulary!

Third grade artists have been super busy, having fun and working on mixing tints for their ice cream still life paintings, based on the work of American painter Wayne Thiebaud. Sometimes, Wayne Thiebaud is thought of as a Pop artist because of his favorite subject, fancy store bought desserts, but I like to think of him as a formal still life painter, minus the bowls of fruit and vases of flowers. A tint is a color mixed with white to make it lighter. I'm getting hungry just looking at these sundaes! The students got an amazing range of tints in their work. You can never have enough sprinkles! Thank you, Home Depot!

Hey art lovers!  Welcome to my blog.  I am an elementary art teacher in Middletown, NJ, where my students create amazing artwork.  This is a place where I can share what we do, and you can share the love of the things I share by commenting in a positive way!  Stay tuned for lots of lesson ideas, photos of student work and work in progress, and stuff that will make you smile.