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.

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The Snowy Day: Making connections and collages in Kindergarten

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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
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Printmaking in 5th grade

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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!
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3-D Art and problem solving

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The art shows are fast approaching--my favorite time of year!  The faculty and staff always love seeing so much artwork hanging in the halls, and the students are thrilled to see their work showcased. I usually do 3-D projects with my students as close to the art show as I can, for storage purposes (translation: "where am I going to store all of these sculptures?"). Right now, there is a lot going on to show you!  Students used problem solving skills to decide which 2-D shapes would be best to draw their animals and which 3-D shapes would correspond to the 2-D shapes in their drawings.  So, if a bird has a beak that is a triangle, then what is the 3-D shape to use in a sculpture?  There were lots of moments of discovery and amazement!  Love witnessing those moments! Model magic, play-doh, clay...any modeling materials are great for the development of fine motor skills and spatial awareness.   WARNING: this could have probably been about 5 separate blog posts, so bear with me
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