The new session got off to a great start this week. We started by reading Petunia by Roger Duvoisin. This is a classic story written in 1950 about a goose who finds a book and believes it has given her wisdom. This “wisdom” causes her to be proud and gets her and her animal friends […]
Today I taught a class for Peyton’s 9th birthday party. What a great group of girls! Peyton had requested something with flowers. Using flowers for observation and inspiration, the girls drew flowers from life and from their imaginations. They then added patterns and details with oil pastel. For the last step, we used liquid watercolor […]
For the last project of the session, I needed a project we could all finish in one hour. This project fit the bill and gave us some practice on facial proportions, color mixing, and painting techniques. We began by reading Do You Have a Hat? by Eileen Spinelli, Illustrated by Geraldo Valerio. It is a […]
Since we already had beautiful painted papers and scissors and glue out for our flower collages, we used the rest of our hour together creating a bird collage. This was a quick, easy project inspired by Lois Elhert’s illustrations in Pie in the Sky. I did provide templates for those that wanted to use them, […]
This week we took our drawings and painted papers from last week to create a flower collage. The idea was to add little bits of color just to enhance the delicate line drawings. Cutting the right shapes was a great exercise for both observation and hand eye coordination skills. Students decided what colors to use, […]
I know spring is not here yet, but the warmer weather certainly has me thinking about spring flowers. We also haven’t done a life drawing project in a while. So, this week we started drawing flowers from life and painted colorful papers. Next week, we will add pieces of the painted paper to create a […]
For the last two weeks, my 3rd-5th grade classes worked on oil pastel birds. My inspiration for this project came from an acrylic painting class I took from Alison O’Donoghue. Alison’s technique involves many layers of acrylic paint on a wood panel and hours of work, which doesn’t work for this age group. However, I […]
This week I read Saturday Night at the Dinosaur Stomp (by Carol Diggory Shields, illustrated by Scott Nash) to the K-2nd grade group. It’s a fun, rhyming book about dinosaurs having a party. The bright illustrations of dancing dinosaurs provided our inspiration. We drew our dinosaurs with crayons and painted them with liquid watercolor. We […]
Today is President Lincoln’s birthday. So this week we have been creating Lincoln inspired projects. We began by reading Abe Lincoln’s Dream by Lane Smith. In this story, a little girl leads Abe Lincoln’s ghost on a tour, showing him how things have changed since he was alive. Along the way, they share a few […]
We had a crazy, busy week making Gelli plate prints. Gelli plates make it possible to make mono prints without a press. It is a lot of fun and can produce some very sophisticated results. The hardest part is understanding how the layers work. You have to think ahead because you are blocking out colors […]
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