Happy New Year!

The best way to start the New Year is to review and reflect on the Art of my students. Unfortunately I was unable to post for a while due to the fact that my picture files were to big and I reached my maximum space limit. But thankfully AAPS gave me some more space. I have so much to share. I will try to break it down into small entries. Please enjoy the students' work.

Kindergarten

Each year we begin with rules, shapes and colors. Below you will find some amazing primary circles (red, yellow and blue) and secondary colors (purple, orange and green) inspire by Kandinsky and Jazz.

First Grade

This past summer I went to Germany, France and Austria with my son to visit family and I fell in love the artist Hundertwasser all over again. Besides the fact that he was an Eco-architect and Eco-arrtist thier is something playful about his use of shapes. My first graders combined the circles of Kandinsky with the line work of Hundertwasser. 

When students finished this project they did a Self Portrait as a pretest. I did not help them in the actual drawing part of the portrait but I did help with reminders of detail and background.

Second Grade

Second Graders created their lollipop trees after looking at the work of Hundertwasser. We discussed the importance of trees and how we should reduce, reuse and recycle. We also discussed how important it is to make sure while doing art we know what a landscape is. We discussed foreground, middle ground and background. Each student was responsible to make these sections of a landscape look different.

Third Grade

Third Graders created fall trees and sunsets after looking at the work of Gustav Klimt an Austrian Artist who I was lucky enough to see his work in Austria. We discussed how trees cast different shadows during the day and that the also vary on the time of the year it is.

Fourth Grade

Forth Grade looked at the buildings the Hundertwasser created as well as pictures I took of his building while I was in Vienna, Austria. We discussed how Hundertwasser was concerned with disturbing nature and would include roof top gardens atop his buildings and parking structures to help balance nature. My students were encouraged to create a city scape that included 5 building with 2 or more overlapping and turrets atop several. Students need to include windows that reflected their sky. They needed to include designs on their work.

Fifth Grade

Each 5th Grade student took a pretest in which I asked them to draw an eagle to the best of their ability and to write on the back of their drawing what they knew about the Constitution.

After they were done with the pretest I taught them step by step how to draw a American Eagle and to color it with oil pastels. I also taught them the importance of the Constitution and the Amendments which they wrote about on the back of their American Eagle drawing. Students were very successful with their drawings as well as articulating their understanding of the Constitution.