Teaching Art

Yesterday was my last day to teach art. My 10 weeks flew by before I knew it. It was fun and I learned a lot. I took a few pictures of the hallway displays I made of my students' artwork.

Here is a project the first graders made called Rose Window. They folded and cut shapes out of black construction paper and then glued different colors of tissue paper over the spaces. Very basic, but they were learning cutting and glueing skills at this age. I also tried to introduce symmetry and you can see that some got it and some didn't.

Here is another project done by the first graders. We studied the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. His artwork is noted for having black horizontal and vertical lines on a white background, with random primary-colored quadrilaterals. This is the first graders' attempt to imitate Mondrian.

This next project was done by the second graders. We studied the concept of value, or the spectrum of light/dark of a color. The students painted geometric shapes that began as white shapes and then gradually expanded in shades of gray getting darker and darker with each layer.

This last photo is of the chalk pastel artwork done by the sixth graders. They chose nature photos out of magazines and made observational drawings of the photos and then colored them with chalk pastels. This was an exercise in blending and matching color in addition to practicing drawing skills. I don't know how well you can see them, but some turned out really well.

I took a few more photos yesterday, but I don't have them in digital format yet. I'll post them when I get them.