Snowman And Reindeer Pompoms

Middle School - Craft

For the Christmas season, kids that were done with their Snowflake (link soon) and other assignments had the option of making a pompom snowman, reindeer and/or Santa.

We got a whole herd of reindeer and several snowmen but only one Santa. A few sheep where thrown in there too for good measure. There were pieces of yarn everywhere!

The kids were overjoyed with their creations, myself as well, as they are the cutest things. Notice "cool Santa" has sun glasses on and so does his reindeer.

Vase Faces Reversible Images

High School - Art1 - Elements of Art: Positive/Negative Space

We were studying a concept called "Reversible Figure-Ground Relationship," which is a fancy way of saying Visual Illusion. The idea is that it is hard to tell which part of the image is the "figure" - or "positive" shape/space, i.e. actual object drawn - and which part is the "ground" - or "negative" shape/space, i.e. background.

You've seen these images that flip back and forth when you change your eye focusing while looking at them, like this one for example:

Which do you see? The young woman or the old lady?

Paper Flowers With Table Centerpiece

High School - Craft


This wonderful craft is very easy to do and is even more amazing looking than I had anticipated. The kids did a wonderful job with their flowers. They look as close to real as you can get with paper.

Glass bottles are wrapped with yarn of several colors according to taste, with glue being spread on the bottle every so often to prevent the yarn from unwrapping. Pretty easy.

As for the flowers, well, a quick search online will result in plenty of instructions.

Meanwhile, enjoy the pictures:

Halloween Monster Faces

Middle School -

This is the first Halloween project we've done this year: Monster Faces!

Kids start with folding a piece of card stock in half and cutting out a mouth - this can be in any style desired, with or without teeth. By unfolding the card stock and pushing the mouth part forward, kids then draw a face around it to create their monster(s).

Any Halloween / horror character was allowed.

 

American Gothic Halloween Parody

High School - Art I

For the Halloween season, I had the kids do a parody of American Gothic, Halloweens style.

This is the one time during the year where they are allowed to be as gory or disgusting or bloody as they want - surprisingly, most kids chose to be relatively tame, which is actually nice.
They could also pick a different theme if Halloween was not their thing.

We had pictures of the painting American Gothic by Grant Wood, as well as various examples of parodies I found on the net for inspiration.

Warm Cool Protractors

Middle School

The idea with this coloring project was to practice control of a color pencil, with shapes being colored in from light to dark and dark to light. We were also talking about warm and cool colors so that element was added to the project.


We simply traced multiple protractors onto the paper, keeping overlapping lines visible. In addition to going from light to dark in each shape, kids also had to change from warm to cool colors whenever they went over a line. Once done, we filled in the background with black tempera paint to make the protractors stand out more.

Surprisingly, most kids turned out to have a real hard time with this one. That tells me we need to practice proper coloring techniques more...

Alien Name Bugs

Middle School - Color Pencil

We've been talking about lines a lot lately, so I was looking for something for the kids to do with a colorful line background when I happened on an idea from another blogger - to have kids write their name in cursive and turn it into a bug.

We took that idea and went a couple steps further. First each writes his or her name in cursive on a folded piece of colored construction paper. Then they double up the lines to make the letters "bubble style".

Once the name is carefully cut out, taking care to preserve enough of the fold, the name is glued down, unfolded, onto the line background. Finally, the last step is to add whatever necessary to turn that name into an "Alien Name Bug".

Kids made a game to try and figure out who was who once all the projects were up on the board.

Plastic Grocery Bag Notebook Covers

High School - Craft

I try to use recycling material as much as I can for craft projects, and this time I found the perfect item: plastic grocery bags!

We cut and folded white paper for the inside, then sowed them together with needles and strings.

The covers were made following the instructions found on this Instructable post, which shows how to cut and layer the grocery bags, sandwich these between 2 layers of wax paper (wax facing in), and finally iron over the whole things to melt the bags and wax into a single sheet of plastic.

Optical Illusion

High School - Art I - Elements of Art: LINE

The year started off with a study of the Elements of Art, the first of which is LINE. Once the initial discussion and vocabulary is done, it was time for the main project. This year I went for a colorful Optical Illusion done in color pencils.

An other aspect of this project was to learn to control the intensity of the color pencil, going from light to dark and vice versa.

Requirement were as follows:
- The "ropes" had to appear 3-D with a highlight on top and shadows on the side.
- Color choices had to show some degree of contrast.

Construction Paper Weave

Middle School -

The construction paper weave is a quick and colorful project. It doesn't take the kids any time to do - 2-3 class time for most kids - and is perfect for a transition between two more intense or attention heavy projects.

I did cut a bunch of strips before hand with the paper cutter, just because I did want these to be straight. For a slightly more advanced group, the kids could start by having to cut the strips themselves, which would also lengthens the required time to complete off course.

The result is an amazing array of colors! I placed no requirements on the colors, patterns or lack thereof, rather leaving it up to the kids to choose for themselves.


It was hard to pick a few to show here.
 

First Project Of The Year part 2

Middle School

This part 2 is for Middle school images of our first project of the year: "Falling Backward Into Space".
If you missed part 1, check out the High School images here.

What I particularly love about the MS's projects is the facial expressions! They had a great time doing this and it shows.

First Project Of The Year part 1

High School - Art I

After the customary syllabus and beginning of the year activities, we jumped right into our first project and out into space!

The Mid School went with the default of "Falling Backward Into Space" while the High School were left up to their own choices, in addition to the "Space" option.

I introduced the project by telling a little story, which I relay on the Middle School post.


First, the High School:

On the left, notice Superman flying by in the background, ready for that last minute rescue.