Krazy Kinders~ Cows & Portraits!

Kinders learned all about cows and studied the shapes that make up their bodies.

After figuring that out it was a piece of cake to draw them! 

We couldn't resist making some crazy patterns inside of them! 

 Liquid watercolors were used to give them that bright color..we love the liquid watercolors!

"Space Cow" 

Some kindergarten classes also gave self portraits a try. 

 

We used mirrors to study the shapes of our facial features and details in our clothing and hair.

Not bad for first time portraits! 

Fantastic First Graders~ Fireflies...

...or are they lightening bugs? Actually they aren't either! First graders learned that due to their "bumpy" antennae and wing shape they are part of the beetle family. But depending on where you grew up you might call them lightening bugs or fireflies! 

Did you know there are over 2000 different species? Here is a time lapsed National Geographic picture of Blue Ghost Fireflies taken in a forest in North Carolina. Spectacular!

First grade practiced drawing their heads, bodies and wings on white boards first. When ready, they chose thier background color and then used oil and chalk pastels to make the grass. 

Oil pastels were then used for the moon and insects. I love how they smudged in just the right places to create moonglow and firefly glow! 

We learned that the females hang out in the bushes and grass and the males are the "flyers" as shown by this first grader below. "The girls are lined up and waiting to find their true love", she said! 

 

These remind me of looking out my back window in late June and seeing the twinkle of the lightening bugs in my backyard. 

 Let's just look at this picture one more time!

Simply amazing!

Thrilling Third Graders~ Art Show Piece!

Zentangle Hand!

I'm finished Mrs. Cline!

These fabulous stained glass windows were created by fourth grade students who had a bit of extra time on their hands. They can be made with any group of students K-5.

Whenever they were finished early with their art they had the opportunity to work on "the window". It started with an 18x24 piece of white drawing paper that was crumbled entirely into a ball! 

This made hundreds of tiny wrinkle lines that they traced with a black marker to make the "lead" in a stained glass window. After all wrinkles were found and traced the fun began and they were allowed to use any color marker to fill in the shapes that the traced wrinkles made.  

After about four months of working on them here and there they were complete and made a lovely decoration for my art room door.

So fun!

Extra Time

Check out what a fifth grader created with some extra time,  push pins and broken erasers!

Thrilling Third Graders~ Jungle Snakes!

 

Third Grade loves snakes! We spent quite a bit of time studying their colors and patterns but more importantly learning some drawing techniques to make them appear alive in the jungle trees! 

They caught on real quick and erasers were literally worn down to make parts of the snake hide. 

I love how unique they all are and it was actually a students idea to display them end to end to make one giant snake filled tree! 

This was also our first project using liquid watercolor and I have to say that due to the bright color I am never going back to pan watercolors! 

Outlines and patterns were done with oil pastels. 

 Peekaboo!

 

The real deal. We were fascinated by these close-ups! 

Fantastic First Graders~ Patriotic Flags!

The American Flag! Just the sight of it makes me smile! 

First graders spent time learning about the flag and the proper ways to show respect to it.

We discussed the many types of painting tools and used many to create these beautiful flag paintings!

First we started with hands to blend the red and even some yellow for the base color.

Before it dried we used scrapers to create some texture.

Then we used sponges for the blue and brushes for the white stripes. We took care to try to make our flags as true as possible by making 13 stripes! A few ended up with some extra stripes but that's okay, it was tricky! 

The stars were the hardest! We used Q-tips to dot them in but making sure there were just 50 was difficult. Some had only 30, and a few had up to 80! Many students did end up with exactly 50! 

Love the swirly lines! 

When finished we discussed words that made us feel patriotic and learned what it meant TO BE patriotic. Using silver or gold sharpies they wrote those words in.

WE also enjoyed seeing some examples of how others show their patriotism through art!