Our year in Art. 2013-2014 Art class video

I put this video together to show at our Festival of the Arts.  It played in our gym as families walked around the first floor and took their seats for the choir concert.


\

Our year in art. 2013-2014 Festival of the Arts slideshow

Our yearly Festival of the Arts was a great success. Every student in K-5 at Garfield and Grant-White school had at least one piece of artwork decking the halls and gym at Grant-White. Guests had some fun in our photobooth, we listened to the Grant-White choir, and got to meet our new principal!

Fifth grade van Gogh display: Sunflower Collaboration

I love to teach fifth graders how to mix analogous colors with colored pencils.  Every kid can do an amazing job and they are always proud of the results.

We had been learning all about Vincent van Gogh's life and art.  Instead of my usual lesson on Georgia O'Keeffe and her stunning flowers, I decided we would use van Gogh as our inspiration.

We cut out our flowers and assembled them into a vase in our main hall.

Vincent van Gogh Starry Night Mural by fourth grade

I wanted something stunning up in our main hall for our Festival of the Arts night.  Fourth grade was deep into a Vincent van Gogh unit and their newly completed mural was perfect.

I used Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night mural off of Art Projects For Kids.  I purchased a few sets a awhile back and have used them in different ways.  I decided with fourth grade to give them each a piece of the mural accompanied by a color thumbnail of how their piece should look.  Fourth grade used color sticks to color.  We decided on a palette before we started so that each table was using the same color for similar spots.

I started to think this was a little lame.

It was basically a coloring page... In the past I have given students a piece of the actual painting to try to emulate, and we concentrated on color mixing and collaboration.  I then tried to recall what my unit was actually about.  When I designed the unit, I of course began with what I wanted the students to learn.  I wanted students to learn about the life and art of van Gogh, and this was accomplished with our previous lesson.  I wanted them to appreciate his use of color and his technique, and we had done this by looking and discussing his paintings on Google Art Project.  I wanted students to demonstrate their knowledge of composition and pattern.  This would be coming.  This particular lesson was not about learning a skill, it was meant to reinforce the first two lessons.  Okay, it's justified.  New skills would come with the next lesson.

Coloring in isn't always lame.  Some of my students were the proudest I've seen them - pointing out their particular piece!

A head in a hole photo thingy and how I made one for my art show.

It's always the week of the art show that I get a great idea, and then do not have any time to implement it.  But, I usually do it anyway, and just add to the frazzled week. 

I thought it would be awesome to have a head in the hole photo panel of the Mona Lisa and American Gothic on display during my schools' Festival of the Arts.  It is one evening in May where the artwork from my K-5 students is on display at one of the schools.  The choir gives a performance, and everyone mingles and has fun.  

The interactive head in a hole photo thingy was something the adults and kids could do and got the crowd excited about art.  I chose these two paintings because they are soooo famous and recognizable and because my third grade had just completed parodies of them.

How did I make them?

Easy.

I downloaded a large file of the paintings after a Google image search.

I uploaded them to BlockPosters.com  You can choose how large you want your image to be.

Then, I downloaded the .pdf from blockposters, and printed them on the schools laser color printer.

I cut off the edges, and used gluestick to glue it to roll paper. (cutting off all the white and gluing it to a matching color roll paper will hide any seams - I tried just overlapping on my Mona Lisa, and you can see some of the white paper showing through)

Next, I stapled the roll paper to a large piece of cardboard.  I used packing tape along the edges so no sharp staples poked through.

I traced a mask form where I wanted to cut the head hole, then I cut it with an X-acto knife.

Finally, I strung it up from the ceiling with paperclips and magnets. Voila!

My students and my kids loved it.  I put a sign next to it to #tag it on instagram, but nobody but me did!  However, it was very popular and tons of families took pictures!