Kandinsky inspired trees for my first graders! #sharpiespaintandpaper #gearingupfortheartshow

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We used over 500 CD's.

This was quite the process, but well worth it!  It was WAY more time consuming than the bottle cap mural!  This mural was made out of recycled CD's, acrylic paint, and construction adhesive.  First, students broke the CD's into pieces, and then we painted them with acrylic paint.  Finally, we placed them over a 8'x7', black primed, 1/2" sheet of birch wood.  We made sure there was a small space in-between each piece so it looked like a mosaic in the end.  After everything was laid out and looked good, we glued each individual piece down.  I know in this photo the words are hard to read, but it says, "Be the change you want to see in the world."

Snowmen and Penguins!

This is it, this is the end of the winter projects for 3rd and 1st grade.  

I'm ready to melt the snow and warm this place up!

Here are simple tissue paper snowmen made by 1st grade.

Below are penguins made by 3rd grade.

I could use some advice!

I only have my middle school students for nine weeks at a time.  Combined with my typical students I have a different special needs class each nine weeks.  On different occasions I've had to address and discipline students for bullying or making comments to/about my special needs students.  I've been struggling to get some of my students to understand that we are not all equipped with the same abilities.    

So for one day while I introduced a new lesson, I had my typical students wear different things to challenge their abilities.  For example, some students wore vaseline covered goggles to blur their vision.  Others wore oversized gloves to challenge their fine motor skills.  The rest of the students taped their dominate drawing hand and drew with their non-dominate hand.  The entire class period we worked like this on our new project.  Many students were frustrated that they couldn't make their project look as good as they knew it could.  Comments like, "I hate this." or "I can't do this." were heard many times.  I would just remind them that they, after the class was over, could take off what they were wearing and be back to "normal".  The other students in the class were born this way and couldn't just take it off when class was over.  This lesson wasn't life changing, but it did change the respect that my students had towards one another for the rest of the nine weeks.  If anyone out there has any suggestions on how to approach a situation like this in the future I'd love to hear your advice!   

Keith Haring Zentangles

My Art 1 students completed these Keith Haring inspired zentangles.  They had to tell a story without using words.  This first one says, "I love you.".

 This artwork is about the government shutdown.

This artwork is about a torn relationship.  

Leaves, leaves, and more leaves!

Our stamped leaf trees were created by kindergarteners.

Here are a couple of chalk pastel leaf projects from my fourth graders.

These glitter leaves projects were created by 3rd graders.  They took forever to make, but I love how they turned out.  

Fifth graders made these outlined leaves.  

Costumed Person

This costumed person project was completed by my advanced art students.  I gave them the option of colored pencils, chalk pastels, or charcoal pencils.  They could draw almost anyone, the person just had to have some sort of "costume".  I love when my students produce such a variety of different artworks with the same theme.   

This one is an old Halloween costume.