Starting again

Hurray!  The Sm'Arties are back together again!

And we get new notebooks!

Black and silver Sharpies, and permission to doodle - a pretty good first class, don't you agree?

Oh, and little metallic bead-like stickers, too - it turns out they make good frog eyes.

Alienated Names

I am not sure where I first spied this fun lesson.  Maybe it came from Kinderart.  It's so much fun, and the students love the results so much that many art teachers have "alienated" their students :)

How to:  Fold paper in half length-wise.  Using the fold as the bottom line, write your name, your friend's name, or your Alias in GREAT BIG cursive letters in Sharpie or marker. Getting the writing BIG ENOUGH is the hardest part.

The original instructions I read suggested you not add any letter tails (g, y, etc.), but sometimes adding the opposing tails gives some cool results.

Trace the name so that it is mirror image to the first name. If the paper is thin enough and the writing dark enough, you can trace through, but if necessary, you can refold the paper the opposite way, trace name # 2 on the backside, then unfold and trace on the front.  Turn you paper upright and...ta-da!  An alien appears.

Trace him/her in Sharpie or dark marker, find his features, and embellish and color away!  Scare you friends!  Or make them laugh!

Spooky:  Here is another take on this lesson from Kid's Artists.

Squaring off

When I rediscover where I first saw this little project, I will insert a link - credit where credit is due!

Many folds!  We need 8 triangles showing.

Writing the words to fill up the space.  This means the middle letters are the largest letters in the word.

Write each word 8 times.  If you are brave, you can use Sharpies right from the start.

Almost done - smooth it out.

And color!  We like the Multicultural packs of markers, crayons and colored pencils - all those browns!

But frogs like bright colors :)

Nutcrackers!

All over the world of Art Teacher blogs I see classes drawing nutcrackers.  I thought drawing and coloring a nutcracker picture would be a very nice last class before Christmas break.  This week we only did half-hour classes to accomodate a gift exchange, pizza instead of our usual sack lunches, and LOTS of playtime.  The day was festive!

I demonstrated nutcracker drawing techniques, using this lesson from Art Projects for Kids.(Kathy has 3 other nutcracker posts showing  nutcrackers colored with oil pastels, watercolors, crayons - all pretty!) We outlined with black Sharpie or black Slick Stix, then colored them with Slick Stix.  Nice results!

Here are some other Nutcracker art lesson links:

Art Project Girl

Georgetown Elementary Art Blog

Kinder Art

Howling at the Moon

October is such a beautiful night sky month, and lately we have had lovely weather for being out and looking up in the dark.  It has been dry (at least it was up until this week), so no clouds obscure, and our nighttime temperatures  have been warm enough that we don't shiver, yet cool enough to refresh. The full Hunter's Moon from last week was as pretty and clear as I have ever seen it.

{A little parenthetical historical note:  When I was growing up, though I lived in the country with no light pollution - I tell ya' it was DARK at night, and still is - I never could see the "man in the moon" or make any sense out of star charts with constellations.  I think my vision was already that bad.  The moon was just a white disc; and I think I only saw the brightest stars and planets.  Now I look up with my glasses or contacts, and I am amazed at the texture I can see.}

Shameless copycat that I am, I borrowed from two new art teacher blogs for the lesson:  We Heart Art's Spooky Silouettes! lesson and  Fine Lines' Ghost Eye Tree lesson.  Thank you for sharing, ladies!

{Second parenthetical thought:  Perhaps I should have named this blog Copycat Homeshool Art Lessons.  KEISUZI, a teacher before she was a homeschool teacher, tells me all teachers are copycats, so I am in good company}

I began our lesson with a bit of classical astronomy.  We talked about the fall equinox, the harvest moon, and the hunter's moon.  Full hunter's moon had just gone by, so the timing was good.  After reviewing tints and shades and remembering what monochromatic means, we painted our full moons with tempura on watercolor paper, and cut out dark trees from black construction paper, gluing them on so that the moon shown through the limbs.

Oooooo.....

Then it was on to Spooky Eyes, one of the cutest little projects we have ever done.  When I showed my samples to Science Geek, I said "...if we have time, we'll do spooky eyes..." to which she replied, "Oh please get to Spooky Eyes." 

 

Orange cardstock, black Sharpies, and the white punchouts from a hole puncher - easy fun!  

When I read about this project originally, I misinterpreted that I was to punch holes in the orange paper and mount white paper behind to shine through.  On second, or maybe third read, I realized we were just to glue on the little dots.  Ha!  Did I feel silly!

I cut 8.5" x 11" orange cardstock into 6" x 11".  This resulted in lots of 2.5" x 11" strips.  I made one into a scaredy cat bookmark, and sent the others home with the Sm'Arties for homework fun.

Pencil in a new schoolyear

I have so many plans and inspirations for this Sm'Artie year - many more than we can do!

 

Who wouldn't be excited to see these Sm'arties ready for art? 

I want to enjoy making and exchanging Artist's Trading Cards (ATCs).  I want us to paint on rocks.  I want us to learn to draw a little better.  I want to introduce the Sm'Arties to real oil paint from little tubes that stays wet for days.  I want us to carve rubber stamps.  And I want us to learn about art, artists, styles, movements. 

I'm editing pictures so we can have a fresh blog header, and having fun with Picnik.com.  I just love our last year's picture, but it's a new year!  By the end of the week, I want a 2010-2011 picture smiling from the header.

Kathy at Art Projects for Kids starts her students with fresh pencils, and I thought we would, too!  I bought a box of Ticonderoga pencils, gathered my Sharpies from their migratory summer homes, and let the Sm'Arties have at it. Did I tell you that I just love Sharpies?  So do the Sm'Arties.

I offered little strips of yellow cardstock if they wanted to work out a design.  (I don't like that cardstock anyway - I was glad to chop it into strips)  There were tiger stripes, polka dots, some kind of marbly-looking design, just plain stripes - lots of fun; no wrong answers.

 Once pencils were all decorated, they drew a still life - a little stone bird in a tall skinny cage - just a little something decorative Peg has sitting in the corner of her dining room. 

It's kind of hard to take a picture of a group drawing a still life, and include the still life in the photo.  What you get is mostly the space between:

 

 During Science Geeks class, the group was divided into teams - girls vs. boys.  Since our group is more heavily weighted toward masculine, JD was on the girls' team.  He returned to character several times in the course of the afternoon.  He is quite the ham.

It's great to be back!

Hoyes- inspired Windows

Art Projects for Kids inspired me again, with this colorful lesson based on Bernard Hoyes' art. 

A couple of weeks of practical skills lessons have been fun, but we were ready to get back to our art supplies.  

Introducing the children to the work of various artists has been great fun.  We have been delighted when we encounter work of some of these artists elsewhere.  Just one week after our lesson imitated the work of Piet Mondrian, KEISUZI and sons were AMAZED when the Jeopardy question was, "Who is Piet Mondrian?"  and just a week or two after we imitated Kadinsky, Science Geek and sons spied a Kadinsky print in Target.  ( I understand the boys spied it, and yelped, "Kadinsky! Kadinsky!")  I love homeschooling...

This week we "met" Bernard Hoyes.  I passed around sample print-outs of Mr. Hoyes' work, and we defined "contemporary," since he is a contemporary artist. (I think it took a bit of sinking-in for some of the Sm'Arties to realize that Mr. Hoyes is alive today, and probably painting somewhere.)   I love his bright colors and flowy lines.  

Though we were doing the APFK lesson, I wanted to provide space for both a man and a woman in our project.  (This turned out to be providential, as the IEW lesson for today used "The Princess and the Pea," and our boys were already feeling a bit put-upon.)  We have not used our big paper for awhile, so out it came.  {My stash of 11"x17" paper came from a store closing.  I snagged 2 reams of paper from their office for $3.  At my house, you can always ask, "Can I have a piece of paper?" I am a paper stasher.  I ALWAYS have LOTS of paper.}

I drew the windows ahead of time just to speed up the process.  As it was, all was completed in about 70 minutes. 

It really is hard for them to draw with hands, head, and lower dress/pants touching the edges of the windows.    Once the figures were penciled in, we all traced over them with Sharpies.  I though we'd need Moms' help with the Sharpies, but no!  Sm'Arties love to use K-Sue's Sharpies!  A few bricks added to the walls suggests a whole brick building.  Nice trick, huh?

Lots of oil pastels, crayons, and my one set of Crayola Slick Stix came out.  Guess what they ALL wanted to use?  The Slick Stix!  We love the silky slide, the bold colors.  ( Don't tell anyone, but I plan to use my Michael's weekly coupons whenever I can to build up a stash of Slick Stix for birthday gifts.  With each gift come a warning:  These are not washable!  Be careful!)

Their homework is to draw 2 or more drawings in their Sm'Arties homework books (also created from my big paper), with the big figures touching at least 2 sides of the paper.  I can hardly wait to see what they create.