Our Organic Octopus Garden!

My second grade class learned about geometric and organic shapes in a lesson I call the Organic Octopus Garden! After talking about the differences between geometric and organic shapes we watched a short video and read a book about different types of octopus and then drew our own. After all, an octopus is a wonderful organic shape! Next we used tissue paper to dye our octopus drawings by spreading different colors of tissue on our papers and adding drops of water to cause the colors to bleed. We had so much fun learning this new way to use tissue paper and seeing how the different colors blended together to create a "tie dye" type effect. Then everyone added shading to their octopus with colored pencil and cut them out.

Another Fun Day In Nature's Art Room!

We had another beautiful day for Nature's Art Room, thank you mother nature! Our class enjoyed the sun again and headed outside to gather more textured materials for a printmaking lesson. We painted our natural materials with white acrylic paint and experimented with printing them on black paper to see what textures and patterns we could create. Next we are going to use our beautiful texture prints as covers for our stick books! We will use sticks we choose outside and rubber bands to bind our books and then take them outside to sketch from observation next week!

Collaging Color and Identity, A Fifth Grade Identity Quilt Project

In this project my fifth grade students began by creating a poem using the five senses to describe how they perceive their favorite color. The fifth grade class went on to create monochromatic collages using mixed media and we combined their collages into an identity quilt in the fifth grade hallway. I'm so proud of the careful thought my students put into this assignment and of the insightful critique we held as a conclusion to the project.

Creative Compass Solar Systems!

My fourth grade students learned to use two types of compass tool for this project and used a compass and ruler to create their own solar systems complete with rockets and aliens and astronauts! This was such a fun way to learn about finding the radius and circumference of a circle and proper use of a compass tool while creating an imaginative visual art project.

An exciting day in Nature's Classroom!

Yesterday Nature's Classroom students (grades k-3) went on a mini adventure outside our school to gather textured materials! We brought our materials inside and pressed them into clay to create picture frames and texture ornaments. We talked about the importance of respect for the environment and brainstormed ways we can help preserve the beauty of the environment in our community.

Finding friends in nature!

I am so proud of the work my second grade students created for Finding Friends In Nature a lesson I created on environmental art and natural found object sculpture. They gathered their own natural materials near our school and made amazing little sculptures of animals both real and imaginary. Then my students practiced the use of implied texture in their observational sketches of their projects and completed thoughtful self reflections.

We see shapes in fish!

My third grade students have been creating beautiful fish by studying the shapes they see in real tropical fish in the ocean and then beginning with a geometric shape, they draw their own fish and create an imaginary ocean environment for it!

The wonder of technology and the arts in classrooms

I'm currently an enrichment teacher in a local elementary school and having modern technology in the classroom brings the world to my student's desks. Anything they can imagine can be accessed easily on the Internet for research and they always have the source material they need when we do a project. Just last week the third graders were working on a project related to the work of Andy Warhol and each of them was asked to pick an object from popular culture to draw or paint. Not all of them could remember exactly what the object they wanted to draw looked like, but we were able to search for the object on the Internet and they project a picture of it in a slide show on a projector in the classroom. This never would have been possible when I was in elementary school twenty years ago and I find it so exciting to lead my students in the safe exploration of our modern world. These days students have the world waiting for them right there in the classroom on devices like computers and Ipads. (Photos taken by Wendy Campbell)