Kindergarten: The Snowman by Raymond Briggs

In preparation for the holiday, kindergarten students watched and drew The Snowman. I rarely use stencils, especially to make circles, but I thought this lesson would overall be more successful if they traced for their circle. After a few basic instructions for the snowman, students colored him or her in with colored pencils and the background with soft pastel. The snow was made by dipping a q-tip in white paint. I think they came out super cute!

Second Grade: Fox in the Dark

Second graders read The Fox in the Dark and drew a fox of their own with soft pastels. Since the story takes place in the woods, they made leaves out of styrofoam and stamped them around their border. 

Art Gala 2014

 Dale Chihuly sculpture made out of plastic bottles in honor of Earth Day. 

 The downstairs hallway was transformed into a prehistoric cave art exhibit. Students had drawn animals on brown paper and made torches with lights inside. As viewers walked through the dark cave, they held their torches up to the wall and paintings of horses, bison, mammoths, and deers were illuminated. 

Kindergarten's paper mache mushrooms.

First grade's studies on Rene Magritte, Aboriginal Handprints, Edgar Degas, Gustav Klimt, and flowers.

 All of Elementary learned about the Terracotta army and each student sculpted a warrior out of terracotta clay. 

Fourth and fifth grade's Lichtenstein inspired self-portraits, value drawings, and Frank Stella paper sculptures. 

Second and Third Grade- Sailing

Edward Hopper's Sailing was the inspiration behind these beautiful drawings. Students used either soft or oil pastel, paying special attention to the light on the sail.

Kindergarten- Cats in Pastel

 With just a rectangle, triangles, circles, and a heart, students drew charming fluffy cats each with their own unique personality. 

Kindergarten: Cat and Bird

Cat and Bird, 1928

Kindergarten students learned about Paul Klee's Cat and Bird painting and broke it down into basic shapes and intersecting lines. They first drew their cat in brown oil pastel and then colored it entirely in orange pastel to get a solid base color. The next step was to layer certain areas, like the ears, under the eyes, and mouth with white. Students used whatever colors they wanted for the eyes and background. Even though this was mostly a guided lesson in that I demonstrated each step as students followed along, I love that each cat is unique and has so much personality.

Kindergarten: Olivia

I adore how these drawings of Olivia came out! With some minimal charcoal smudges and red  pastel, students drew their own version of our lovable pig.

Kindergarten: Paul Cezanne's Apples and Pears

In this lesson, I had students look at the fruits not as apples or pears, but as shapes. After all, isn't that how Cezanne himself saw his still lifes? "Reproduce nature in terms of the cylinder and the sphere and the cone". Students took a soft pastel and drew three irregular circles and a "flat" circle, or oval, for the plate underneath. Before they colored in their fruit, we looked at how Cezanne's brushstrokes were very visible and not blended in, so they used the flat side of the pastel to create geometric strokes. The last step was to outline their fruit with black pastel and add a shadow underneath their plate. I love how these turned out!