Candles. November 21

At the start of class today we learned about different processes in art. I taught the students about how some artists repeat the same process over and over to create their work. We looked at the famous painting "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" by George Seurat and fingerprint portraits by Chuck Close. After learning about these artists and how they create their art Lori and I started instruction on making candles. Each student was given a wick and dipped it in melted wax over and over until they made candles. 

Petroglyphs! Nov 17

Mrs. Pettit taught about petroglyphs during the week and by Tuesday it was time for the students to make their own. Each student got big piece of brown paper. They cut them into the shape they wanted; some looked like animal skins and others looked like rocks. After cutting the students had fun crinkling their papers into a ball to make it look old and wrinkly. They opened the papers back up and started to draw and color! Many students used images of petroglyphs as a references others created their own original petroglyphs. This projects was very simple, little preparation and clean up needed, and the students still had a ton of fun doing it.

Ceramics! November 7th

On November 7th we decided to bring out the clay and test our ceramics with the second graders. Mrs. Pettit and I put plastic over the tables to help keep things clean. Each student used a chunk of clay, some water, sponges, and a paper clip along with their own hands and imaginations to create some fun ceramic pieces. The original plan was to just make some simple pinch pots. I decided last minute that it might be fun to teach them the basics on how to make a sculpture with the clay instead of a pot since that's what I like to do. Most of the students wanted to make a sculpture, but after we got to work I realized that may not have been a good idea. They had fun making sculptures but I'm worried that as they are fired in the kiln some of them might explode. I tried to help and remind them to make the bigger sculptures hollow so they would be safe in the kiln but many of them feel really heavy for how small they are. After the thanksgiving break we'll find out if they made it through the kiln safely or not. I told the students how my very first ceramics piece broke and I had to glue it together to help prepare them for what might come. They all had a lot of fun playing with the clay and getting messy, maybe a little too messy.

I visited the school our class on Halloween!! It was a lot of fun to see all of the kids' costumes. Mrs. Pettit and I went all out with our Halloween costumes as well. We learned about Pablo Picasso and Cubism. Our art project was to make monsters that looked like paintings by Picasso. The kids loved the idea and had fun using their own imagination to make the monsters their own. They used their cutting and gluing skills to create their own scary monster perfect for Halloween. We didn't have enough time to finish them while I was there so the students finished the decorations during the next week. These will be displayed in an art show in  the future.

October 24, 2014

This week the students learned about bats! They learned about the the different types of bats, their habitat, and what bats like to eat. Some of their favorite facts were that they are nocturnal and like to hang upsidedown. At the start of my visit i taught the class about mobiles as an art form. Then they taught me what they learned about bats. We put these two together and for our projects we made bat mobiles. During prep time i drew a variety of bats on the white board for the students to look at, their favorite was the Batman symbol. I helped them draw simple bats through demonstrations on the Elmo and helped them one on one when they had questions. The students were asked to draw and color two bats, a real species of bat and a bat they made up from their own imagination. They drew and colored that bats and really enjoying showing me their progress. They cut them out on their own then Mrs. Pettit and I hung them bats up from the ceiling on string. As a class we made bat mobiles!!

Bat Mobiles

Oct 17, 2014

On October 17th I met Mrs. Pettit's second grade class. We were all very excited to meet each other. I introduced myself by showing my yearbook picture when i was in second grade and some artwork i still have from back then. Everyone seemed to have questions about me and what kind of art we'd be doing in the future. They all were clearly excited!