Springing into Spring!

We've been trying to subtly urge the weather to turn warmer here in the art classroom lately…we started off by celebrating St. Patrick's day in Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade with some green-inspired landscapes:

Then Kindergarten learned about Georgia O'Keeffe's beautiful flower paintings and used warm and cool colors to create some flower collages of their own. They've gotten very good at identifying the warm and cool colors on their own - pop quiz them at home and see! (Warm = red, yellow, orange // Cool = blue, green and purple/violet)

In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday in March, 1st grade read "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" then used their imagination to paint some inventive fish of their own. I was astounded by their creativity!

3rd grade has been working on dot paintings inspired by Australian aboriginal art. The dot paintings by Australian Aboriginal people are very striking and take time and patience to create. Our 3rd graders learned a little bit about the patience aspect, while having a bit of fun at the same time! Ask your child what inspired traditional Australian aboriginal art ("dream time") and how it is different or similar to what inspired their dot painting. Check out the colorful results:

In 1st and 2nd grade currently we've been learning about pysanky eggs, beautifully painted artworks from the Ukraine. We've focused on using shapes, lines and color to create a variety of patterns. Though many of the students are still working on theirs, one of our students with special needs really impressed me with her choice of color and quality of line in her work. I totally love it:

Last but certainly not least, 5th grade briefly revisited the concept of symbols and were introduced to blues music in our project last month. I asked them to combine symbols for the state of Maryland and symbols of blues music to create a t-shirt design for the annual  Western MD Blues Fest children's t-shirt design competition. I feel really strongly that one of our students will win and have their design featured on the t-shirt this year. I was really impressed with their work, I think there are some future graphic designers in the bunch! Keep your fingers crossed, I'll post ASAP if one of ours wins! Here are a few examples…

In other news…I recently taught a Robot sculpture class at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts. It was super fun, as demonstrated by some of their finished sculptures:

And lastly, today I had a blast at one of our student's birthdays, where I spent some time creating wearable art: face painting at Alli's party! Happy 6th Birthday Alli!