4th Grade: Chinese New Year Dragons

4th grade has been having a BLAST the past month working on a project that is full of so many layers.

The process:

Day 1:

Students were all given a large sheet of poster paper.  Select songs of classical music (with strong emotions) was turned on and students had to draw with the music.  They had to select colors that reflected the emotion of the music and draw along to the music.  The students LOVED this.  Most said that they felt relaxed while doing this.  Almost all students couldn't believe how quickly class time flew by.

Day 2:

The next art class students were given back their musical drawings and stations were set up around the art room.  At each station there was a different technique for painting.

-Stamps
-Paint rollers
-Paint scratch tools
-Paint daubers

Students spent time at each station adding layers of paint and texture to their artworks.  By the time students were done, we had quite the variety of artworks.

The painted papers were torn into strips and students arranged them around a background paper.  

The dragon heads were drawn, outlined in oil pastels (variety of colors), and then watercolored.  These were cut out and attached to the backgrounds.  Fire was made using colored tissue paper.  

I think the final results are SPECTACULAR!  What a way to bring in the Chinese New Year!!   Students learned about Chinese New Year and the symbolism of the dragon in the New Year's celebration.  Hopefully these dragons bring good fortune and good luck into your homes for the upcoming New Year.  

This is a great project to ask your child how they created them.  I guarantee you they will be overjoyed to share with you the process.  I would guess that their favorite part was drawing to music.

3rd Grade: Chinese New Year Dragons

We finally finished these!  A little bit late for Chinese New Year but students got to work on them during the Chinese New Year time and got to learn a lot about the traditions and history of Chinese New Year and the significance of the dragon and fireworks in the celebration.

We watched a little of the San Francisco Chinese New Year parades dragon dance as well.

Here are some pictures of students working and some of the finished products.

Kindergarten: The Colors of Us: Completed

Kindergarten just finished a unit that focused on all of the beautiful shades of skin tones that God blessed all of humankind with.

We talked about what things make us all different as people (body shapes and sizes,  hair color,  eye color, the things that we like and enjoy to do, etc...) and also all of the things that make us the same (we are all people, all have feelings, all made by God, etc...).

We started the unit by reading the book, "The Colors of Us" and then I had students color a picture of themselves and then color a picture of their table-mate and then look at all of the things that were the same and different about one another.  The importance of this conversation was to show students that just because someone looks different than you or likes a different sports team that you do or has different hobbies doesn't mean you don't enjoy them as your friend.  A world full of people that looked and thought just like us would be really really boring.  The students thought that a world full of all of "them" would be hysterical....some even thought they would like it.  Hahah.   More on that part of the project here:  Colors of Us

We then spent some time practicing drawing shapes and then used stamps and ink to create all of the different "body" shapes on our papers.  The best part was when students got to start drawing all of their people details.

They were encouraged to:
-draw arms and legs that were not "sticks"
-include eyes, noses, mouths, hair
-include lots of fun details (hats, props, buttons, accessories, pets, etc.)

Students finished this project this afternoon.  I took a few quick pics of some of the completed projects.  I can't wait to go to work tomorrow to spend some time to look at all of the millions of details the students put into their artworks.  They really had fun with this one!

1st Grade: The Kissing Hand

I don't think it gets much sweeter than this.  The Kissing Hand, a book near and dear to my heart.  A book that I had to use and kisses that I had to give to my own son to calm his own fears in preschool and even in the start of Kinder.

When I read the book to the 1st graders, most had already heard this story before, some of them had heard it many times before, but still they sat quietly and seemed to still be completely captivated by this story.

After the story, we talked about the colors that were used a lot in this book (besides black and white)....blue, yellow, and red (the primaries).  We spent some time discussing what primary colors were and what made them special (a review from what they learned last year).  In our Valentine's day project this year, we were only going to use the primary colors + black and white.

We drew, we painted, we used crayon rubbings, oil pastels, and sharpies....and I have to say, I think that each one of them is going to end up melting your heart.

I asked the students if any of them would adopt me, just so that I could keep their beautiful artworks. While many offered, I know that none of them would be parting with these precious artworks anytime soon.  They are very proud of them and very excited to be bringing them home in the near future.