1st & 2nd grade scupting

One of the skills we wanted the kids to learn this year was sculpting so we have done several projects and gotten pretty good results although almost all of them said the animals were a bit hard to do.


We started with the 1st grade making pinecone turkeys like we did at the library. The class really enjoyed the feathered tail and forming all the parts of the head. Then everyone wanted his/her turkey to FLY!






The second grade had 2 very different materials to work with and managed to create both the turtle and the lizard although both took considerable attention to detail which is hard for a group that talks a lot. For the turtles each student had a ball of brown claydough. They were instructed to form it into the shell over a small pine cone then pinch out the head and all 4 feet and the tail. They were not to make each piece separately and reassemble it. Most of them were able to get the head out and the tail. The feet were a bit more of a challenge but some even got toe nails on them. 

The final sculpture for the 2nd grade was a foil lizard. This was a combination of math fractions to divide the sheets and manipulation of the foil pieces.

They cut the foil square into sections then created a head, legs and body. They learned to fold and roll the foil and were able to assemble a pretty good lizard with a curvy tail. Some were a little less gentle and had very tightly rolled legs that were a bit hard to mold but all in all they were able to complete the project. 

1st grade Water Cycle

We tried a bit of multimedia this week to create the water cycle and demonstrate its
parts. It is always fun to use unusual or different items in the art work so the kids are able to not only integrate the art into their classwork but be able to manipulate a variety of materials.
The students first drew the landscape with a body of water and some kind of plants or trees. They then pulled strands of cotton to demonstrate evaporation, locating the strands over the body of water and placing clouds above the strands. Lastly they used cotton and white crayon to show different kinds of precipitation. Of course some had to add birds, fish and other animals and a variety of legends including WOW.

Mouse paint color with Kindergarteners

We are still working on learning about colors and color mixing in the kindergarten. We mixed the secondary colors last week from primary ones and painted a rainbow (and the tables and some of the hands and arms!) 


The book Mouse paint by Ellen Stoll Walsch is just so much fun so we started the class by reading the book then painted the mice and mixed colors to paint the feet and ears. This class went a bit better but we still have a few that just mix everything together in great delight to get a muddy brown. They are a few lessons ahead with the brown. The kids were pretty picky on just what purple looked like as it is the hardest one to get right. Orange was so easy for them. Green took a bit of effort to get enough yellow into the mix.