Dot Day-ish

 

International Dot Day is celebrated on or about September 15th....ish. Thank goodness for the "ish" because this year we couldn't stick to just one day. We celebrated for a whole week! 

Betsye Sargeant of The Phoenix School in Salem, Mass. and I collaborated on the Dot Day Recipe Project. Originally created by librarian Matthew Winner, this project allowed for us to really delve deep into art, technology, and language arts. 

In a nutshell:

• Read the books The Dot and Ish by Peter H. Reynolds. 

• Students explore with paint and create color recipes using primary colors and white.

• Students exchange recipes with another school and use the color to create a work of art. 

• Students view each other's work, post on their blogs, and write thank-you notes to each other. 

• example of a "thank you" blog post: click HERE

For the full lesson plan click HERE

Please enjoy our Dot Day 2014 video!

The Dot Big Screen Book - click HERE for more info

        

MLK- Painting and Listening

In honor of Black History Month, we spent some time painting portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr. The students don't get to paint very much because we do not have art at the elementary level in our district, so this was a special treat. While they painted, we listened to songs and audio recordings:

• Shed a Little Light - James Taylor Live 1993
• We Shall Overcome - Bishop Paul S. Morton, Sr.
• We Shall Overcome - Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr,
• I Have a Dream  - Speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.

This point that I like to stress to my kids during Black History Month, is that Martin Luther King would be so happy to walk in our school and see that his dream did come true!

The portraits will be hung in the hall where we have our Black History Month display.

Photo credit: Ginny Limer http://www.ginnylimerphotography.com/

Sponge-Painted Poinsettias

Make these gorgeous poinsettia sponge paintings!

I have a wonderful friend, Brenda, who comes to my class occasionally to do art with my students. We don't have art at the elementary schools in our district and it is hard to work it in. Having a friend plan and teach these projects allows my students to experience art without adding more to my already overflowing plate! Thanks Brenda!

For Christmas we made these sponge-painted poinsettias. The idea came from Deep Space Sparkle. This is a great place to find all kinds of art projects! Brenda made a PowerPoint so the students could see all of the steps from start to finish.  It was a lot of fun and the paintings turned out fabulous!

Cut foam sponges into the shape of the flower petal.

Make 3 flowers in a diagonal across the page. 

Add dark green leaves using a smaller sponge cut in the same petal shape. Using a Q-tip, add yellow dots to the center of the flowers.

Paint the white areas with a glittery wash made by watering down lavender  paint and adding glitter.

Symmetry Butterflies!

Today we had our last visit from Mrs. Brenda Glass, my good friend who likes to do art projects with my class. I really appreciate her visits because our district does not provide art on the elementary level so it is sometimes hard to work it in on a regular basis.  My kids are thrilled when they know she is coming because they get to use materials that we don't regularly use like paint and pastels.

Today's project incorporated learning about symmetry by painting butterflies. Brenda used a powerpoint to explain a little about symmetry and then the steps for doing the project. The powerpoint really helped the students understand what they are doing before we get started.

First, the students drew the body and the wings in pencil and then went over it with black tempera paint.

Next, they painted the wings using one color at a time (yellow, red, and orange) .

Then they traced all of the different colors with black

Finally, they added white dots around the edges using a pencil eraser dipped in white.