What Is This?

Check out Google Art Project.
Tour some amazing US and European art museums.
And ZOOM in THIS close to the the artwork.
AMAZING.
Can you guess?

Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh.
http://www.googleartproject.com/

Working on Royal Egyptians

Some are finished.

Some are nearly done.

Some are nearly done.

Some are still in progress

The Bangles--Walk Like an Egyptian

A lovely introduction to Ancient Egypt with a catchy beat.

Kindergarten Forum

The one thing I love about blogging and following all the great art blogs online today is the wonderful connection I feel with art teachers, not just across the country, but  also across the world.  It's an amazing thing that the touch of a key can open windows into art rooms in Brazil, or Australia, or the UK or anywhere.  It's an amazing thing to look at the map behind the dashboard and  see people coming together from all over the world.

So I thought today I might tap into all that energy and post a question for the blogging community concerning kindergarten art.  I'm especially interested in what works for you.

I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but to me, kindergarten is THE MOST challenging class to teach. (Probably stems from an especially traumatic student teaching experience with kindergarten, which in hindsight is hilarious, but I'll save that for another post).  Anyway, in my particular case, in one of my schools, I teach art on-the-cart, which is difficult at best.  The kindergarten class is relatively large.  And the room is arranged in a very awkward way for art.  (No great place to hang art examples where all kids can see them.  Tables of varying sizes arranged all around the room, difficult to see all the kids and for them to see me. No good place to do a step by step demonstration for kids, etc.  I have a 50 minute class and some kids are finished way before that.  Passing out materials and collecting everything at the end art is chaotic, and behavior is not great.)

I feel like I've been bumping along, waiting for things to get better, but clearly things are not where I'd like them to be.  I've tried working as a whole group and in centers with this group, but in each case, things kind of fell apart, and I'm looking to take this class in a new direction.

So my question is this, what is your experience with kindergarten art?  Please share.  I'd also love some input on great Kindergarten lesson plans, because I'm always struggling to keep it simple, yet engaging.  Does anyone else teach K on the cart?  What's your experience?  I'd just love to hear everything near and far about kindergarten, because I want to get better at this.

Thanks for listening.  I'm going to share two very interesting kindergarten links.
I found this post http://inartclass.blogspot.com/ which lead me to http://ms-artteacher.blogspot.com/2010/12/kindergarten-teaching-with-art-centers.html
And then...there's always this....http://artteachershateglitter.blogspot.com/2011/02/um-so-yeah-this-happened.html, where I hear congratulations are in order!

In Like a Lion...

First and Second Graders welcome March with big cats!
I don't repeat too many lessons.  I like to mix it up.  But this art lesson is so much fun I just couldn't resist.  So this year, March came in like a lion, leopard, a jaguar, a cheetah and a whole lot of tigers.

My young elementary students had a little bit of experience going into this project because we had done some cat drawings earlier in the year.  So for this project, kids dug right in with brush and black paint.  We started with a brainstorm about "big cats".  We collected a lot of ideas about animals that fit this category and kids decided on which cat they wanted to paint.  The cats were then created as a guided painting ala Mona Brooks.  We decided where the eyes should be and placed a dot and a circle or oval for each of the eyes, then added the nose.  Next came a circle or oval for the muzzle and the upside down "y" shaped mouth.  We outlined the head and added the ears.  Then our outlining took different paths.  Kids were shown how to make the mane of the lion or stripes for a tiger, or leopard's spots.  We added a body, whiskers and any finishing touches on day one.

On day two color blending and chalk pastel techniques were introduced and practiced as kids added color to their creatures.  Kids use one finger to blend their colors and work one small section at a time.  They are taught to use their finger "like a crayon" as they move their colors around inside the lines.  My kids are given a tissue to clean their finger if they need to, but I don't have them use it on the paper at this age because I find it leads to a lot of excessive uncontrolled blending.  They are also given a piece of copy paper to use as a cover sheet and encouraged to use it to keep their fingers and sleeves clean and to avoid unwanted smudging.

Oops, somebody has forgotten to use their cover sheet.  That's okay, just need to go around and give my young friends a friendly reminder.  Any stray smudges can be cleaned up later with an eraser.

These cats have so much expression.  What's not to love?

"If I hadn't started painting, I would have raised chickens."

More Inspired by Grandma Moses

With repeating house shapes, this artist leads the viewers eye up the path and into the space she created in her painting. 

More work-in-progress landscapes inspired by Grandma Moses.  The first two are Currier sixth grade examples.We're really working the watercolors.  This artist's work demonstrates careful planning in the sequence in which she applied her paints. Working slowly and with a plan is key to avoiding color bleeds. 

With repeating house shapes, this artist leads the viewers eye up the path and into the space she created in her painting.

Rhythm and movement are created by combining flowing lines and repeating sets of shapes in this fourth grade artist's landscape.

Kids will be putting the finishing touches on these this week.  Nice job Currier!