3rd grade did a little weaving for Mother's Day this year. With this project we introduced the concepts of weaving, and vocabulary as well. We didn't have much time to finish it properly, but we decided to follow Mr. E steps on finishing them with markers patterns. They loved the results anyway, at the end we cut out a circle from construction paper and wrote a message for mom, then pasted it on the back and hang the entire loom by a thread.

Students used templates to cut the shape of the loom out of cereal boxes. Recycle all the way!

End of year is near, and for 1st grade we decided to do something fun with our name...kids love to use their name in projects, so this turned out to be a perfect end of year project! It gave us a chance to review simple concepts like negative and positive space as well.

Inspired by Mr. E we gave it a tried at this Air-Dry Clay project and here are some of the results:

Our fish got a little crazy...no water and all you know... :)

Some got a little too happy with details and added more than needed...still a good result though!

I love this one! It feels like he's laughing out loud so it makes me smile every time :)

And here are the results! Like I said, too many, too good, couldn't leave anyone out!

For this project we introduced the concept of radial symmetry and combined it with circular shapes and organic forms. We also talked about abstract design and came up with ideas on how to work directly with paint instead of doing a pencil drawing first. Students were not so sure about this part at first, but once they got their brush in hand and did the first few lines, the rest was history. I documented this project from day one, as it took them a little bit more than usual to finish it. It was completely worth it to give them the time.

After doing the designs with only black paint on day one, we moved on to using 3 colors only and learned how to plan ahead and leave enough space for the other colors they wanted to use.

One of those projects that I have to thanks Mr. E for trying first :)

Flowers were part of the theme for our Mother's Day presentation, and this is how we made our contribution to the school's presentation!


We used crepe paper for them but these can also be made using tissue paper. Every day we did a couple flowers, at the end we managed to create over 100 of these in all possible sizes! The garden was more than full :)

1st grade started working for the first time with dry pastels with this project inspired by Dominican painter Cándido Bidó. Students did their outline with white pencils first and then followed the colors of the original painting to add the dry pastels. We talked about highlights, shadows, cool colors and warm colors along with introducing the artist and seeing many of his paintings.

Usually I'm against taking artists works and doing replicas but this was such a good exercise for the little ones! I made an exception...

Following up on my last post for 4th grade, this is the other half of the class that worked with Van Gogh instead of Monet. Results were as good as the other ones, and students enjoyed finishing a painting that required a few days of work.  (See the works inspired by Monet)

Final year project couldn't have gone better than this!

This idea came upon seeing some beautiful results on Art With Mr. E for a similar project. Half of my class did paintings inspired by Van Gogh and the other half worked with Monet. A great way to introduce 2 great artists when running short on school year time!