Welcome to Super Happy Art Class!

I hope you enjoy looking at the wonderful artwork from Duchesne Academy Lower School. Lower School consists of girls, grades pre-k through fourth. Unfortunately I have not kept record of all the successful projects, but here is a good sampling. Check out the artwork by grade level, but realize that each activity can be used for multi-grades. Click on an image to see a larger view.


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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Texture Burgers

Kindergarten had a great time making these texture burgers. First we discussed what a texture is, and they felt some textures, from scratchy, to soft, to bumpy. I had printouts of the hamburger buns all ready for them to cut out, and several items on the counter that they could use to fill the burger with texture fixings.

After gluing the top and bottom buns to the top and bottom of a piece of black paper, each child was given a small container in which they could fill a variety of textures. Some items included pipe cleaners, beans, foam pieces, string, foil and buttons. These items were glued between the buns to make the textures.






Monday, April 29, 2013

Collagraph

My first grade class viewed several works of art that focused on cityscapes. We also talked about printmaking and looked at several different ways to make prints. I had some rubber stamps and some foam stamps as well as a linoleum block. I gave them a large pile of scrap construction paper and some corrugated paper for texture. They cut and glued paper in the shapes of buildings. We used Elmer's glue because glue sticks are not permanent enough and tend to come off when ink is applied.

When the girls had completed their city-scape collages, we allowed them to dry. I did not add a varnish to each plate, but if you have time, adding a layer of waterbased varnish to the surface will make for a more rich print, as the ink will not soak into the paper. Next class I inked one collage to show them how they would be printed. They loved seeing how the image was flipped after it was printed. They also liked seeing what happened to the textured area.





Pinch Pots

First grade had a blast making little pinch pots with texture and color. I used Sargent brand Sculp It, self-hardening sculpting material. I love this brand and type because it is already portioned out and is very easy for little ones to use. I have a little water on each table, napkins and lots of tools for mark-making in the end. Here's a good video of how to make both pinch and coil pots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5O2mJELhRg







Imaginative Insects

Fourth graders were intrigued by insects this year. I gave them the challenge of "inventing" their own with this printmaking project. I checked out many books on insects and we talked about different shapes we saw. They needed to figure out how to make the insects seem believable so no stick legs here! The girls thought about joints in legs, antennae shapes, body segments and eyes. Would the insects fly? Would they be good climbers? Would they have stingers to protect themselves?

We used foam printing plates to make the prints. First they drew their insects in their sketchbooks, them transferred them to the foam plates by tracing over their drawings over the foam. They were so excited to make their own colorful paper using color diffusion paper, liquid water colors and pipettes. After their papers had dried, we used silver ink to print the foam plates. What interesting and beautiful results they achieved!