3-D Gingerbread Houses

First Graders made these adorable gingerbread houses.  I wish I would have left a little more time for students to work on these because a lot of the students wished that they would have had more time.  Oh well.  Live and learn.  They were on the floor of the hallway- only for the day of the winter concert.  More than that I'm sure we would have had some disruption to the homes as they were getting viewed. Hope the kids and their families enjoyed this project!

Abstract "contemporary" winter trees

2nd graders made a batik type project.  Students drew 3 triangles (with trunks) and colored with HEAVY crayon any kind of design or pattern they wanted.  They painted it black tempera and ran it under the sink to see the crayon and the paint.  Day 2:  Cut out trees, glitter, and glue them onto tan music paper.  Added snowflakes with a white crayon for background.  LOVED IT!  Fun one to do.

through my window

Third graders made these very cool pictures of winter trees.  The requirement of the project:  1 tree in the foreground, one in the middle ground, and one in the background.  Anything else they wanted to add was up to them.  A very FUN art project.  It fits in perfectly with our units on showing space/depth in a picture.  I hope people that came to the winter concert enjoyed looking at the pictures through the halls.

Mr. Gingerbread!

First National Bank has 8ft. gingerbread made out of plywood painted brown.  They gave one to each of the area schools to decorate how ever they wanted to decorate.  I was a little nervous about getting this done on time, but I sure had some AWESOME helpers at school to execute this project.  I LOVE how it turned out.
Already starting to think, what should I decorate the gingerbread as next year??
They were on display for the month of December down at the bank....  They were featured outside at the local Holiday Stroll on Second Street in Muscatine.

4th grade MOLA's

This project idea comes from the book Dynamic Art Projects for Children by Denise M. Logan.  It was a book I bought a few years ago that has some pretty great ideas.  Art Elements, different media, and exposing students to different cultures is what this book is all about.  Here was how our "Mola's from Panama" turned out!

Aboriginal Artwork!

 4th graders did an Aboriginal piece of artwork (artwork from Australia).  We looked at how the early artists of Australia painted.  One of the most common characteristics were the use of "shimmering" dots.  The students painted using a q-tip in bright flourescent colors. 

 We added a boarder for the background/frame.

Students had to think about using unity (of the dots) and variety of colors to make the hand stand out.  They had to use contrast of colors and paint neatly to find their hands.  Here is a link that I went to when I found the idea:  artiswhatiteach.  Thanks for looking!!

Radial Weavings

 Awesome weavings right?  Students in 5th grade made these weavings from recycling old coat hangers  -donated by some awesome teachers of our school!  I found this idea from the blogspot of Mrs. Picasso's artroom.  She had fantastic step by step directions on how to complete this project!  They were a little time consuming, but beautiful pieces of work!  Nice job 5th grade!