Birch Trees

An old post from last year that never got posted:

Fifth grade has FINALLY completed their foreshortened birch trees! They did a great job with them!

2nd Grade made stand up towns to create communities!  They each designed a small section (or street) out of cut paper and once they were done, they worked in teams to create neighborhoods, arranging the streets in different ways. One group decided on a big circle facing outwards so all the kids could play together in the big backyard it created,  Another made long streets and cul-de-sacs!  At the very end of the last day, we all put out neighborhoods together in one bi classroom community. I looked at the pictures and recreated some of the formations in the display window after the unit was over.

3rd Grade stained glass

Happy 2018!

We've been very busy in the art room this year!  I'll be putting recent works in a few new posts!

We did a stained glass unit with 3rd grade where we learned about the process of creating stained glass and designed our own window using rotating symmetry.  We used transparency sheets and sharpies.  After drawing the design on paper, I taped the plastic sheets on top and they traced their lines carefully with black sharpies (acting as the lead of the window).  I had them flip their sheet over to the back to color the shapes in, still using the white paper so they could more easily see their colors.  Flipping the sheets prevented the black from running into the colors so the works turned out nice and clean!

They were so focused and excited about these windows - and that's been a challenge this year!

Early finishers took a look at rose windows' radial symmetry and created a symmetrically colored rose window as I noticed a few students that didn't quite translate the rotating symmetry to the color part of the lesson.  I think the next time I do this project, I may have them do the colored rose window first before adding color to their own windows...