Teacher blogs can be useful for other teachers because they can be inspired to create new projects for their students. Not only can they use them just in art, but also in other areas of the classroom. Blogs are a good way to stimulate the mind into creating ideas of your own or even trying out some of the ones previous teachers have posted.
1st Grade Emotion Paintings
In this exercise, 1st grade students were told to draw the 4 most basic emotions; happy, sad, mad, excited and then were talked about what colors describe each emotion. They were then told to paint lines with the colors that represented each emotion. I thought this was a very good way to conceptually think about emotions in a more abstract way rather than physically showing the emotion through facial expression. I love how emotions can be shown in any way with this exercise, there is no "right" way to do it and the children really get a chance to show their personality.
The Scream
During this project, 4th grade students studied the piece The Scream and talked about how the brush strokes are used to show emotion. They were then were told to interpret it in their own way. Make their own version of this painting. They used chalk pastels on construction paper and then drew the figure on manilla paper, cut it out and glued it on. This is also another great way to let the students show their personality. Everyone knows what The Scream looks like, it's just cool to see how each and every student is different and see how they see it in their eyes.
Penguins
These penguins are so cute. Kindergarteners were studying penguins in class and then had an exercise to paint their own penguins. They each have their own personality. This shows what kind of imaginations that little kids have.
2 Point Perspective
This exercise was for 4th graders. I thought they did an excellent job at drawing the 2 point perspective of their own cities. Gives the children a better understanding of depth and space and definitely made their drawing skills better.
Geometric Birds
It's a wonder what you can make out of just a few different geometric shapes. With this exercise students were able to learn about the primary colors and shapes in one. They used geometric and organic shapes in this project. I thought the google eyes were definitely a nice touch. Kindergarteners were the artists in this project.