STEAM Winter Art Activity and Sub Plan - Doodles

This winter art lesson is integrated with math. It may be drawn in a complex design or a simple one.

The main idea is "radial symmetry."  Six templates are provided to help students evenly draw their designs around the circle.  Five drawings of completed designs are also included.  It includes a sheet of sample winter and holiday icons to help the kids add detail. This would also be great as an early finishers activity.  You can find this over at the TPT shop: Cool Classroom Ideas.

Emotion Drawings....Grade 3

Sometimes I absolutely adore the work of my students.  I am often shocked at the wide range of results I can get within one class.

My third graders last quarter studied how to draw a face.  Now they're taking that information and applying it to a drawn self portrait, showing emotion.  In the first lesson, they looked at a mirror and drew their image while making a face showing emotion.

This was one of my very favorite drawings.  It reminds me of the work by the artist Jean Debuffet.

These were well rendered, I thought.

There were drawings whose skill levels were at the opposite end of the spectrum as well.  It baffles me from time to time how there can be such a great chasm in skill in one class.  But, I guess that's how life is on every front. 

Student Creativity

Sometimes I am so busy thinking about and planning for my students' art, I don't have time to do my own. I feel that way lately.

Here are what some of my kiddies have been working on.
Fifth graders, who study medieval times, made tapestries. We talked about how tapestries were hung on the walls of castles, and how they even helped insulate the rooms.

They had to demonstrate a minimum of five weaving techniques.

I try to convince them to use five or less colors and choose ones that look good together. Often, they just can't resist using every color that I set out.

Younger kiddies have been working with clay. Third graders, who also study ancient cultures, looked at anthropomorphic vessels. They created their own out of clay.
It's hard to imagine that they made the vessels in one 45 minute period and glazed or painted them in another.

Holiday Busy-ness

Here's what I'm doing these days:

More babuska note cards and Christmas cards for sending and for Etsy.

Here's what "my" kids are doing:

Fifth graders - paintings of before and after natural disasters
My second graders painted patterns on paper and used them for animal collages.
My third graders are studying the architecture of ancient Greece. They planned contemporary buildings using Greek elements and then created them out of cut paper.




There are lots of clay lessons happening in the art room, as well as painting.

In Snippyville there's lots of drawing, snipping, selling, and planning. Busy, busy, busy.

Little Pixies

In my last post, Kim, inquired as to what I had done with my third graders.  They got no mention in that post at all.  Even though my classroom usually has around 13 cameras, yesterday it had none, so I had no way to record the moment.  And from home I couldn't get this photo because it was on the school network.

My third graders are experimenting with a computer paint program.  The one that my school system uses, and which I like very much, is Pixie.  I had let the kids experiment with all the tools one day.  Another day they had to alter their own head shot.  Since we currently are looking at how artists show facial expressions, the assignment was to alter their photo to emphasize an emotion.  While they weren't supposed to save the one they created yesterday, one boy begged me to let him save his.  So we were sneaky and saved it.   Hehehe.  Kids love this lesson.