Anyone else flooded with Spam?

Recently I have been getting many spam comments from weird businesses. Is this happening to anyone else? I am wondering if there is anything I can do to minimize this unpleasantness - I already use comment moderation so at least I can stop the spam from being posted but it's so disappointing to see a comment notification and have it be phony!

First grade street scenes

First graders continued our theme of cityscapes by adding a printed, collaged street scene to our portfolios. We used bubble wrap for the background and we rolled toy vehicles through tempera and on to our paper to create the streets. We tried something a bit different this year with the vehicles - instead of collaging one large vehicle, we drew a number of different ones and created a little "traffic."

We also had a special visitor during one of our printing days, a Dolvin Dads volunteer! His little boy was very proud to have him there and it was great having an extra set of adult hands during this activity.

From 2-D to 3-D...

Fifth graders focus on the element of space for a good portion of the second semester, whether it is creating actual 3-D forms with clay and sculpture, or creating illusions of space through perspective drawing. I thought a good intro would be creating a relief sculpture based on a famous 2-D work of art. We looked at the iconic nonobjective paintings of Mondrian and Kandinsky, and worked in one of these two styles. We examined the elements of their early 20th century pieces and combined them with the added element of three-dimensional space on the surface level. Thank you to Room 9 Art for sharing the Mondrian example.


                                                     
                                                                           

Stamp Print Architecture, KDG 2013

It's time again for our kindergarten art unit on architecture - so fun! These "blueprints" have become an annual favorite. We started our unit with the book Where We Live, and we looked at examples of architecture in our own city of Atlanta.  We saw the modern white forms of the High museum, designed by architect Richard Meier, and drew our own plan for an art museum using combined shapes.  This was a great warm-up for our next activity - stamp-print architecture.  We use cardboard and other gadgets like marker tops, legos, and sponge shapes to stamp white patterns onto the paper. To take these home, we will make a label band with our building name on it, roll up our "blueprints," just like the architects do, and proudly present them at home!

Mitten Monoprints

Second graders enjoyed the monoprint process during our lesson, and many recalled the similar technique from last year when we made monoprint monarch butterflies.


We began by folding our paper in half and drawing a mitten shape around one of our hands with a pencil. Next, we traced along our pencil line with a brush dipped in tempera, stopping to print every few inches by folding the paper over the painted line and rubbing. We are creating a symmetrical pair.

We created patterns and colors inside the mitten shape as well, printing each new line to create a perfect symmetrical match.

Finally, we cut the mittens and added arms and a snowy background, as if we are catching snowflakes! Wishful thinking here in Georgia (it's 75 degrees out.)
Thanks to MN Art Gal - I saw her cute mitten project using painted plaid lines on Pinterest and it led me to this...