Paragraph contest for Starry Night

After Starry Night was voted the winner of our mARTch madness tournament, students had an opportunity to write about why they thought it was the winning artwork. We had a large stack of entries with really well written paragraphs! It is so important for artists to express their ideas about their own art as well as others. Here are a few highlights: 

“It has pizzazz and makes you feel glorious.”

“I think that Starry Night won because it makes you look at a normal night in a whole new perspective.”

“The painting’s setting was very dark but Van Gogh made it bright, and even though you can’t see wind, he made me feel it with the visible and thick brush strokes.”

Wow!!!

Mark your calendars for Fine Arts Night '16!

Clay slab aquarium/terrariums, 3rd grade

These adorable clay aquariums and terrariums have been a welcome change to my 3rd grade clay curriculum - everyone really loves them! This lesson was inspired by a post at johnpost.us - a cute clay fishbowl. It provided us the opportunity to work with rolling clay slabs, coiling, modeling, and joining clay as well as surface texture and glazing.

The first week, we discussed the differences & similarities in aquariums and terrariums, and rolled our slabs. We used a bowl as our "tracer" to get the right size and cut our shapes, smoothing the edges with a drop of water on our fingers. We closed the first session by writing our names in the back and texturizing some pebbles on the bottom. Then we wrapped in plastic til the following week. My clay boards that top the tables really come in handy when rolling slabs and coils - you can read about making these here: http://dolvinartknight.blogspot.com/2013/11/clay-boards-for-tabletops.html

The next session focused on brainstorming plants, animals, and objects that might be found in our containers, then coiled and modeled clay to create them, scoring and slipping to join them.

After the first firing, we glazed the surface with a few coats of Blick brand glaze.

To make them stand, I hot glued a cardboard easel back to each one.