Evergreen Forest Collagraph prints, 3rd grade

Winter (almost) greetings! This printmaking lesson is a tradition for my 3rd grade classes over the years because it is always fun, successful, and you can use a wide variety of materials. Search my blog for more examples from years past.

 This year, we used matboard that was donated by Artome, who frames our art show each year. We added different shapes of evergreen trees in a snowy ground, and a hole puncher is a great way to get the effect of berries, cones, or decorations. We used lacy paper doilies and scraps of printing foam - some other great materials to try are craft foam, yarn, corrugated paper, and sandpaper. Make sure the pieces are glued down well. I use Blick block printing ink - when the final print has been pulled, we dust the plate with a layer of sparkly clear glitter and it becomes its own work of art as well. A few of the final prints also have some blue ink mixed in because we were getting low on white and it turned out great! I think we will continue that happy accident in the future.

   

   

Clay cells in 5th grade

Fifth graders learn about the parts of a cell in science class, and if you think about it, a cell is very similar to abstract and nonobjective art - it is made up of shapes, lines, colors, and textures. We used clay techniques like slab, coil, modeling, adding, and subtracting clay. Students chose a plant or animal cell to illustrate on paper, then we created our clay cells that were glazed as a final step. I use Lizella clay, Crystaltex snow fire glaze, and Blick essentials gloss glazes.

This lesson was inspired by the work of @lasd_arts on Instagram.

   

We love the Peanuts Gang!

I’ve had a lifelong love affair with the Peanuts gang - ever since I was a young kid, I have loved drawing the Peanuts and collecting their memorabilia. I’ve noticed a lot of my students have a similar admiration and here are some of my fellow collectors and Peanuts connoisseurs...

This third grade friend has an AMAZING collection of Snoopy!

  

Celebrations - Fall '19

We’ve had lots of fun this fall at Dolvin and in the art room - here are some pics of some special moments.

Thankful for Reading Day:

Sweet handmade gifts from students:


Banner for the cafeteria made by my second grade friends:


The biggest toad I've ever seen hopped by one day:


Glow party with Ms. Greathouse's 5th grade to celebrate "Hats Off to good behavior":









Lots of amazing entries to the yearbook cover art contest - winners will be announced soon!


Fortunate to be working with a group of teachers (TPS Architects) on developing arts infused units for 5th grade - Teaching with Primary Sources:


A lovely lunch celebration celebrating Fulton County's Teachers of the Year:

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season - thanks for catching up with us!

Kindergarten clay gingerbread houses

 Kindergartners really had fun experimenting with clay and we used a variety of hand building techniques to create our gingerbread houses. We added the color using oil pastels and we strung some beads from the hanger and decorated our to go bags. So cute!

Northern Lights monoprints, 2nd grade

Second graders enjoyed making Northern Lights monoprints with Arctic animals - we drew a simple icy landscape with black Sharpie and white crayon, then colored a plastic transparency with Crayola markers. Spritz the plastic with a mist of water and print on the paper - you can feel the reflection of the sky on the ice, so beautiful!