#petpARTners 2019-20, FurKids Atlanta

Right before the holidays, my students started our annual community service project called #petpARTners, which raises awareness for our local animal shelter, FurKids Atlanta. Students select a photo from the list of available pets to create a portrait of, and each grade level makes the portrait in a unique way - clay, collage, and good old drawing. We share the portraits around our school and community as well as online and our hope is that our work will attract attention and get more pets adopted and more donations.

The students love helping these dogs and cats through their artwork - you can see more on our Artsonia page and on my Instagram @smartestartists. If you'd like to try a similar program in your community, you can find my #petpARTners “how-to” packet in Teachers Pay Teachers -https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/petpARTners-a-community-service-project-3475456






     

         

     

Mixed media fish, Kindergarten

My kindergarten artists packed four different media into this fun fish lesson which was inspired by Alexander Calder's sculpture, which has a great feature in Colleen Carroll's new book in the How Artists See series. Around the same time I received the book, I saw a student artwork featuring printing and collage on the @Sittonstudio Instagram page - after all this inspiration, we gave it a go! Drawing shapes first in pencil, then painting our outlines with thin brushes, and finally stamping scales with cardboard edges was a fun way of thinking about how to use different media. The next week, we added foam shapes and hand cut/torn bits of shiny metallic Fadeless paper to create that look of metal or glass bits found in Calder's work.

Gelli print snowflakes, 5th grade

"Snowflakes in a Rainbow" would be a great way to describe the effects of our 3-layered gelli prints. This was our very first time trying the gelli plates for printmaking, and we learned lots for the future. It is a tradition to cut paper snowflakes in my art room during the final days of the year, and we used those as our stencils for printing. We used Blick brand mixing acrylics in primary yellow, blue, and magenta on white sulphite paper. Here are some of our colorful results!