Bridge Scapes, 3rd grade

I am very excited to share these beautiful mixed media landscapes focusing on famous bridges. Students learned about using a horizon line and showing space with size changes and line directions. We used a combination of Sharpie, watercolor and oil pastel on construction paper. Thanks so much to this article at Arts and Activities magazine (which I found on Pinterest) for the inspiration!

Here is a handout for the students to practice their drawings in our sketchbooks before starting final copies:

Art from other times and places...

It's my favorite time of year in the classroom - time to start our multicultural units!
Don't get me wrong, we study art history all year long from lesson to lesson, but these units are in depth studies of a specific culture or era, involving a number of different activities. It is exciting to think that by the time students leave Dolvin as a middle schooler, they have had art history experience that truly crosses the world and thousands of years.
Here is the list of topics by grade level and as seen on our world map - check back soon to see our progress!
K - Prehistoric art
1 - African art
2 - Asian art
3 - Art of Ancient civilizations
4 - Mexican art
5 - Medieval/Renaissance

Here's a sneak peek... which culture are these students learning about?





Still life photos on iPad

This super cool photography club lesson was inspired by a post over at Media Arts Maxwell, so thank you for your great idea! My 5th grade photo club members worked in teams to assemble interesting still lifes to photograph and edit with our iPads. Artist Audrey Flack makes paintings of interesting combinations of objects that come together to tell a story symbolically, and we enjoyed looking at her work before beginning ours. We used the Paint FX app for the editing and coloring. Some of the still life photos are the same image but edited differently by group members.