I have not been able to do quite as much with Art Club this year as I normally would, which is very sad. There have been more field trips, programs, sick days etc where either I was out and we couldn’t meet or the kids were gone.
Here is a brief glimpse into what we have been working on though.
Third Grade
Third grade spent the first part of the year making ornaments for The Greening at the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum and that was a blast, but they were really excited to get started on some more colorful projects. The first project they choose was a bright graphic monochromatic tree design. We made a grid first. Then painted a tree on top using black tempera paint. They each chose a color and used only colors in its family to fill in their grid. Then they painted back over the tree to make it nice and dark. There are a few students still working on these right now.
Fourth Grade
Bless their little hearts these fourth graders have had it tough this year. They meet on Mondays which means any time there is a holiday on a Monday they miss Art Club. They have also had some testing done that was on Monday and a few other things have come up. They have more “unfinished” projects than the other Art Club groups. Their first project this year was these radial name designs using colored pencils. Right now they are working on some very painterly rows of houses on a river and some food chain collages.
Fifth Grade
I have two groups of fifth graders. One meets on Wednesday the other on Thursday. Both groups are very different and full of interesting personalities.
Wednesday’s group is all girls. These are some GIRLY girls too. Thankfully they don’t mind getting a little messy though. They have spent the whole first part of the year making paper mache seahorses. They brought in empty plastic bottles. We cut those to make the body and head shape then used newsprint and tape to craft the rest. The color is all added with tissue paper and the paper mache mixture (for us that’s just watered down elmer’s glue all). Once dry they could paint it with a layer of metallic watercolor or just start drawing their designs. There are still quite a few working on these right now its been a very labor intensive project but they are loving it. For their next project they have chosen to make some large watercolor roses. They are going to be very delicate and gorgeous when finished I can already tell.
The Thursday group of Art Club is much more laid back. They are more interested in trying different techniques than getting perfect finished pictures. The biggest surprise to me is how quiet they are. This group gets so focused on testing out materials and experimenting that they don’t talk unless I push them to. They have tried out crayon batik and watercolor. These watercolor cityscapes were a lot of fun to make. Now they are using felt and scraps of fabric to stitch up some critters!
