Fingerpainting Art - Name Tutorial

I saw this very cute idea on Pinterest. Here's how we did ours.

I used painters tape to make the letters of my daughter's name.  The canvas we used was smaller, so I cut the width of the tape in half before fashioning the letters.  The straight line letters are much easier to create than the round O and a.  I bought the canvas at the Dollarama - 2 for $1.25

I set my daughter free to fingerpaint over top of the whole canvas.  We used Crayola's fingerpaint.

We then set the finished product to dry.  I know this is upside-down, but you get the idea.

Once dry, I very carefully removed the painters tape.  That's it.  Super cute!

Footprint Art - Butterfly

 

This Butterfly art idea was found on Pinterest and super easy to do.  My daughter chose the purple and blue colours.  I painted her feet one at a time and pressed them to the canvas.  You can find cheap canvases at the Dollarama.  I drew in the butterfly middle with a Sharpie marker and used her thumbprints for the ends of the antennae.  Super cute and she loves it!
 

Evolution of Pre-School Art

OHMy 3 and a half year old has had a major artistic breakthrough these past couple of weeks.  She can draw pictures that go beyond scribbles and actually start to resemble things.  She can print letters that make up actual words (well, just her name, but that is a REALLY IMPORTANT word).

Here's a drawing she brought home from daycare a couple of months ago still hanging on our fridge.

 Here are 2 more recent drawings, the first is of me (what pre-schooler doesn't love having a real live muse in their mama?)

The second is of a jellyfish (she saw lots of those on our recent trip to PEI)

And a picture of her name

Here is the little artist at work

Classroom Art - Falling From Space - Self Portraits

This was a super fun, but time consuming art project. The kids first traced their shoes, then their hands. Once the feet and hands were in place, they drew a head and filled in the body. The effect makes it look as though they are falling. The added a background - most drew theirs as if they were in space. They outlined all of their marks in marker and filled in the rest with pencil crayon. This was all done on a rather large sheet of drawing paper to fit everything in.

one student drew his feet on fire as he re-enters the 

Atmosphere and lands on a sheep!

One of my students falling and drifting in space

Classroom Art - Fall Owls

Yes, I'm right into the Owl craze too. And why not? They are super cute and made for fantastic October Art. I began with the background. The students chose to paint with either blue or purple and then shaded in a little bit of black paint to capture that fall evening sky.
The trees were cut out of black construction paper. I threw up a picture of these button trees up on the Smartboard to give them a little bit of inspiration and let them go at their own tree designs.  Button trees were found here.

 For the owls I brought in a selection of scrapbook paper.  We used this sewing template as the basis for our owls. 
Once the children had all their pieces they glued them into place, creating a nice layered effect.  I think it's one of the cutest art projects I've done with kids!

Classroom Art - Poppies

Our grade 3 Remembrance Day Art this year was a lesson in painting. The backround we painted all black. We then took a piece of plastic wrap, placed in on top and scrunched it up and used our nails to scratch on top a bit. The kids thought the textured results were very cool. While this was drying we sponge painted the 3 stems. The Poppy heads we painted on three different types of paper: regular white paper, newspaper and construction paper. Once everything was dry we glued it all together. The centers are just black construction paper cut out in circles. I really liked the effect.

Classroom Art - Hidden Names

This was my first art project this year with my students (grade 3). They took the letters of their name and printed them as tall as the page. They oulined it in marker and then created random patterns in and around their letters with pencil crayon until the page was covered. Most kids chose to use black marker for their name, but the best creations used a less-obvious colour like orange and then coloured quite hard with their pencil crayons. Those names were truly hidden!

My Life as an Art Teacher

This past year I have been having a blast teaching Art 8.  It is a change from Music which has been my usual subject for the past 7 years.  I am still teaching music, but have this one block of Art each week.  It has been such a joy to be creative with these kids.  Here are a few of our recent projects that I'm so proud of.  They are a result of the art of faces. 
The first is a face made entirely of pipe cleaners.  I gave them a few ideas and off they went.

 The second self-portrait, pencil drawn.  They then cut off the top, and opened it up, adding in drawings of things they think about.

 This last was Warhol style pop art.  I took a picture of each of them, then photocopied it 4 times.  We used highlighters to colour in.  The rule was that each had to look slightly different from each other.