Finished: Mr. Seahorse & Monet's Pond

Kindergarten and 1st grade have finished up their YAM projects!  Here are out Mr. Seahorse and Monet's Pond projects...(the 4 seasons kindergarten project is being finished today and tomorrow...I'll have photos to post as soon as they dry on the drying rack!)

Monet's Pond

Eric Carle's Mr. Seahorse

Eric Carle's Mr. Seahorse: Part Deux

 Today we worked on our Mr. Seahorse mixed media projects in Kindergarten "class C" and my 12:1:1 class.  We're not quite finished yet, but I'll share what we did today.  My finished seahorse project is on the right.  (If you didn't see my previous post about these and how we painted everything to get ready for the construction portion, check it out here!)

Our first step today was to cut out long, skinny triangles from the green paper to make the seaweed. This was the easy cutting part!  This was also a time when I had the students not following the gluing rules.  I showed them how to put a bunch of glue at the bottom of the plate to stick the seaweed to.  In the past, I've done similar projects and when they put dots of glue on the seaweed, it just didn't stick very well.

 The next step was to trace 3 seahorses on the back of the red paper.  I'm only having them do 3 sea horses on their projects, but this way, there are extra seahorses for people who were absent or for students who might have cut off the tails.  The seahorse was tricky for some students to cut out, but good practice for advanced cutting skills.

That's about as far the kids got today on their projects.  Here is the rest of how we are going to finish this mixed media art:

The seahorses get glued like this: two on the big plate and one on the outside.

 Next, I'll have the students paint on some glue on the bottom of the outside ring.  We'll sprinkle some yellow sand on it.

If they have any extra green paper, they can add some seaweed to the outside too.

I've already hot-glued the cellophane onto the frame plates for the students.

Next class, we'll finish the frame part of our project, add the sand, and some small seashells.  I'll hot glue the plates together, as they hold better.  When I did this project before, I had the kids use regular glue and a lot of them fell apart.

Kindergarten: Eric Carle's Mr. Seahorse Project

Here is how I'm revamping that old aquarium lesson I did my first year of teaching:

While we aren't necessarily specifically using the exact techniques of Eric Carle, we are giving our artwork a similar texture and using collage to build this.  Another reason why?  I was sick and had a substitute so I didn't want to overwhelm her with lots of materials to have to clean up!

So, for the plates, I pulled out fluorescent blue and white paint.  I asked the kids to paint in one direction with the blue and then to streak in the white to make it look like waves.  That took one class period.

Then, on the second class period, I showed students how to use the paint scrapers.  They received two halves of Manila tag board.  On one, they painted fluorescent green and yellow, the other they used the fluorescent red and pink (some added a little yellow too).  Then I asked them to drag the paint scrapers through to make some cool texture and designs.

Next class, we will work on putting it all together.  This is one of those lessons where I AM going to have them use a pattern to trace the seahorse.  I will have them trace two seahorses on the back of the red paper.  I'll have them cut up the green paper into seaweed.  We'll glue those to the inside of the plate.  I'll probably run the hot glue gun to glue cellophane onto the plates with the holes and then to glue the plates together.  The last step will be to paint some glue on the bottom of the outside plate and sprinkle some colored sand on it!  I'll even let them glue on some sea shells.

Up and Coming projects...Kindergarten

Whew!  It feels like I fell off the face of the earth for a few days!  Besides being super busy with my YAM activities, I took a personal day on Tuesday.  It was meant to be a relaxing day spent with a friend of ours, however it ended up being a sleep-all-day-because-I'm-sick day! :(

My husband and I did manage to make it out to Watertown in the afternoon just so I could get out of my germ-infested house.  We bought some paint to paint the second bathroom and the hallway and I bought my outfit for pop art day on Thursday!  I'm SOOOO excited to wear my outfit!  Check back tomorrow to see it and hopefully the other great pop art outfits faculty and students will wear tomorrow!

Anyways, I want to share with you some of my up and coming projects that I have just started.  

Firstly, Kindergarten:

One of the Kindergarten teachers chose to teach her students about Eric Carle as part of my read-a-loud YAM activities.  These projects below are from my first year of teaching.  Back then, I thought these were awesome...now?  I want to hide my head in shame! So, I'm going to revamp this aquarium project to incorporate Eric Carle's techniques and his seahorse book. While I'm not going to use print-out coloring sheets, I am going to have the students use a tracer for this project. 

  

Students are going to start off by painting the plates with blue and white paint.  Then, they will paint their own grass using green and yellow.  When everything dries, they will cut the grass apart and glue it on the inside plate.  They will also paint a small piece of paper using fluorescent pinks and reds, and tissue paper.  When that dries, I'll have them trace two seahorses, cut them out and glue them to the inside of the aquarium.

Lastly, I think we'll add some real sand and seashells to the outside.  Class C and my special needs class started these yesterday while my sub was there, so I'll have some results to share soon!

The other two kindergarten classes will be doing a project based on the four seasons.  Their teachers decided to read about Monet.  Since he liked to paint outdoors at different parts of the day, I thought it would be a good way to talk about Monet in class, as well as connect with the Common Core listening strand.  

I haven't quite nailed down the project I'm going to do with these kinders, but I did give them a 6-square drawing test last class and I was very surprised at the number of students who resorted back to the rectangle tree with a green cloud on top!  I asked them to draw a tree in winter, spring, summer, fall, a flower, and a rainbow.  Out of the two other kinder classes, I'd say only 3 students used the 'y' and 'v' technique we practiced with the cherry blossom trees!  Good thing we're going to review it!