Visiting artists to come to Valerius!!

Valerius Elementary is partnering with Metro Arts Alliance and Green Arts to bring visiting artists to all art classes! From October 18th to November 19th, all first to fifth grade classes at Valerius will participate in workshops led by local artists in the Green Arts program.

GreenArts is an arts education program that uses the arts to help Polk, Dallas, and Warren county community members of all ages connect with nature and become more involved with conservation initiatives and practices. The program is an offshoot of Metro Arts’ highly successful and virtually free Education on Location outreach program. There is a growing need to educate people of all ages about the human impact on our natural resources, and the ways everyone can help make a difference in ensuring the future of our planet. Artists go to school and community sites to conduct programs that connect conservation and nature to the fine arts.

1st-3rd graders at Valerius will be working with artist/educator Carol Taylor. Through puppetry, storytelling, interactive pantomime and songs students will learn fun and fascinating facts about insects, their life cycles and value to humans and the planet. Students will work with the artist on additional stories and create an original insect puppet from recyclables.

4th and 5th graders at Valerius will be learning about mammals of Iowa's past and present. Artist Bettie Jane Bibler will work with students on the elements of design, color, symmetry and animal motifs. Students will create masks or collages from a variety of recycled, reusable and natural material. Bettie Jane will also use multicultural folktales as a part of her programming.

Paul Klee Castles Projects- Completed!

As you read on my last post, 3rd graders have been hard at work on their Paul Klee-inspired Castles Projects. Check out some of these completed mixed media projects - they turned out incredible!

This has quickly become one of my favorite all-time projects. It's so multi-layered, rich, promotes success for all, stimulates creativity, and the kids enjoyed it immensely!

The last two photos show you how far the students have come and all the steps we had to take to finish our artwork - we had to create a complex grid of shapes, mix colors to paint nearly every shape, cut out our shapes, assemble them to creatively form castles or fantastical buildings, glue down our shapes and then blend two colors of chalk pastel for our backgrounds!

1st grade Crayon Resist Turtle Paintings

Check out these wonderful Crayon Resist Turtle Paintings by our 1st graders!

A few classes have finished and some need just one more art class to finish these beautiful and detailed works of art! As I mentioned in an earlier post, I love doing this project with first graders because it really shows them they can create "realistic" drawings if they follow instructions and when I show them how to break subjects down into simple shapes and lines. I've been receiving all kinds of turtle drawings in my mailboxes when I arrive at my schools - so I know that kids are practicing at home, and showing their families - how fantastic is that?

2nd grade Chalk Pastel Lion Drawings

2nd graders have just completed their Chalk Pastel Lion Drawings, and they look fantastic! Chalk pastel can be a really tough medium to work with, especially with younger ones, but 2nd graders did a great job! It was a little tough at first, but we learned how to color very lightly with chalk pastels (using zig zag lines). We also learned how to overlap colors, and blend colors together using our fingers. We did a great job following directions to draw our lions - I showed students different possible ways of drawing lion parts and features, they chose their favorite and added a little creativity to make it their own. We also reviewed the concepts of the horizon line, filling the page with details and coloring neatly.

3rd Grade Paul Klee-inspired Watercolor Castle Collages

3rd graders have finished painting their shapes for their Paul Klee Castles Projects (see last photo), and have started to cut out their shapes and arrange them to create castles and other kinds of fantastical buildings!

For this project, I don't give kids glue sticks until we've talked about their compositions - at first some don't understand why and want to glue right away, but I encourage big picture thinking and planning. Once they've started arranging and planning their castles, they understand why they can't glue right away - it's challenging to design buildings!

I love watching the "wheels turn" as students place down their shapes, arrange their shapes, remove shapes, move other shapes across the page, wipe the page clean and start all over again. In another week or two, all students should be done with these amazing Watercolor Castle Collages - and they will look amazing and reflect all their hard work!

4th Grade Gustav Klimt-inspired "Self Portraits With Quilts"

4th graders are wrapping up their Gustav Klimt-inspired "Self Portraits With Quilts". They've learned a lot during this project and the results are outstanding! We started out by looking at Gustav Klimt's "Baby", a portrait of a baby wrapped in a crazy quilt, and talked about Gustav Klimt's use of pattern and color. Next, we spent a class learning how to draw our faces in correct proportion.

Over the past few class periods, we've been drawing different patterns and designs on our quilt squares and painting them neatly using colors we've mixed ourselves (that means no standard reds, blues or yellows straight out of the box)! The last step, which only a few classes have gotten to, is adding embellishments to each quilt square using gold paint markers. We've talked about how gold is Gustav Klimt's signature color, and I think it adds a little something extra to these beautiful paintings!

5th Grade Watercolor Experimentations

Watercolor Experimentation Charts, 5th grade:

5th graders have been working very hard on these watercolor experimentation charts for the past few weeks. Most 5th grade classes have finished their charts - each of the 12 squares features a different watercolor technique (wet on wet, even wash, glazing, graduated, dry brush, stippling, sponge printing, blotting, crayon resist, cardboard printing, bubble wrap printing, and scratching). The students have had a lot of fun learning about different techniques and have learned that artists can do a lot with watercolors using different tools and applications! Next, they will use their new knowledge to create Experimental Landscape Paintings - using each of the 12 techniques in their compositions.