Itty Bitty City Prints

 Itty Bitty City Prints 

I may have posted about this project in the past, but I just love they way that they turn out, so I took a few pictures of the process to share with you. Our 4th graders are working on this right now.  

On the first day of class I introduced the project by talking about architecture and interior design, because they go hand in hand.  I showed the students a slideshow of cityscapes from around the world and had them take notice of the sizes, shapes and structures of buildings and details that they saw.  

Next, I gave each student a 6x9 inch piece of drawing paper. We folded it in have like a book and painted with water color using WARM colors on the top to represent a sunset and COOL colors on the bottom to represent a body of water. 

Next, I gave each student a piece of newsprint to practice drawing their cityscapes on.  When they felt they were ready, each student was given a 4x6inch piece of printing foam.  The students drew the cities in the foam with a pencil and then cut away the sky. 

I set up ONE table for 4 kids at a time to print at with mat for printing, ink, scrap paper, a clean brayer and a brayer for inking. The students then rolled ink over their foam city and printed it in the sky. When they were done with the sky, the students printed their city upside down in the water to represent a reflection. (I know they dont line up because it is a mirror image, but it still looks cool!)

Harris Elementary Art Show 2013

Mrs. Mount painting a tiny hand.

 Our 4th grade Dale Chihuly inspired oversized flowers.

Some students and their family members taking photos. 

Finger knit weaving

3rd grade Fall Trees. Th students learned a little bit about perspective by adding trees in the foreground, middle ground and background. 

 3rd grade tiered cakes inspired by artist Wayne Thiebaud.

"All about ME" word collages. This was a mixed media project using recycled dictionary pages, magazines, yarn, texture sheets and foil. 

Our P.E. teacher, Mr. Quarando painting a student's face. 

Ms. Knight painting a student's face. 

These are some cool mustaches! 

4th grade copper name plates

Matthew peeking through our SCREAM mural, inspired by Edvard Munch!

Show me your best SCREAM face! 

Mrs. Mount painting away. 

Special guest, Mrs. Winiasz face painting at the art show! 

Our Principal, Mrs. Schwartz painting a student's hand :). 

Some parents checking out our awesome finger knit weaving. 

CIRCLE PAINTING! ART FOR ALL, ALL FOR ART!

OUR Gym/Art VIDEO!

The video link above shows Harris Elementary's gym and art class combined last week.  The students learned about circle painting. Circle Painting is devoted to community-based art. Circle Painting is a group of artists, teachers, and community leaders who are all for art and want to bring art for all into communities. They are based in Southern California.  Since we could not bring this creative group to us, I decided to use their project as inspiration and create some circle painted murals, Harris style. 

circlepainting.org

or check them out on Facebook!

We couldn't have done this project without our gym teacher, Mr. Quarando. We had around 60 students in the gym at a time, painting, doing sit-ups, pull ups  and playing a bean bag relay. The gym was set up in stations so that each student could paint and also perform some fitness assessments as well. It was an exhausting week for us, but totally worth it! 

By Friday, all 600 of our Harris students will have taken part of this giant mural project.  This is why I love my job! 

Just a portion of our group circle mural :) The kids are having a blast. 

Finger Knit Weaving!

Who doesn't LOVE finger knitting?! I can tell you that pretty much every third and fourth grade student LOVES finger knitting at Harris Elementary. The students have been hard at work finger knitting at home, recess, library and art classes to work on this large weaving project pictured above. 

 Remember the post about t-shit weaving on a HOOLA HOOP? Well, we did the same thing, but with finger knit rope and then tied them together to make a giant rug. This rug will be used as a wall hanging in our school and will be on display at our annual art show on April 3rd!  

This is a school-wide project that everyone in our school has worked on and is about 6' x 4'.

Conferences

Dear Parents, 

My conference time will be between 4-7p.m. on Wednesday, April 3rd during our Harris Art Show.  If you need a conference before then, please email me!

Thanks, 

Mrs. Renner 

T shirt Weaving

T shirt Hoola Hoop Weaving

!

I know I found the link in English somewhere...but here you can see awesome photos of how it works step by step.

 First,  you need to cut along the hem of the t- shirt all the way up to the armpits in strips to create loops to weave with.  The kids are also finger knitting large ropes and weaving with those as well. I told them I"d post this so they could do this at home. 

Happy Weaving!! I"ll post pictures of us hard at work soon! 

Duplos in the Art Room!

Duplos in the Art Room!

Today I brought a new idea to the art room. The students first used large duplo blocks to build a sculpture of their choice. Many of them tried to build an animal.  Next, we added a little math!  Using graph paper, the students created a scale or map for the size of each type of block.  The scale was then used to re-created their 3D sculpture onto graph paper in 2D form.  Here are some students in action!