Fantastic Mr. Foxes!

Yowza!  It has been quite a long time since I last posted. So very sorry about my absence these past few months folks, but I have been trying to crank out a Master's degree before having my own little French Fry any day now.  It has been quite the whirlwind, but onto the foxy fun!

I wanted to share one of my favorite projects my art kiddos have created in the past few weeks.  As a fan of all things foxes, Roald Dahl, and Wes Anderson, I have been on a major fox kick this year.  Is anyone else a HUGE fan of Fantastic Mr. Fox?  The book and movie get me every time!

My second graders created some fantastic fox collages after reading Nonny Hogrogian's One Fine Day. 

We even spent some time making literacy connections, as I had the students work with a buddy after reading the story and write out a one sentence moral of the story.  I got winning answers like:

- Be kind to others.
- Treat others the way you want to be treated.
- (And my fave) Be nice to foxes...and other animals!

My students drew their foxes in pencil first on colored construction paper.  Then, each table was given a palette of primary colors and a tint of white to paint in their foxes like a puzzle.  I encouraged students to add lines and designs onto their foxes as a final painting touch.

Next class, students outlined each little piece with a black oil pastel, cut and glued their foxes onto black construction paper.

I've been on a major painted paper kick this year and hoarded a crazy amount of paper scraps which have come in handy during many a project.  I decided to have my students create their own frames from painted paper before finishing their masterpieces.

I've got a soft spot for this five legged little foxy friend!

Hopefully I'll be able to get a few more posts going before the arrival of little French Fry.  But until next time, keep being foxy!

Fab Flamingos.

I blogged a ways back about some of our Dali projects in development, one of which was my Second graders' project based on Dali's The Elephants.

The Elephants, 1948

I was really trying to drill home our two Art Smart words "exaggerate" and "overlap" with this project, so I wore the words every class for the entire lesson to remind the students to use these techniques in their final products.  After all, no lesson is complete without some weird accessory attached to me, right?

After looking at some examples of Dali's works, I "read" my students Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle.  Now I say "read" because the book is wordless, but we could not get enough of the story.  As a lover of all things flamingo, I am in LOVE with this book.  My students loved narrating it as we flipped through it together and studied the flamingo's poses.

We got to work creating the backgrounds with tempera and salt first, then created painted paper with two tones of light and dark for the flamingo bodies and wings.

Next class, we used eyedroppers with watered down black tempera to create the exaggerated Dali-esque legs.

 

Then we cut out the bodies, beaks, wings, etc. and glued them down carefully as the black leggies were still pretty wet.

Final details of google eyes and feathers were added last.

Love the legs on this one!

Have a Fabulously Flamingo Friday!

It Just Got Surreal.

How many Salvador Dali's does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Clock.

Welllll, this joke went way over the heads of my elementary students (like much of my off-the-wall humor does), but I will say, this whole wearing a costume or accessory thing is FAB-ulous.

My students are stunned into silence (maybe a little bit concerned about my sanity too) from minute one.  BEST classroom management tool ever.  

Total twinsies, right?

Best part about my costuming this year, is that the kids are getting into it.  This little friend below was proud to show me his mustache sweatshirt he purposely wore on Art day.

Before kicking off the artist intro, my kiddos were given a few minutes to design their own mustache, which naturally they had to wear for the rest of the day.  Tell ya what, it is SERIOUSLY hard to guzzle coffee with a 'stache.  I had coffee all over my smock!

Surrealist art is our focus this month, so we continued with a little Dali up in this Art Room.

I forgot how totally wild Dali's paintings are...and I also forgot how many undressed ladies there are in his paintings.  One of my fourth grade artists paged through a Dali book at her own home to do some research and (thank the art gods) is a totally mature student, and quietly reported to me that she found some cool paintings, but "gosh, Miss D., there were a lot of ladies without clothes."

Therefore, Miss French Fry had to do some serious combing of images before presenting them to her students.

The Persistence of Memory, 1931

The Elephants, 1948

Check out our 4th grade finished works below:

 

Those are some vicious carrot-chomping teeth right there.

What a shifty-eyed selfie, am I right?

Annnd the 2nd grade's Dalis in development:

Okay, no more dilly Dali-ing for me.  Off to update my CPDUs online, ugggh.  I don't know what your state's Education website looks like, but Illinois' is super dull.  They really should have hired an Art teacher to jazz up their page, so it's at least a little fun to look at...

Polar Where?

I am obsessed with all things Lisa Congdon.  She is a wonderfully creative artist and illustrator with killer style (and a hoarder after my own heart).  In fact, she has even turned her collections into art, which are documented in the book A Collection a Day (see hubs, I CAN turn my obsession with milk glass and vintage bowls into something).

Many of her works are often inspired by her adventures, and after a trip to Scandinavia (my favorite place to visit), she created a series of beautiful paintings featuring creatures with some interesting Scandi accessories, such as this little guy below:

After the worst Chiberian winter ever here in the Chicagoland area, I have been trying to turn all this snow and cold into something bear-able (get it, get it?), and this project was a good start.

Check out my 2nd graders' polar bears inspired by Lisa Congdon below.  We utilized realistic chalk drawing with shading, paint, and weaving on these bears.  They're totally adorable, FUR reals.

We used slate gray construction paper for the bears because polar bears' skin is actually grayish-black.  On top of their undercoat, is a thick covering of long, clear, stiff hairs.  They look like tiny clear plastic straws!  Polar bears' fur only appears to be white because it is reflecting the visible light, which in the case of the arctic surroundings, are snow and ice. I gathered this gem from my nighttime habit of watching PBS nature shows before bed. Thank you PBS!

Love this polar bear.  He is extra blubbery...

Can't get over how chubby the 2nd graders made their bears.  So sweet!

Go check out Lisa Congdon's work when you can.  Her paintings are the cure for the winter blues, FUR sure.

Thiebaud Takes the Cake.

In a previous post here, I blogged a bit about my Kinders' gumballs based on Wayne Thiebaud, our previous artist of the month.

I was just trying to clean up my camera and up popped some Second Grade Cakes and Third Grade Ice Cream Sundaes based on Thiebaud's works.  These bad boys look delish!

Second grade cakes were done with pencil and chalk on gray or blue paper...

The Third Grade ice cream sundaes used a mix of watercolor paints, chalk, and modge podge.  It's hard to photograph the modge podge, but each sundae was painted with a coat to give it a "glassy" bowl effect.

Gosh, after all those sweet treats, I am off to eat my remaining box of Girl Scout cookies.  Goodbye New Year's resolution of eating healthy.  It's fine though, I taught Kindergarten Art today, so I totally earned these cookies.