2nd grade name art for last day

Last Day with Kids!

Wow! What a year it has been! With class sizes at 25-26, and a lot of younger kindergarten students (didn't turn 5 until Sept), and lower skilled students, this has been one of my most challenging years. Home life has been busy too with my daughter (21months) being super active and my husband accepting a variety assistant basketball job with St. X along with still teaching in Lakota. I'm looking forward to a summer of fun with family, vacations, painting my master bedroom and lots of quality time with my daughter. I wish all of you a fantastic summer and please stop by next year to say hello! I will remain in the same art room. 

While students only had 2 days of school, I still kept them busy with a fish project. Yesterday, the children painted and today the kids used markers. I read the book, "Fish Eyes" and Tuesday children used black oil pastels and painted with liquid water colors while today's students used sharpie and marker. 

The Starry Night

Kindergartners are working on making a reproduction of Vincent vanGogh's painting, The Starry Night. For this project, kindergarten artists are using glitter scratch off paper where they use a wooden tool to scratch away the black to reveal the glitter, rainbow colors underneath. If a child does not finish in the art room, he/she can use a broken tipped pencil at home.

Out today

I am out today with my daughter. She came down with a rash Friday and a fever all weekend. The fever broke last night around 930, but with giving 24 hours without medicine, I had to stay home today. According to the pediatrician, this virus is going around!

Amate Bark Painting

2nd grade artists learned about Amate bark paintings. Amate is a way of making paper, done for centuries by Mexican Indians. Amate paper is made by cooking the inner bark of different trees. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Nahua Indians of Mexico started making Amate paintings as a form of Folk Art, especially in order to exchange and sell them to tourists.

Amate Bark Paintings show scenes of Mexican countryside's such as weddings, wild flowers, animals and birds.





2nd grade artists started with pencil first and drawing a border around the paper. They could choose from a bumpy, curvy or zig zag line. Then, they drew a big tropical bird, a branch for the bird to sit/stand on, leaves and flowers. After drawing, they traced it in black Sharpie then started coloring. The border and tree branch is colored in construction paper crayon and the bird, leaves and flowers were painted with fluorescent paint. Finally, when the painting was dry, they traced back over their sharpie lines and added details.