Love, love, love this project!!!
All the magazines that I have in the art room proved to be a goldmine!



Fold the page, glue it, tape it, roll it tightly, tape again. Repeat. And repeat...

I did this project with third and fifth grade because I wanted to find out which grade this was going to work with. Fifth was the winner!

There are a few "how-to" pages if you Google "magazine bowls."
The kids really enjoyed this project and the end result is way cool.

Third grade gets hit hard with color families and learning about color value in our school's outcomes. There are so many awesome projects to teach these outcomes that I usually try something different each year. Although, there are those projects that are my favorite that I keep going back to. This is one of them.

We discuss and look at cityscapes as well as talk about the horizon line. The students choose one of the primary or secondary colors to use for there cityscape. Before they actually paint on their drawn out cityscape, I have them experiment with values. Some students are surprised to see the changes the white or the black paint makes.

Obviously, I have the students mix their values one at a time and paint the building one at a time. One pet peeve I have is the rinsing of the brushes in water then directly putting the paint brush into tempera paint to get more. I ALWAYS remind my students to have a paper towel next to them to dry off their brushes BEFORE they put them back into the paints. Tempera paint should be opaque, thick and velvety, not transparent and runny. :)

Once the painting is finished, students use black Sharpies to trace around the building to clean them up and I give them the option of adding a few windows.
Enjoy!

Browsing through Flickr one day, I came upon a project that incorporates using neutral colors. I thought it was really neat looking and gave it a whirl. They turned out awesome!!

Students started with a 12x12" white paper, drew a simple straight line border around the paper, and filled in with a variety of sizes of circles. Next, they created the rings that you would find when a tree has been cut down.

Using black crayon, the students colored in all of the open space that was left around the circles. They also used a variety of neutral colors to trace around the circles and rings.

Now is the fun part - mixing colors with watercolor paints! After demonstrating ways to create neutral colors with brown, black, orange and yellow, the students began painting.

The crayon acts as a resist, so the students didn't have much trouble with the colors bleeding together. When one neutral color was created, they could use that color over and over again around their paper.
After the circles and rings were all painted in, the students chose one color - any color - to paint their border with. Check these out...

These cakes were inspired by Wayne Thiebaud. There is a super neat video on You Tube from the CBS Sunday Morning. Once I figure out how to load that video, I will attach it for you.
So back to the cakes...we practiced and practiced that elliptical and turning it into a 3D form. Getting the "slice" into it was also a feat to master! One thing that I did to help them out with the elliptical was to have them get off their stools, stand directly over the top of the stool and use their hands to "outline" the circle in the air, holding their hands in the air. Next, I had them squat down and look at the top of the stool, use their hands to "outline" the top of the stool and they saw the elliptical. Kinda neat.
The students used oil pastels because it made texture that sort of looked like frosting. We all made a cake stand together on this awesome silver paper that was donated a few years ago. Lastly, the kids carefully cut out their cake, cut out their cake stand and glued it to a contrasting color.

Third grade just finished painting these with watered down tempera paints. I think the colors turned out awesome! I have done so much with glazes in the past years and I haven't been able to get such brilliant colors with them, that's why I have used the watered down tempera and the acrylic paints. I suppose that the fun glaze colors are not lead free, and I know that the ones that are can be so draining on an art budget.
I have always called these blow fish, I guess because their mouths are so large. So simple to make! I give the kids a chunk of clay, cut right off the 25 pound block, and they make a simple pinch pot. Setting the pot on it's side is what creates that large mouth. I demonstrate a variety of tail shapes and of course we go through the big shpeal ( how do you spell that anyways?) of scoring, wetting and wiggling the clay together to make it stay. The eyes come next and the kids are free to add any other embellishments they want, as long as they score, wet and wiggle it together. And wa-la, the hour is over and it's onto the next class waiting at the door to come in...

Third grade fish prints! I introduced the Japanese art of fish printing called "Gyotaku." As I am showing the kids the Smartboard presentation I keep referring to printing real fish. I notice that a lot of the kids keep looking around the room for a real fish, I have even been told that the room smells like fish! Well, as we begin the printing process, the big let down comes as we print with fake fish. Those art catalogs have the best things! Rubber fish!!
The kids painted an underwater scene after a long discussion of things that we could find underwater if we went scuba diving. The fish were cut out and glued to the underwater scene to complete the project. One addition to the fish this school year was to paint in the eye of the fish with tempera paint and give it a reflection dot to make it look real.

So these are Georgia O'Keeffe flowers. Third grade does a huge study on the color families and these are a great way to use the variety of families. The rule here is to have the flower be big enough to touch each side of the paper. I have used a variety of mediums for this project through the years and these are colored pencils. Watercolor pencils are also so fun to use for this project.