Elementary Art Project - Under The Sea

This week my Kindergarten and 2nd grade classes both made "Under The Sea" projects.  I got this great idea from Mrs. Brown's Art Website.

I always have music playing as the students enter the Art room quietly.  I love to find a great song that ties into the lesson.  Sticking with the "Under The Sea" theme,  I played the instrumental version of "Under The Sea" from Disney's Little Mermaid.  I use Spotify to find and play music.  I was really excited to also find the instrumental version of other songs from that movie which I played while the students were working independently on their Art work.

At the very end of class, I told the students if they cleaned up very quickly and nicely then I would reward them by playing the youtube video of the Under The Sea song from Little Mermaid.  Below is a picture of the class watching the short video.

Enjoy the pictures of the lesson (below)!

Our Agenda for today was "Draw, Color, Paint, Clean Up, Watch Video".  The tan paper on the bottom of the picture shows some sketching we did together as a class.  I used the document camera to show how to draw different sea creatures, sea weed, and a seabed.  After the students learned how to draw those things, I gave them white paper to use crayons to color those same sea creatures.  They all had to also color a seabed and seaweed.  Step three was to use blue water color paint to paint on top.  (Painting was done on the next class period.)

Here are a couple of finished projects from the Kindergarten class.

2nd Grade Student working on coloring sea creatures.  I love how she made her seaweed!

More 2nd Grade Samples

This 3 minutes video of Under The Sea from Disney's Little Mermaid was the perfect ending to our lesson!

May Art

My special education class made these adorable bees today!  This is a great activity to practice cutting and gluing skills, and also talk about shapes.  The different texture of the pom pom balls and pipe cleaners add another element.  Thanks to Pinterest for this great idea!

The students also glued on a little "BEE HAPPY" note in the bottom corner!

April Art for Students with Autism

The student's April artwork looks great in the halls!  The students made paper plate butterflies, kites with fluffy clouds, and umbrellas.

I traced a leaf shape on green paper for the students to cut, then some of them colored with a green crayon before gluing the pom pom balls, pipe cleaners, and googly eyes to make the caterpillars.  Thanks to Pinterest for this idea!

Easter chicks and caterpillars.

The first step of this umbrella project was to do the background.   I drew the raindrops with white oil pastels so they magically appeared when the students used blue watercolor paints on top of the oil pastels.  The next day they decorated half of a paper plate for the top and cut out the brown handle.  I think they turned out really neat!

We used a variety of colors and painting tools for this project.  We had special paint rollers and brushes which the kids enjoyed using.  The first painting was with several colors and the second painting was with only blue paint, which we later used for the fish project below.

I found a neat variety of paper in the art supply room this week.  I traced fish on the back side of the paper for the students to cut out (ovals and triangles).  The students cut and glued the fish and added a googly eye.  I think these turned out great!

Today the students used "texture boards" and crayons to make these neat rubbings.  We used these beautiful papers to create butterflies (butterflies not pictured).

Sensory Bottles and Fine Motor Practice

These sensory bottles and fine motor games are things I use for the last few minutes of Art class if my students finish a project before our time is up.  I got these ideas from Pinterest, along with the sensory bags in my previous post.

From left to right - Green Sensory Water Bottle with glitter, rice and toothpicks, rice with curly rope inside, fine motor games - cue-tips  in a parmesan cheese container and tooth pics in a spice container.

Kinder and 2nd Grade Art Pics - April

This is a picture of how my Kindergarten students enter the Art room.  I always play instrumental music as they enter quietly.  They fold their hands in their laps and "put their smiles on".  It's a great way to begin class!  Always makes me happy to see 20+ faces smiling back at me!

Today I began class with the book, "Moon Dance".  It is about sea creatures, and was a great intro to our "Under The Sea" Art projects.  I found the instrumental version of songs from Disney's - Little Mermaid on spotify, and the students really enjoyed listening to it while they worked.

Under The Sea Art - Step 1 - Today we practiced sketching sea creatures, then we began fresh on a new paper and used crayons to draw and color sea creatures.  Next week the students will use blue water color paint to make the water.

Clay Day!  2nd Grade students made clay fish today.   They rolled out a ball of clay, cut around the fish template, and used a variety of tools to decorate their fish.  Next week the fish will be ready to paint.

These are samples of clay fish after they have been fired and painted.