4th Grade - GRINCH MUSIC VIDEO!!

I get really excited about a lot of our projects, but these music videos are some of my favorite things.  Having an extra day with Ms. Gertz's fourth graders (and a handful of Mr. Hayes' fifth graders) this quarter provided the perfect opportunity to tackle another song.  I give each kid a piece of paper with the lyrics printed on the bottom, then they draw what they think they lyric is supposed to look like.  Check out our other videos here.

This year, we did "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," with mostly 4th graders and a handful of 5th graders.  Enjoy!

1st Grade - Symmetrical Bugs

Hooray!  The 1st graders finally got to paint!

After a few weeks rehearsing for their choir concert, these kids earned a fun project where they learned a cool technique using using oil pastels and the chance to paint.  We learned all about symmetry and used pastels to draw a bug on one side of the paper, then followed instructions on how to make the bugs the exact same on both sides.  To top it off, we got back into painting and worked on background.

The 1st graders did such an excellent job with everything, especially considering how distracted and excited we all can get this time of year.

5th grade - More Choice

A few more Choice projects from the 5th graders recently.

These next two are the same picture, upside down.

2nd Grade - Making Money

This has been one of my favorite projects that the kids get super in to from the beginning.  It helps us work on adding details to keep our artwork interesting.

Dolla, dolla bills, y'all.

I tell the kids that I've looked into the future and seen that, strangely enough, everyone is going to become president someday.  When we are president, the rules change quite a bit, and one of the perks is that the president gets to put his or her face on a freshly designed dollar bill.

But this comes with a catch.  To protect the country against counterfeiters, we need to add lots of little secrets and details to our dollar bills that make it much harder to replicate.  The second graders love to share some (but not all!) of their secrets with each other during share time.  See if you can pick up any from the examples below.

6th Grade - Choice Projects Update

Tons of good work by a great group of sixth graders this quarter.

3rd Grade - Album Covers

A new project for 3rd graders, but one we did last year with 5th graders.  For the few weeks between Thanksgiving and winter break, the third graders pretended to be award-winning musicians designing their debut album cover.  The goal was to get the album cover not only eye-catching, but also reflective of the type of music they would make.  So, we studied a handful of album covers and talked about how we could tell one looked "country" or "pop," and used their ideas in our own album design.  Each 3rd grader had to invent his or her own band name and album title, too.  Check out a few awesome examples.

5th Grade - Choice Projects Update

5th graders have been hard at work with their choice projects, coming up with some clever ideas and creative ways to express them.  Part 1: