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!

4th and 5th Grade - Music Videos

Reading schools repeats specials Fridays, so we typically have "Fun Friday," where in Art we take a break from our regular-week activities by playing an art game or doing another activity.  For this Fun Friday activity, the 4th and 5th graders collaborated to make lyric music videos for a few classic songs:  Come Together by the Beatles and Lookin' Out My Back Door by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Each student got either a lyric from the song or a "music break," and it was his or her job to draw a picture of what that lyric (or song) would look like.  I collected the pictures, put them in order, and set them up with the music to create the music video.  The results are really cool, and definitely something I want to build on moving forward - hopefully I can give them more time.

The Beatles - Come Together

CCR - Lookin' Out My Back Door

4th Grade - Paper Mache Globes

Man, I have fallen behind on updating my blog.  Rest assured, we've been just as busy as ever in Mr. Schmidt's art room since the middle of August.  The good news is I have pictures of projects, a few videos, and a couple of SLOs (!!) coming up here soon, so check back early and often.

First up in this series is a collaboration I did with our 4th grade Social Studies teacher:  paper mache globes.  For the first class, we covered a small balloon with paper mache and newspaper   The next week, we painted it blue.  Then to top it off I projected a picture of the globe up on the screen and we painted the continents, deserts, and/or ice caps.  The paper mache provided a nice texture for the globe, and 3D projects are always a hit.  Here are just a handful of examples.

Art Club - Collaborative Whiteboard Animation

It's sad to see Art Club come to a close, but I think we topped it off with a winner.  First, we looked at a handful of whiteboard animations on YouTube and then worked together to create our own in the art room.  We divided up into 2 lines and took turns making small lines on the board while I took pictures using stop motion software on my Galaxy Note.  We finished (spoiler alert) by signing our names and adding music.  Take a look!

2nd Grade - A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Second graders really rose to the challenge on this one.  Designed as a project to help build vocabulary and serve as practice for really seeing the details in composition, second graders partnered up and took turns describing artwork to each other.  While one person kept the real picture secret, the other partner had to take clues and try to redraw the picture as accurately as possible.  Here’s a video of the kids in action, followed by a few pictures and some of the final results. 

4th Grade - Primary Team Paintings

Fourth graders teamed up to paint these artworks using only the primary colors.  One person was in charge of the blue, another the yellow, and the third red.  Each group had to work together to paint their idea, which they chose on their own.  Each group came up with their own unique idea and they were all well-executed.  Take a look!

3rd and 5th Grade - Recycled Art Designs

Third and fifth graders at Holmes collaborated for this sculpture project using recycled materials, only with a pretty big twist.  First the third graders were split into groups and given a bag full of supplies like cereal boxes, cardboard tubes, buttons, and pipe cleaners.  Then they were tasked to create some sort of sculpture using only those supplies, with the twist being they weren't actually going to be the ones to put the sculpture together.  They made instruction manuals detailing everything fifth grade groups would need to know to build their idea.  The third graders really had to focus on the artmaking process and their communication skills for their artwork to be successful.  The fifth graders had to do a good deal of interpreting and problem solving to make sense of the manuals.  This was a really interesting project where the kids had to work together and think both abstractly and literally to create an excellent piece of artwork.  It was tons of fun to watch, too!