Ocean lessons

Themes so far this month: Chinese New Year and Valentines day
Theme to finish the month. The Ocean!
Who doesn't love the ocean. There are a ton of great ocean ideas out there and fish and sharks and octopus and starfish and so forth are familiar and easy shapes for students to draw. Working on ocean art lets us concentrate a bit more on the media and technique involved in the project. But first some classes have some Ketchup to do...sorry catch up;)

Monday: NO School. Relaxing at home with my hubby and dog who has his head on the key board right now making little whinny noises so I will pet him.

Tuesday:
4th grade: Needs to complete new years Tigers. Next week will work on pastel resist ocean life. 3rd grade will be doing the same.
Deep Space Sparkle
6-8th- making good progress on dragons and carp windsocks
3rd- Masi: Draw outline of angel fish and seaweed. Put aside and finish assembling new years dragons
3rd- Hunter: has not done clay yet: clay slab fish
oh dear...either that Artist women or Teach kids art (I think the later)

Wednesday: late start day
6-8th china projects
1st grade: 1st and 2nd have a choir concert coming up and we always put up their art. this whole ocean unit is basically for that. I have a stack of base color painted paper that I had the kids make for some future collage project. And now we have one. I want to do this pretty general ocean project. I'll have some templates for the kids, a fish, a octopus, a shark, seahorse and a turtle for the kids to trace and cut out. Then they can add extra color to the top with paint. We will cut out the sea life, glue to turquoise paper and then collage on sea weed, coral and so forth. I expect this to take two full weeks.
Deep Space Sparkle

Thursday:
5th grade: Will do a glue and pastel sea life drawing. That is if my black paper EVER shows up. I asked the school secretary to order it 4 weeks ago! The major issue with glue resit is getting it to dry. So day one draw, go over our lines with glue, set them to dry and then color a nice ocean life coloring sheet till next class. Tips with the glue: Keep the tip of the glue touching the paper. DRAW BIG, don't make stuff to detailed. Don't squeeze to hard. Keep glue moving. Realize blobs will happen and are OK. If you have money to spare (I personally don't) Elmer's now makes glue "sticks" that are more like glue pen's that have white glue in them and two size tips that make doing this really really easy. Each pen lasts about one project and costs about $2 at Wal-mart and can be re-filled. If I do this with a summer camp group it will be worth the cost but it's a no go for my low income classroom.


2nd grade
I don't remember who's blog this came from, but she mentioned she had read a book called, "I'm the best artist in the ocean" and had painted mustachtisohed giant squids with her students. I don't know why I find this soooo ridiculously amusing but I do. So I got the book and we will read it and then go draw our own squids wearing mustaches and holding paintbrushes. Ask me what the deep down artistic value this has and I'm not sure, but I'm the art teacher and I want to do this book and so we will. If I had my dream world I would have the kids make paper mustaches and use masking tape to put them on their upper lips. These two classes get way to excited way to easily to do that but maybe one day.


Friday: God I even feel tired just looking at all the lessons we do in one week and this isn't even addressing the middle school classes.
5th grade again: We need to finish up the carp. Cut apart mouth. Glue up sides. Roll tops over a pipe cleaner. Punch holes in mouth for string. Tie strings. Find a way to display....hum. If done early I want them to get done with their Faith Ringold Story quilts before letting them work more on their ocean stuff.

Kinder: Finish up those trains. Let's see we still needed to put on last train body shapes. Cut out wheels and the bar connecting the wheels and then put on a cotton ball or two for smoke. I would like to double mount these with a name tag. That will take our full 20 min.