Lilypad & Lotus Flower Ceramics Lesson-This lesson is ADORABLE! Targeted for elementary (2nd-5th grade) and teaches both slab & pinch pot techniques.

I LOVE these flowers!!! I also think this may be my new favorite art lesson to teach! 2nd Graders did such a fabulous job creating them– SO proud of their work!! Step-by-step directions with…

Sailboats with Reflections Art Lesson. To make this art lesson more challenging you can use a full sheet of paper and make several sailboats & reflections.

12 PLAYFUL PUMPKIN ART PROJECTS FOR KIDS

I have been seeing beautiful peacock artwork on teacher blogs and Pinterest a lot lately, so I hopped on the bandwagon and did a peacock les...

A Self-Portrait Lesson to Encourage Self-Awareness Connections % %

Today I enjoyed reading Mr. Schu's interview with Lizi Boyd , author of Flashlight and Inside Outside , wordless picture books with ro...

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this lesson! It's colorful, fun, and full of cheer! :) To begin, start by reviewing color mixing with your students. If you're teaching upper elementary they probably already know that a primary color + a primary color = a secondary color.. but do they know that a primary color + a secondary color = a tertiary (or intermediate) color? This lesson is GREAT for teaching about those tertiary colors! After reviewing, give students a sheet of heavy drawing paper and have them LIGHTLY draw out 6 (or 7 if you want to add a second red balloon next to the purple to be able to create red-violet) balloon shapes (upside-down egg with a small trapezoid at the bottom) that overlap each other. The size of the paper is totally up to you, but this lesson does lend itself to doing some different sizes (like tall and narrow). Once the balloons are drawn, have students paint in every other balloon a primary color with watercolor paints. The first balloon should be red, the third should be yellow, and the fifth should be blue. I personally like painting them so that one side of the balloon is more heavily saturated with color (to help create the illusion of form) - but the highlights we add later will do this as well. At this point it will likely be the end of class. This is a great stopping point because it allows the primary color balloons to fully dry before painting the secondary color balloons. You want them to be dry so that the colors don't accidentally bleed into areas that are not actually overlapping. If you're using watercolor paper, the water in the paint will sit on the surface longer - so it's even more important to make sure that it's FULLY dry before continuing. If you're using a heavy drawing paper (recommended) then it should just take a few minutes for it to dry out enough to be able to continue painting. Students will need to paint the secondary colors into the remaining blank balloons, keeping rainbow order in mind. This is a great opportunity to have students problem solve to determine which color goes where. For example, there's an empty balloon in-between the red and the yellow balloon. What color would be made if red and yellow were mixed together? Orange! As students start painting in the secondary colors and they overlap the primary colored balloons, they'll start to see the tertiary (or intermediate) colors coming through! What happens when the purple balloon overlaps the blue balloon? Blue-violet is made! Once everything is completely dry, give students colored pencils to add the ties and ribbons to the bottoms of the balloons. Then finally using a white chalk pastel, have them add a highlight (or more) to each balloon. To get the most realistic highlights, the curvature of the highlight line should match that of the balloon (so rounded like the edge of the balloon). Have student lightly blend in the chalk pastel with their finger. The highlight is what really makes the balloon look like a balloon! :) To add a nice finishing touch, try mounting the pieces of art of black construction paper. Then using all those bits of colored scrap paper (that I KNOW you have haha), add some confetti pieces to the border. I think this finishing touch REALLY makes this lesson even more fun looking! If you'd like the full lesson with all the resources used (including two amazzzzzzing PowerPoints), check it out in my shop. :) Also available in my TPT store.

Create this colorful jellyfish art project with just a few simple supplies and easy chalk pastel techniques. A great ocean art activity kids will love to make!

Hey, y'all! The cicadas are coming! Or...in the case of here in Nashville, Tennessee, they are already here. It's been many years since our last cicada summer and while at first I was totally grossed out by these big carcass-leavin' bad boys (and girls), I know rather ... well, I was gonna say "like" but that's a stretch ... appreciate is probably a better word. I appreciate their...gee, what do I appreciate? Their cool look. It's like seeing a bug under a microscope, they are so stinkin' big! I've shared several symmetrical printing lessons in the past and they are always a huge hit with all of my students. We've done butterflies (you can find the lesson video in the link)... And this is kindergarten! We've also done hearts (again, full video lesson in this link)... And now cicadas! If you are interested in a list of supplies I used, here's a link! Have fun and stay tuned! I have more on this project coming your way!

Yesterday was an early release day for my school system and all of the art teachers were brought together for a little staff development. I love getting together with my fellow art teachers! They a…

Second graders are finishing up some really creative drawings set under the ground, so we did a lot of visualizing to come up with our ideas. We looked at some classic book illustrations by Garth Williams of Cricket in Times Square fame and the always classic Beatrix Potter. All of these story animals live in a hidden away, subterranean world and the job of the illustrator is to create that world. We talked about visual textures found in the layers of soil, clay, and rock. Some drawings show a realistic setting for a possible hibernating animal, readying for winter, and others have more of a sense of humor about them, as if the animals lived like people. Thanks to North Art Alert for posting their lesson on underground worlds - my students were inspired by yours.

I think Instagram has surpassed Pinterest in usefulness for me. Since Pinterest keeps adding pins of things THEY think will be interesting to me and things that THEY think I'll want to buy, half my feed is essentially junk. Conversely, there are a lot of art teachers who post relevant, real life lessons, ideas, and observations on Instagram daily. I've gotten a good amount of new lesson ideas this year from Instagram and I've had great success with them. If you want frequent updates from my classroom, follow me on Instagram @thomas_elementary_art One Instagram post by another teacher (@mrsallainart) inspired this new first grade clay lesson. I always base my first grade ceramics project on the pinch pot. This project included a wide, shallow pinch pot as well as a simple penguin. Penguin details (wings & beak) were added by simply smoothing clay together. The penguins were scored to attach to the base. The sculpture portion was pretty fun and not too difficult for my first graders, but the killer part of the lesson was the ice. I bisque fired the penguins after they had been sculpted. I then added several blue decorative glass marble type things to the base of each penguin. I got the glass from the dollar store. They're not perfectly round, but I would imagine real marbles or even small pieces of other types of glass would work just fine. I re-fired at cone 05 and achieved this sweet ice effect. The glass melted very nicely. I just recommend that you put plenty of glass in. I wound up adding more glass and re-firing the first set that I tried because they needed more glass to cover the bottom. This project was a big hit with the first graders and everyone up through 5th grade was super jealous that they didn't get to make one. I guess that's one way of knowing a lesson was successful.

Last month, 3rd grade started this little project, after I was inspired by the Instagram post of the incredible art teacher, Ms. Rogers! You can check out her IG here! I believe they painted their backgrounds, but since we're still art on a cart this year, we had to improvise! Here's how we created ours! Materials: Pencils Hexagon tracer Crayons Sharpie Markers Crayola Oil pastels Day 1: We draw our bees together. I do a little directed drawing, then we trace with Sharpies, and color with crayons. After they draw their bees, they can get started tracing their hexagons to make the background! (some liked the cardboard tracers better than the plastic, btw) After we filled up our paper with hexagons, we colored with pastels! We colored with brown and orange lightly, and then colored with yellow very dark, so they looked beautifully blended. After they colored, they cut out their bees and glued them on! Stay tuned for some more awesome art! DISCLOSURE: LINKS TO PRODUCTS ARE AFFILIATE LINKS, WHICH MEANS I GET A SMALL COMPENSATION FOR SALES. THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR BLOG!

My 2nd graders created their own version of The Scream ...first they learned about Edvard Munch's famous painting. I read them a blurb abo...

The return of the lego self portraits. You've probably seen these/my face floating around Pinterest (or at least I'm told by my fellow colleagues that my face is plastered on Pinterest). The original project I did last year brought some major traffic to my blog. I think part of the reason, along with the fact that legos are just awesome, was that shortly after I posted the project The Lego Movie came out and Lego Mania was upon us. This is probably one of my all time favorite lessons. We cover a lot of information and it is fun, the kids love it and all find some sort of success! The majority of this lesson is done with crayon, a few students did choose to use marker on the background. To see a more detailed description of the lesson go here. I'm amazed as to how much I can see the resemblances in some of the portraits and I can pick out which lego belongs to each student.

This week, we looked at the art of Vincent Van Gogh, talked about the Element of Art, VALUE, and started creating these cute lil pumpkin paintings! Here's Van Gogh's painting, we were inspired by. Starry Night Here's how we did it! Day 1: Drew the pumpkin on a 12"x12" piece of 90 lb paper with Mrs. Stacey. We started with the middle section and worked our way out. Then, we drew the objects in the background, with a pencil. Then, we traced with Crayola Oil Pastels. I like the giant class pack! Day 2: Paint! We talked about the element of art value, and how the shadows are usually on the bottom and the highlights are usually on top of the object. It just depends on where the light source is! We started with brown paint on the bottom, orange paint in the middle, and yellow paint on the top. We also talked about blending the paint to make it more of a gradual transition between colors. This is my new favorite tempera paint! Stay tuned for some more student work!

Create surprise watercolor heart art for Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, or just to say I LOVE YOU any time of year!

3rd grade students drew a basic cat shape on either orange or purple paper and then cut them out. Using the left over paper, students turned what was the negative space into the positive space of their artwork by gluing it onto a black background revealing the stiletto of a cat shape. Students then completed their artwork by using yellow triangle shapes to represent the cats’ eyes glowing in the dark.

If you watch the news then you know we have had record rain here in North Texas for the month of May. The gardens are growing in and outside of the classroom, but enough is enough! My fifth graders just finished these amazing one day pinch pots.... They used Sax underglaze with a clear coat to finish last week. It is hard to get the clay to dry out and find a non stormy day to run the kiln this month! We have had 3 inches of rain on Saturday.... not to mention the amount falling right now. my little garden is lush... but it needs some sunlight to ripen the tomatoes. Third Grade is working on their last project.... We looked at Rufino Tamayo's paintings and drew repeated slices with oil pastels. 12 x 18 white sulfite paper Sax tempera cakes love these...I know I pinned this idea from Pinterest but can't find the pin.. Thanks to whoever originally posted this lesson. I was also treated to the Teacher of the year dinner last week with many of my long time teacher friends and family. my girls Art Teachers! My Family... 11 more days then stay tuned for Summer School Art!

Inside you'll find an easy step-by-step How to Draw a Simple Fox Tutorial and Coloring Page. Stop by and grab yours for free.

As you may have noticed, my past few projects have been decidedly winter themed, but I can't help it - today it was close to minus 40 wit...

Today, 2nd grade embarked on a new project! New to me and certainly new to them! I saw this awesome idea on Abby Schukei's blog, Art, Eat, Tie Dye, Repeat and decided to give it a go! Here's how we created ours! Materials: 90lb 6x18" paper 6x18" Tru Ray construction paper Crayola oil pastels Fiskar scissors Pencils Big Kid's Choice flat paintbrushes Crayola Artista II tempera paint Day 1: Talk about the Element of Art, VALUE! Value is super duper important, y'all! Value is the lights and darks of a color. We use value to shade things, and to make our pictures just look more AWESOME! ;) I like to say, Value adds $Value$! Need another example of Value...how about the ever popular Ombre craze? It's everywhere! You can have ombre from head to toe if you wanted! Well, we're making ombre ice cream! lol Today, we're focusing on the lights or the TINTS. I tell them, not like the tent you sleep in! A TINT is when you add white to a color. (A shade is when you add black to a color, but we're not doing that) I gather them around my middle table in my room and show them how to paint a 6x18" piece of paper. I start with my plain color, and slowly add dollops of white to make the color get lighter and lighter! I remind them to paint in one direction to make the color smoother too. After I paint my long paper, I show them how to paint their cone paper. I used oil pastels to make crisscrossing diagonal lines. (peach and brown from Crayola's oil pastels) Then, they got to work! Here's Mrs. Fitch's class, hard at work, making their Tints & cones! Day 2: I'll get them to trace an ice cream template on the back of their paper, cut them out, and assemble them on a complementary color of their ice cream! Mrs. Fitch's class doing a great job! Here's Mrs. Parsons' class, hard at work!

Inside you'll find an easy step-by-step How to Draw an Apple Tutorial and an Apple Coloring Page. Stop by and grab yours for free.

Using Fall Colors, 2nd graders created these fun turkeys!

To create this shoal of goldfish, immersed in a blue lake, we made some prints by matrices in Styrofoam (polystyrene for foodstuffs). What better way to recycle plastic trays, used as a container f…

Looking to teach a lesson on symmetry? You can bridge math and art with this fun, vibrant project. Butterflies are an obvious choice for symmetrical animals thanks to their detailed designs. If you’re teaching it in the spring, it’s an even better time to dive into butterflies. Using a rubbi