1st Grade: Tree of Life

The "Tree of Life" is a very famous painting done by the artist Gustav Klimt, from Austria. Gustav's tree was meant to be a symbol of life. The black bird on the branches represents death, as every life must come to an end at some point. The tree is filled with other symbols as well. First grade and I discussed what a symbol is. First we looked at some symbols that we can all recognize, like a traffic light, recycling sign, deer crossing sing etc. Students created their own"Tree of Life" and including symbols of things that were important to them in their life. If you have a student who created one of these trees, I encourage you to ask them what their different symbols mean. It was really awesome to hear about what is important in their lives or future plans that they have for their life.

Kindergarten: Muddy Pigs

These muddy pigs were created after one of the kindergarten classes did a unit learning about farms in the class room. For a little pig and farm inspiration we took a look at the work of Jamie Wyeth, son of Andrew Wyeth.


We made our rain using washable markers, crayons and water. The mud was made with brown tempera paint and tooth picks to carve the ripples in the water. The pigs were drawn in sharpie and painted with pink tempera paint. The rainbow was used making tempera paint. To get our pig muddy the kids had to get a little dirty by spreading the mud on them using their fingers. We added the fun little rain boots using patterned papers.

2nd Grade: Jungle Animals

These jungle animals were inspired by the French painter, Henri Rousseau. He was famous for his jungle paintings, although he never actually visited a jungle in his life. Student's learned about using a foreground, middle ground, and background in their art to create depth. Students chose any animal that lived in a jungle. This project was made using oil pastels, watercolor paint, markers, painted paper, and colored construction paper. 

1st Grade: Optical Illusion Paper Weaving

This project was so much fun to create with first grade. Students were aloud to choose any colors of their choice. They painted one paper using concentric circles of there colors in a darker version and then did the same pattern of circles on another paper, this time using lighter values of their colors. Once the two pieces of paper were painted, light and dark, we copped the papers up into one inch strips. Students then learned how to weave using the different value paper. This created a really cool optical illusion effect when all together.

8th Grade: Scratch board Animals

This wonderful project really helps students to capture visual texture in their images. Using a scratch board students must learn this reductive process of art, by scratching away materials to reveal their image. We are usually used to an additive process of working, whether that be in pencil, paint, markers, etc. One of the trickiest parts of this project is that once a mark is made it can't be undone. One of my favorite parts of this project is how well students capture value (light and dark) using just black and white.