Art with Mrs. O'Neill

In 2nd grade classes we have been studying asian culture & in particular Chinese New Year.Students love the bright cultural traditions & especially the dragons. We glued yarn in a shape for the body & then drew a pattern in oil pastels.  Here are some of their masterpieces. 

Third grade has been working on a peacock project thst is turning out great. I did a modified version of a lesson on Deep Space Sparkles blog. Students are using metallic paints and metallic oil pastel. I can't wait to see the final results! 

I have been doing some fun dessert art projects with 1st-4th grade. We looked at Wayne Theibauds work for inspiration and created an assortment of cakes and ice cream. 

Kindergarten did some really cute rainy day drawings. We read the story "Rain Drop Plop", then students drew themselves under an umbrella. We used oil pastel to add color & a white pastel for raindrops. Then students did a blue wash over the picture to show our raindrop resist! Fun lesson & I love the personality that shows in the kids art!

I have a wonderful student teacher right now- Ms. Hillenburg. She has been working with 5th grade  in groups to create these giant paper flowers. The results are beautiful & the kids worked great together to create them!

Teaching the art elements shape & color to kindergarten. It's always fun teaching them painting techniques & they think the oil pastel resist is magic! We read "the dot" and look at Wassily Kandinsky's circle paintings, then students create their own.

My first graders are learning about European artists in preparation for arts in school night. We are in the middle of a great Vincent Van Gogh unit. There are some wonderful books out there like Van Gogh and the Sunflowers, and Starry Night. In this unit we explore Van Goghs tragic life history and what techniques he used in his art. We then create a still life of flowers in the same composition style as His famous sunflower painting. I encourage students to draw the flowers "floating at the top of the page, then draw the vase/container, then the stems. (This keeps them from drawing long skinny stalk like flowers). Then we outline in glue, which adds texture(similar to van Goghs use of texture). The next class is used to add finishing colors with oil and chalk pastels. It's a great lesson for learning pastel techniques & I always love the results!