5th Grade Clay Leaf Dishes

5^th Grade artists created ceramic leaf dishes by pressing fresh leaves into clay slabs (flat pieces of clay). Leaves are textured (bumpy), so it created an impression in the clay.  Students used pin tools (sharp tools) to cut around the edges of the leaves. Students then learned how to bend parts of their clay up in order to create curved parts for their leaves.

 Leaves were then fired in the kiln (called a bisque fire), which made them hard and stone-like. 

Students then glazed their leaves and the leaves were fired again. 

When they came out of the kiln, they were the colorful shiny leaves you see here.

Please enjoy 5^th Graders’ beautiful ceramic leaves.

First Grade Line Monsters

Students in first grade began this project by learning about lines. We read "Lines That Wiggle" by Candace Whitman and "Harold and the Purple Crayon" by Crockett Johnson. We identified various types of lines (straight, curvy, zig zag, bumpy, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, etc.) as we looked at paintings by Sol Lewitt and Stuart Davis, who used lots of lines in their work.

Sol Lewitt

Stuart Davis

After this, students practiced creating a variety of lines by making a drawing of their choosing using all of the lines we learned.
Next class, we read the story "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak. We imagined "if we had our own monster, what might it look like?" We discussed big parts (head, neck, body, arms, legs, wings, tail, etc.) that the body might have as well as small parts (eyes, mouth, nose, ears, eyebrows, horns, etc.). Students spent a class drawing the big and small parts for their monsters in pencil.

After this, students learned about texture (or the way things feel). We identified different textures we could spot in the art studio and on ourselves (bumpy on the bottom of our shoes, fuzzy inside a sweatshirt, smooth floors, etc.). Students learned how they might use a variety of lines to re-present various textures on their monsters.

Students continued creating these beautiful line drawings of monsters by tracing all of their lines with Sharpie, cutting their monsters out and pasting them onto colored paper. Lastly, students spent a couple of classes painting their monsters with tempera cakes. Please enjoy these friendly and fierce Line Monsters!

Mei, 1R

Uriel, 1R

Denise, 1R

MJ, 1R

Zoey, 1R

Kathleen, 1R