2014 Junior Duck Stamp- Primary

Another great year with the Jr. Duck Stamp program! I've written about the program before, and my experience as Junior Duck Stamp Ambassador. I love this program and think it has a great goal of teaching kids about conservation of wetland habitats through their artmaking. Every student completed a project for JDS, the State Fish Art Contest, or a book contest with similar criteria. Actually deciding whether or not to enter the artwork in the contest was up to the student. This was our most successful year to date in the contest with 6 Honorable Mentions at PC and 1 Honorable Mention at PS. I'm so proud of my students' efforts and especially of those that tried new things. 

 

This student tried a new technique by using oil pastels to draw the shape of the feathers and watercolors for the rest. The resist works really well. Often students can't figure out how to differentiate between the edges of the feather shapes while still coloring them in. This will probably be a demonstration next year. This Canada Goose was one of our HM winners.

These two were both drawn by 1st graders.

 The 4 above were 2nd grade projects.

 This student used her new knowledge of wood ducks' nesting habitats to inform her background.

 

This student was brave enough to add the reflection, which is intimidating to a lot of kids.

 Two more HM winners.

 Another HM winner. We had to do some research to find out what color the duck's legs are since in the reference photo it was swimming.

 Lots of good Hooded Mergansers this year!

Great texture in this HM winning painting!

K-3 Choice Drawing- Animals

My students are always interested in drawing animals. I had that in mind when I stocked my "inspiration station". In addition to the animal encyclopedia set I was given when they were discarded from the library, I picked up several plastic animals at the Dollar Tree to be used as models.

 I also added some penguins that were mine when I was little. Unfortunately the penguins were stolen! I was very disappointed and said that I would be happy if they just showed up outside my door one day, but nobody returned them. One little guy still asks me almost every week if I ever found them!

Giant rabbit or a tiny carrot. I'm not sure. I am sure that I was very excited with the composition! It can be such a struggle to get students to fill the space of their paper.

A Kindergarten zebra and a 3rd grade dinosaur.

Colorful fish.

The lizards have been very popular, though I have to keep remind some students to observe them, not try to trace them.

 This drawing came a long way from the time this first grade student first told me she was finished. I encouraged her to add more value in the grass and to make the ladybugs more solid. She also went back and blended in other greens to make it more interesting. I always with that I would have remembered to take a before picture to show the students how far they've come! 

This 3rd grader worked on his bug drawing for several weeks, adding more variety each class. Here's the artist statement: Bugs are cool they have all kinds of cool life skills. They have different defense methods too.

 Science and writing in the art room!

State Birthday Cake Drawings

This is my favorite of the projects I left with my sub during maternity leave.  The project was completed in 1 or 2 class periods depending on the schedule and snow days and was taught to K-3rd.  This year Kansas turned 150 and I knew there would be even more celebrating happening at school this year than any other year I could remember.  The instructions I left were for my sub to read a book called "One Kansas Farmer: A Kansas Counting Book" that I was given for Christmas a couple of years ago.  The book obviously has counting as implied by the name but had some cool facts about Kansas that I didn't even know before!  (Did you know that Kansas leads the nation in helium export?)  They talked about symbolism and our state symbols (meadowlark, bison, sunflower, etc.) before looking at a PowerPoint with slides of interestingly decorated cakes.  I said to pretty much let Kindergarten and 1st grade students draw cakes their own way but made examples of how to draw cylinders to show perspective and visually stack them to look like a layered cake.  The students drew the form of their cakes first, added symbols for Kansas, and colored with colored pencils (Kindergarten used crayons.)  I will definitely use this lesson again because of all the great things it teaches (perspective, drawing, symbolism) with a local social studies tie in.

 The Kinder-cakes!

If I had more Art time with my older students, I would have them do an Art History version.  At last year's KAEA conference, we celebrated 75 years of KAEA and had tables decorated with the coolest cake sculptures based on artists from history!  I wish I would have taken some photos to share with you all!