Art Show Night for 2014-15 School Year

Last night was art show night at Church Creek Elementary School!  There was a lot of "behind the scenes" work that went into the art show.  I had twelve fifth grade students who were face painters, eight fourth and fifth grade students who helped with crafts, twelve students who were "Mystery Artists" all around the school, and two wonderful parent volunteers who helped out with set up, clean up and monitoring all 
of the stations.  The art show was being held on our school's "PAWS Family Fun night" and book fair buying night.  So families came to enjoy the art and help raise money for the school by purchasing books from the book fair!  Then they could go into the cafeteria to enjoy the ice cream social and popcorn.

The student volunteers were amazing!  The face painters made paw prints, snakes, spiders, paint palettes, panda bears, butterflies, rainbows, cats, and so much more.  The craft helpers assisted the younger students with two crafts: a dragon craft with an accordion folded body, and a peacock craft.  

The "Mystery Artists" were students who were pretending that they really were a famous artist.  Every year, I introduce six new "Mystery Artists" to first through fifth graders.  At the beginning of each class period, there is a new painting on the whiteboard by one of these artists.  We spend the first few minutes of class guessing which artist we think painted it and why.  By the end of the year, the students know these six artists very well!  

This years Mystery Artists were: Wayne Thiebaud, Faith Ringgold, Piet Mondrian, Henri Rousseau, Katsushika Hokusai, and Andy Warhol.  The student volunteers did an amazing job of telling the parents and visitors all about a famous artist!

This year, I wanted to have my classroom open for visitors.  The students make so many wonderful clay projects from kindergarten to fifth grade, and I wanted to display them in a way that I knew it would be safe. 

 At each table, I also included a few "Clay questions to ask you student" so the children could tell their parents about the projects.


I also displayed the students paper mache masks and their metal tooling projects in my classroom.  These were the favorites for many parents and visitors!

The theme of this year's art show was "The Art of Asia".  Down the main art hallway, there was a vast display of artwork to represent China, Japan, India and Russia.

This was a wonderfully fun collaborative project!  The Kindergarten students learned all about their primary colors: red, yellow and blue.  Then we created parts of this volcano by mixing red and yellow to make the orange lava and by mixing all three primary colors to create the lava rocks.  The dinosaur collages were created by third grade students as they learned the collage method.

The first graders created rainbow fish by using the stamping method.  They could choose to stamp them in a random or organized pattern.  The large fish was painted by fifth grade students with outstanding behavior to show them that I appreciate all their hard work!

I hope you enjoyed the art show pictures.  I know that when I am trying to get some great ideas I look on pinterest at all of the wonderful projects that other art teachers have done too.