Your favorite art classwork as a child?

[artgoddess]

I'm looking to find out what inspired you, held your interest, was the most fun for you when you were in say 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th grade? When I was a child the arts had a lot more funding in schools. Music and Art classes were a weekly given. Not so much any more. What can you remember from your childhood that stuck with you and made you excited about art?

[artgoddess]

I loved it whenever we got to work with the pottery wheel.

[number572]

Clay dinosaurs, Clay house, Clay other things (my school had a kiln, guess they wanted to get the money's worth haha), torn paper art, cut paper art, collage from magazine pictures/words, "found art" projects. I dug functional crafty stuff too such as a popsicle stick marker caddy and the elbow macaroni jewelry, lol.

One of the most impacting art lessons, was once a week throughout grades 1-4, a local museum employee/vol would come into the classes and flip thru 5-10 prints of famous works of art & teach us about them. I've remembered looking at those pictures of the art pieces very often!

[artgoddess]

thanks for responding. more ideas please, keep em coming!

[JamieCatheryn]

Clay here too. A bowl and a cat sculpture. Paper mache too though that was in the main classroom rather than art class. I've always been partial to 3D art.

[leighi123]

We did printing by taking a flat peice of foam (like what veggies sometimes come on), drawing a design on paper and then going over it again pushing down hard on top of the foam to indent the design.

Then we used a roller and real printing ink to print it onto paper to make stationary.

[hippiechickinsing]

I vividly remember absorbent paper and dippity-dye and watching how red and blue made purple when they met. I still love colors and exploring color blends.

[E.V. Lowi]

Finger painting using dry tempra and starch. It was so much fun seeing the colors develop! Art is a process, not a product!

[annettemarie]

I still remember a second grade project-- we used watercolors to paint a sunset. Then, after it dried, we cut out shapes from black construction paper-- buildings, trees, etc-- and glued them on to create a "skyline at sunset" picture.

[doubledutch]

i remember one extremely simple project we did in third grade that i actually still do from time to time. the teacher wrote our names in cursive in the middle of a sheet of construction paper. then we made an outline around it as closely as we could, so it was kind of cloud-shaped . . . if that makes sense. then we took another color marker and made another outline, then another in another color, etc so it was like this concentric, radiating rainbow going outward toward the edges of the page, with our names in the middle. i thought it looked really cool.

another one i loved is the one where you fill in a whole page with bands of color (not sure if you use crayons or colored pencil), then color over the whole thing with a black crayon, pressing hard, and then you scratch out a design with a pin, so the background is black and the lines are multi-colored.

in first grade we did an easter project of a stained-glass window. we ripped up a bunch of tissue paper in all colors, then glued it onto something clear (probably wax paper) and then sandwiched the whole thing between two pieces of construction paper with a "window" cut out of the middle (like a gothic window shape with a pointy part on top).

[hildare]

hm.. when i was really young, we did a finger painting project using pudding. but i have always been somewhat obsessed with food.

another thing i remember is making a drawing on paper with glue.. when the glue dried, we put foil on top of it, and it made an image in relief.

loved the coloring with crayons - colors first then black crayon on top and scratching through to reveal the colors below. Like DoubleDutch said.. it's crayon all the way, though i imagine color pencils for the colored part would work too.

potato prints!!! (ok, i have also made those as an adult..)

making a kite.

weaving

making a terrarium. (is that art?)

[sunnysandiegan]

The only art project I recall isn't really traditional art, but it made a lasting impression on me. We used light-sensitive paper and went outside (which I love) and gathered leaves/sticks/rocks. Then we put the object of choice on the light-sensitive paper and set it in the sun. The paper around the object changed colors. We removed the object and the "print" remained. I thought (and still think) that is the coolest thing!

I am a volunteer art teacher at DD's school. We use a formal art program and teach the same 8 lessons each year: line, shape, value, space, color, texture, composition, and famous artist. The specific artwork is different for each grade level, becoming more sophisticated as the students gain the necessary skills. I've done this for four years now and it! There are so many great art lessons for these basic principles and we always emphasize at least one famous artist at the beginning of each lesson. I'm finishing up third grade next month and the students are really getting it.