Clay creations.

All grades seem to enjoy clay. The older grades tend to want to create functional useful objects, while the younger grades generally enjoy fashioning imaginative pieces.

Two second graders made Christmas decor, "We just wanted to make Christmas trees. It was hard to make them stand up, though."

From left to right: a princess, a cartoon or video game character, a smiling boy, and a bowl of meatloaf chunks.

Paper and Glue

"It's a decoration for my room, the string is to hang it."

This is the shelf where students put completed work.

These students trying to determine the best way to attach a cone to the top of their rocket.

The Drawing Center

I'm fascinated by the students who choose to visit the drawing center week after week. Even with paint, clay, construction, and other centers available. Each class has its own core of students that love to draw.

A first grader made a book about his family, "see? here's my whole family."

I've been watching this second grader draw since kindergarten. One of his classmates observed his drawing skills and said, very quietly (not wanting me to overhear), "Wow, I think you might be a even better drawer than Mrs. Dyer." And I'm inclined to agree!

Some of my favorite drawings, the kind I fish out of the recycle bin, are these types of things. Students just playing with lines, patterns, shapes. Not creating a finished product, but joyfully playing with the process. "I'm filling in each of the squares and then it's a pattern, but with different colors. Do you know what pattern this is called? It's AABB. 'Cause it goes circle, circle, square, square."

3-D artwork

"It's a little puffy creature, this is its
 bed and pillow too."

"I wanted to have something for my desk, 'cause it gets messy. This is a pencil holder."

One sixth grader created this articulated puppet, complete with moving limbs."I just wanted to make something that was movable, you know."

"This is cool. I made it with yarn and sticks, and it's gonna be a decoration for my house."

"It's for my dad. I live with him, so I made him this card."


"Isn't this so funny? I love this story!"




"This one is just silly."


"It's just the story, then we'll draw pictures later."

"It's a dragon. I used little squares from the collage center, then I drew on them, then I made the body. He's breathing fire!"

"I traced around the modeling clay shape. This is the middle part, that I cut out."


"I made a dinosaur collage, and I even collaged the letters."


"I just saw the lady's head in the collage papers so I made her a body."



"This is like sewing, I did it on burlap. It's a present for my brother and his wife. They just got married! I used the colors she likes."




"We decided to copy the picture, just for fun. We both did it."

drawing and collage centers

"These are a boy and girl. Not boyfriend and girlfriend, just friends. They like to play together at recess."

"It's a princess. And I wanted there to by sky and ground, so I drew them on the paper."

Two fifth graders created similar collages, "What we did was, we drew a dog picture first, and then we used those shapes for kind of a pattern to cut the colored paper."

This second grader made a book to put on the back of her book! "It's my pop book, and it has words in it. Words I know."

"We got the idea to draw dragons from a dragon book. And D__ says dragons aren't real. They ARE real, aren't they teacher?"

"It's a girl, her name is 'Roxie', but her nickname is 'Rocks'. I didn't have room to write her whole name, so I just put her nickname on it.

"It's a dog picture. I want a god, but dad says no more dogs. He says we already have three kids in the house, so why do we want a dog too? But I want a dog. So this will be my pretend dog."

"These are pets that I made, and this is a carrier for them."




Two first graders collaborated on this large creation, "It's a transformer alien. A two-headed alien transformer car."




First graders love using grown up tools, like staplers, and often incorporate them into their artwork. Here, a young artist uses the staples to help create a race track, "I got the idea because I wanted to shock my mom. I knew if she saw it she would be super excited--shocked--about my project. I like my track and I wanted to very very shock my mom three times."

"I'm just making scary aliens."

"It's a fuzzy brown bear with a baby. I can't wait 'til the fiber center opens up, so I can make my creations come to life."

"It's a covered wagon, made out of paper."

"It's different shapes cut out. I want to make a bunch of these, I think they'd look really pretty."

"I made this mermaid with paper. I couldn't find skin color, so I used orange."

A second grader created this robot, as a departure from some of the robots he made as a second grader, "This is a baseball robot. That's his bat, and he can hit the ball EVERY time! He has a baseball hat too."

"I wanted to make a necklace, but then I would have to cut it, so it's a crown instead."

Welcome to the 2010/11 school year!

Things have been going well. We've only got one center running; the drawing center--but that's enough to get the kids' creativity going. Many students are interested in honing their drawing skills, like the fifth grader who drew this dinosaur.

An exciting addition to the art room this year; an overhead projector along with a document camera! Now I can show students images from the computer, as well as do demos that EVERYONE can see.

My absolute favorite part of my job is when I get to experience the hum of creativity. There's a current of excitement and wonder, an actual tangible feeling, when the students are working together. It doesn't happen every time for every class, but when it does, WOW. That's when I think about what a privilege it is to work with these kids.

"It's a decoration for my room. These loops are so I can hang it up. I have LOTS of art in my room, so if there isn't enough space, I'll give this to my sister for her room."

"It's just a girl, not me or anybody I know, just a happy girl, she's smiling 'cause her dress gots lots of colors, kind of a rainbow."

"Well, this started out as just a picture on this side, but then my friend made one too and we thought, 'Let's glue them together and make it long, like a snake!' so we did. I'll take it home this time, and she'll take it home next time."