Super LEADers with 2nd Grade

     At our school this year, we have been studying the book, The 7 Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey.  These habits help the kids to take charge of themselves, their learning, and their school, and it has been so neat to see the kids embrace these ideas and really take pride in the awesome things we do here at school.  Because the students are using these habits throughout our school, it was easy to have conversations about them in art class.  The students chose the habit they think is most important for their artwork focus, and it was easy for the kids to select one because they have become so familiar with them.

    For these artworks, the students imagined themselves as super heroes whose super powers correspond with their chosen habit.  We did some brainstorming and writing to help fully develop these ideas.

    We then practiced drawing body proportions from quick sketches, and we were off to the races!  We also looked at real super hero artwork to gain inspiration for costume design.  With the help our wonderful media specialist, Mrs. Baker, and a wonderful parent volunteer, Mrs. Lonzrick, we were able to take some dictations on these portraits to help the students really make their ideas clear.  The end results are very fun, but also very thoughtful works!

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Night Lights

My school is leadership skills, and we've started having leadership groups where multi-grade level students are grouped with teachers to hone in on a topic of interest in which they can become a leader.  I have seventeen 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders in my group called the Clay Kid Leaders.  We are focusing on creating functional ceramic work that can help ourselves or others.


We just made these cool night lights.  They are meant to sit on a bathroom counter or maybe a dresser with an LED tea light underneath.  We made the form by wrapping a thin slab of clay around a school paper towel tube.  We then used another slab to close off one end.  The kids then poked holes in them and added designs.