After coming back from Winter Break all grades worked on these lessons:

• K -   Drawing lesson of penguin, starting out with the letter, "P"

• 1st - 3D umbrella with snowflakes

• 2nd - Pioneer and covered wagon drawing lesson led by me - domain related

• 3rd - Viking long ship drawing lesson led by me - domain related

• 4th - Tessellations

• 5th -  Water color painting inspired by Russian artist, Wassily Kandinsky

Then, all grades began preparing for Black History Month:

K and 1st -  We read a story, Alma's Art, inspired by Alma Thomas who was an African American artist that specialized in mosaics. Using her work as an inspiration, they completed a two-part lesson making a heart mosaic with tissue paper (learning about patterns as well).

2nd and 3rd - We read the book, Saving The Day, about inventor Garrett Morgan who invented a three way traffic light.  Inspired by him, they created their own traffic lights and used a mosaic theme for the actual lights using small shapes of construction paper.  They were briefly told about Alma Thomas when I introduced the idea of using a mosaic theme for the lights. This was also a two-part lesson.

4th - We read the book, Between the Lines: How Ernie Barnes Went from the Football field to the Art Gallery. They then began working on a drawing, inspired by one of his paintings, that took three class periods.  The drawing is titled, "High Aspirations." The students were encouraged to draw their version of it with the only requirements being that it had to be a basketball player and the arms and legs had to be drawn longer than usual, the same way that Ernie did, to show movement. We also talked a little about shading and using light when coloring.  The drawings were colored with colored pencils. I was impressed with the creativity that I saw from these drawings!  Ernie grew up here in Durham and I feel like the students connected with him because of that fact.

5th - We talked about African American artist, Romare Bearden.  Romare Bearden was born in Charlotte, but grew up and lived in different parts of the United States.  He was known for his collages, so the students made their own collages.  The collages were titled, Romare and Me and had to include at least three items that told something about Romare and at least three items that told something about themselves. Romare was also an author and songwriter. This was also a three class period project.