Third Grade

Roxaboxen: My Secret Place

After focusing on drawing a realistic portrait of themselves ,the third graders are given a well-deserved break to create a place using their imagination.  They look at a book about make believe homes children built in the dessert. They look at realistic and AI creations of tree-houses to house boats, underground homes to those hanging from trees. There are questions to think about, like how to they keep it safe and what makes it secret.  They are the architects of their own designs.  First, they sketch ideas out in their sketchbook, then they draw their design in pencil on the shiny side of a piece of posterboard, outlining it in black Sharpie. The coated posterboard allows them to use the watercolor markers like a paint in the first 3-4 minutes, mixing colors before it dries. Once they have finished coloring they have to options of adding at least 3 pieces of collage to their finished secret place.

In the past the 3rd grade teachers have had the students write about their secret place as the subject of an essay.

Sketchbooks and Zentangles

This year the third graders are given sketchbooks that they will keep until they graduate in 5th grade. They learn to take notes, jot down steps in a process and use the sketchbooks for preliminary drawings and ideas. They come with a blank front page. On the front page they write their initial in block or bubble letters and decorate it with Zentangles or multiple patterns. Then they add color. We start the process but then move on after 1 or two weeks. Any unfinished parts can be worked on if a student has extra time in the following classes.

https://padlet.com/twittkowski/zentangles-kfftuhry8gz1ov6w

Self-Portraits for Square  1 Art

The third graders started off with one of the most difficult projects of this year. They learned about facial proportions and practiced  drawing a generic face. then they used mirrors to draw their own face, following those general guidelines. They looked a the different skin, lip, eye and skin colors of different people and the learned to us the colored pencils, mixing them when necessary to find the right colors for their self-portrait. Then they added a chosen background. This was their Square 1 Art project.  It was sent off to the company at the end of August to be printed on gifts for families.

https://padlet.com/twittkowski/3rd-grade-self-portrait-owxff09u9uujzxgs

End of the 2024-25 school year

Metal Repousse

Repousse is a metal working technique in which a malleable (soft and easy to bend) metal is textured and shaped by pushing from the backside to the front to create a design in low relief. Chasing is the opposite technique (working from the front to the back). Both are used together to create a finished piece. It is also known as embossing or metal tooling.

Students create a plate with a center image and four sections with different patterns. Then they add ink to the plate and burnish it off, creating darkened lines and indentations that make the patterns more visible. Next they glue the metal repousse on a black piece of paper.  Once it is dry, they draw out the patterns in the metal onto the black paper with white pencil. then they proceed to add colored pastels, making the 3-D texture into implied texture on a 2-D surface.

(The video below is for a middle school audience but I skim through it for the students.)

Wolf Kahn Landscapes

Third graders begin this project by looking at the color wheel and learning the beginnings of color theory. This includes primary, secondary and tertiary colors; tints and shades, warm and cool colors, complementary colors, and analogous colors. They create their own color wheel with the primary colors, and use white and black to tint and shade. These are added to the sketchbook they received this year.

Next we talk about Wolf Khan who was an American Impressionist and color-field landscape painter. They learn about atmospheric perspective, the illusion of foreground, midground and background in a 2 dimensional painting. For their project they create and paint a landscape in the style of Wolf Khan.

Coil Pots

Third graders watched a video of Maria Martinez, a Pueblo Indian potter from New Mexico who created highly polished black pottery that is now in museums. She made her pots from coils of clay she dug and processed with her son. They fired in a homemade pit kiln. (She is now deceased.)

Third graders learned how to make a round slab base, roll coils, use slip to join them and help to smooth the clay. Some experimented with the form of the pot, others tried using the coils in a decorative pattern. Once the clay dries and is fired they will glaze their pots. Then they will be fired a second time to finish.