Second Grade Framed Portraits

Second grade students studied the portraits of Frida Kahlo. Students created their self portraits with glue  line printmaking.

Students created their prints in a few different colors. After completing the prints, they chose their favorite and created a frame, with designs in oil pastel.

Printmaking is one of my favorites. Students find so much success!

You can see more of these prints in our Artsonia gallery.

This worked for me! Tessellations

This lesson is from a couple of months ago, but it was highly successful. I taught tessellations years ago, but the way I did it was very confusing. Confusing for me, even more so for my students. I don't know why I didn't think of doing it with an equilateral triangle where mirror images complete the image. When I saw this idea back in September from Artful, Artsy, Amy, I was also desperate for lessons that used the supplies I had. Copy paper and markers were perfect for this 5th grade lesson. I used the hand out that Amy posted. As you can see from these examples, even less than perfect examples turned out pretty nice. You can see even more tessellations from our Artsonia gallery.

The one thing that I probably should have emphasized to my students was making sure that each figure was very distinct. Some of my students made robot-like figures that were difficult to put together successfully.

Thank you so much Amy for posting about this!

Artsonia?

Artsonia is definitely where I have been this year. I decided at the beginning of the year that I would publish all student work. However, it is taking up soooo much of my time.  We spend more than one class on most lessons, so it could be worse. I thought I would do this as a way to share student work with parents, grandparents, etc. I don't have that many visitors, though. I am wondering if it is worth it. What is your opinion of Artsonia? Do you use the site? If you do, what makes it worth it? How much do you upload? Do you do all of the work yourself?