Eco-Friendly Art in Honor of Earth Day

The Dragons have created some amazing recycled artwork with reused materials in the art room this month. Not only does their artwork look outstanding, but the students and I both were absolutely elated that we were able to use materials that help keep our landfills, oceans, and forests a little bit cleaner and safer for all living things on our beautiful planet.

We learned some about ecology and taking good care of the earth in our first lesson to the art room. We learned that trash does not disappear when it leaves us, but instead travels sometimes to places it is not intended to go, like the oceans which causes pollution and makes sea animals sick. We also learned to be thoughtful about how much of our natural resources we are using to prevent deforestation and overuse of the planet.

Pre-K, K, and Life Skills created amazing recycled cardboard fish that will be composed into class mobiles on recycled hangers. We learned about some endangered fish in the oceans and made a project in honor of our "fishy friends." First, the students traced a fish on pieces of recycled cardboard and cracker boxes donated by our wonderful teachers. We then drew details on our fish with Sharpie marker and added some color with crayons and pastels. On our next visit to the art room, the students glued bits of cut plastic grocery bags to their fish for the fish's "scales" and painted on top of it with "magic glue" (which was decoupage glue mixed with some metallic paint) to make our fish look shiny and wet like a real fish would look. We saved trees and kept plastic bags out of ocean waters!













1st-3rd grades made a collaborative forest mural in honor of Earth Day. Each grade and class had a part of the mural they created: birds, trees, flowers, butterflies, even grass. On our first visit to the art room, we traced and cut out our class animal or plant on recycled cardboard. We drew in details with Sharpie and added color with crayons and oil pastels. Then, we used recycled magazines to make a collage on our piece. The students were instructed to be "color matchers" and look for colors in the magazines that resembled the colors they used on their piece. They then cut small squares out of the magazines and used glue stick to adhere them to the surface. Finally, we re-traced some of the details with Sharpie on top of the magazine pieces to define the shapes a little more. The mural looks incredible! It spans an entire wall space in the art hall. The clouds and sun are even made of recycled Styrofoam.


















4th grade is working on a team project. They are creating a recycled container town using recycled plastic containers, leftover paint paper (from our Eric Carle project), and decoupage glue. They will be drawing details on their buildings next week. Photos forthcoming!

5th grade was enjoying the great outdoors--earth in all its beauty--at Camp Olympia. They will be working on some collage images from recycled magazines this week.

The students will be showing some of their recycled artwork with other eco-friendly artwork from Briargrove Elementary students and Rodriguez Elementary students for our "Go Green" art exhibition later this month! A BIG thank you to Mrs. Gonzalez for putting this event together and for inspiring us to be "green" in our art room!