Indian Elephants-Inspired by "More"

I work as a roaming Art Teacher for grades 1-3 in Ben Tzvi Primary School in Afula once a week.I work through a wonderful organization called Keren Karev.

I have 2 classes of each grade and 143 pupils all in all! And teach them ALL in 1 day!

It’s definitely quite a challenge, but ever so rewarding!!And I love it!!!!

I am also a Children’s Book Illustrator and wanted to share one of my stories with my students.

I chose “More” a fable set in India written by the wonderful & talented Enid Richemont from England. We published it as a digitalbook

I copied the book  all on a disc-on-key and showed them the pictures on the screen, translating the story into Hebrew for them. They sat mesmerized for a full 20 minutes!!!Wow!it was great!

I pointed out the bold & bright colours, the patterns, the decorative details of the artworks. They were well impressed that their art teacher had actually illustrated this book!

I chose to take one element out of the story & teach them how to draw it, it was the elephant.

We used pastels and watercolors, adding gold gouache & beads for decoration.

We used 2 lessons; some classes even took another lesson to continue decorating!

Thank you Enid for the wonderful opportunity of illustrating your story!and sharing it with my students!

בעקבות איורים שנעשו על ידי המורה קלאודיה-ספר " More"- סיפור הודי

הוצאנו מתוך הספר אובייקט אחד שהוא הפיל ההודי

בטכניקה של פנדה, צבעי מים על בריסטול בקישוט נצנצים וחרוזים 

Indian Elephants with my students at Ben Tzvi

Indian Elephants with my students at Ben Tzvi

“I’m me! I’m Different! And proud” - Portraits

I work as a roaming Art Teacher for grades 1-3 in Ben Tzvi Primary School in Afula once a week.I work through a wonderful organization called Keren Karev.

I have 2 classes of each grade and 143 pupils all in all! And teach them ALL in 1 day!

It’s definitely quite a challenge, but ever so rewarding!!And I love it!!!!

Thanks to Patsy from Deep Space Sparkle I was able to tackle portraits! I bought Patsy’s amazing PDF “Fun with Portraits” it is fantastically laid out & very helpful! Thank you!!! As always soooo inspiring!

We took 2 lessons to complete our portraits .I bought some mirrors & showed the children how beautiful they are .They loved this!

We worked with pastels, watercolors & gouache using artlines for our outlines.

Just look at all these gorgeous, beautiful, amazing children!!!

Grade 2's looking at their amazing results

Wonderful, colourful and fun portraits with my Grade 2's

Self Portraits with my Grade 1's

Self Portraits with my Grade 2's

Self Portraits with my Grade 3's

The Underwater World: Grade 1- 3 (November 2013)

I work as a roaming Art Teacher for grades 1-3 in Ben Tzvi in Afula once a week.

I have 2 classes of each grade and 143 pupils all in all! And teach them ALL in 1 day!

It’s definitely quite a challenge, but ever so rewarding!!And I love it!!!!

I wanted to do a project with all 3 of my grades .Something that we could collaborate to make something special! To show them that each on his own is special & beautiful but together we are amazing!

I thought underwater would be something bright & colourful!

I must say I was a bit apprehensive but it was a very successful, though hard working project!

The grade 3’s started with the background, I took them out of the classroom and I must say it was a bit wild!but they had fun & made beautiful backgrounds! I decided not to take the others out as 45 mins just isn’t enough!

The grade 2’s & 1’s were instructed to draw fish and seaweed (I prepared some worksheets with ideas which I handed out for those that wanted inspiration) I reminded the kids that if we copy something we must always change some details to make it our own!

I then took home all the paintings of fish and that’s when the hard work started I cut out all the fish & stuck them on the backgrounds (a surprisingly long process! Really it took me over 3 hours!)

Just look at the wonderful results!!!We are all very proud!

And the schools walls are brightened up!

Grade 3's working together

Great textures happening

Working together

Different shades of blue

Paints, pastels, markers, pencils and happily painting children

Cutting out the fish

One board done!

And another

Loving those colours!

Each fish has its place under the sea!

Even mermaids & castles!

Three boards connected and up on the wall!

Two boards connected & up on our walls!

Art with a splash of English-28/10/13-4/11/13 (Tal Menashe)

A group project once again, this time with the “littlies”. grade1-3's

After reading the great book “The glass bottom boat” by Peter Harris

We spent the first lesson painting the background with different shades of blue & green on great big sheets of paper. The following week we drew fish with black pastels and painted the watercolors. The results were spectacular.

I then cut out the fish and stuck them on our beautiful sea background. Just look at the beautiful aquarium we now have in our studio. A wonderful way to “jell” a class and have fun doing it and a great way to decorate our white walls in our new studio in Tal Menashe.

After drawing the outlines with an oil pastel they start filling in the colour

Three shades of blue

Look at how they are all working together so nicely

Adding some more details with oil pastels

 

Beautiful drawings with black pastel & watercolors

I just love this fish!

Beautiful shapes, pattern & colour!

After carefully cutting out all the fish I glued them onto the beautifully prepared background...spectacular!!!

Art with Ben Tzvi and Keren Karev

Lesson 4: 23 & 30/10/13-Van Gogh’s Sunflowers

Today would be our first experience with paints! I was both very excited & nervous!!I don’t have a home class room, no basin & I have full classes of up to 28 kids….and only 45 mins. to do it all!!EEEK! But my teachers are a great help! (The homeroom teacher stays with me) I don’t know what I would do without them!!!

We rearranged the desks to make groups, I brought a bucket of water (my mobile sink), tin cans for each desk and we got started!

Inspired by the beautiful work my private classes came up with I decided to do this at school too!

I showed them Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, some of them had seen it before. We talked about the shapes & colours and I showed them how to draw a simple vase. I told them they could decorate the vase as they wished. We also saw how if we added a line at the base of the picture we could have a table.

We used permanent markers for the outlines, watercolors & blue tempera for the backgrounds.

Though we were stressed for time (it could easily be a double lesson) It was a very successful event! And the results are superb!!!!

 

The grade 3’s wrote tests that morning so I had a small group of kids to work with! We were allowed to work in the library .We painted tortoises and had the best time! The grade 3’s painted their sunflowers the following week on the 30th

 

Art with a splash of English – Spots and dots!

I am very excited as today is my first lesson in Tel Menashe, with a group of new girls ranging from pre-school to grade 3.Teaching English in a fun & creative way I decided today we would start off with something fun and colorful and simple but effective. I had recently bought the wonderful book “The Dot” by Peter H. Reynolds and loved the illustrations and the wonderful message! Just the perfect way to get started!

Unfortunately my studio was not available yet, but we were blessed by one of the moms offering us her patio…so we got to enjoy the outdoor air too!

We read the delightful story, on my magic carpet; translating each page …they loved it!

I gave the girls each a cut out circle in different colours and asked them to stick it on their page as our starting point .I also gave them black pastels and suggested that they could make rings around the circle(like a tree).Others stayed with the dot idea.

The girls were delighted with the wonderful paints (I use Giotto tempera)the radiant colours and wonderful results!

Great fun was had by all!

Art with a Splash of English- Africa

Teaching English in a fun and creative way to my class of older girls (grade 4) I decided today we would draw African woman carrying baskets or clay-pots. We leant about patterns, inks and the richness of Arican colours. We were inspired by my series of books of "African Design" and each given a black marker pen . Some of the girls insisted on working in pencil first. We then painted with my marvelous water-color inks. Just look at the beautiful results!!!

After Hodaya has finished her frame she starts to draw her ladies




 

Hodaya busy with her outlines

I just love Sapire's line work

   

Kinneret's close up is wonderful!and I love her frame!




 


Emma-Lee painted her and her grandparents, a tribute to her grandfather
so beautiful!





Hodaya's stunning use of colour had us dazzled!



Hodaya's finished art work



Emma-Lee's beautiful artwork



 

 



 



 





 

Art with a splash of English - Down in the Jungle

This was my very second teaching lesson and it was certainly one of the best! At time we were still having our lessons in our dining room. I did it with my grade 1’s and then again with my grade 3’s (both thoroughly enjoyed it!)

Fun, giggles and lots of creativity!

Being a Children’s Book Illustrator myself I like to incorporate stories & books wherever I can! Here we “read” the wonderful book “The Animal Boogie” by Debbie Harter. I say “read” because it’s a book with a sing-along CD with a very catchy & fun tune. (The kids at the crèche I worked in couldn’t get enough of it!)

We looked at other books & pictures of animals…I also put some plastic animals in the center of our table. I gave them each marker pens & told them to go wild! (Marker pens really allow them to draw without too much thinking & planning. I find working in pencil first really stints their creativity and most times they rub out the most beautiful drawings)

Then we used my most favorite watercolour inks and I also told them that I didn’t want to see any white! I wanted to see that the animals were in the deep dark jungle. We also used salt on the wet inks which gives a most wonderful effect.

We learnt all the names of the animals in English, we boogied to the music and the kids created wonderful master-pieces!!! The colours were magical and full of great energy!

The kids were amazed at themselves!!



My group of little-ies drawing so beautifully!



Drawing with the Marker pen



Painting with brilliant, vibrant inks and adding salt



Oooooh look at those colours!

Wow!Look at Orah's beautiful painting shes only 3 & a half!

My older group really getting that jungle fever!