Tonight, on Facebook LIVE at 8pm CST, I thought we could talk about how to prepare for a sub. I'll share with you what I do to insure that I'll won't come back to a Hot Mess Express. I'd love to hear your tips. ALSO...I have BIG NEWS about our LIVE chats that I think you are going to love love love! So I'll see you real soon.
My lovely and sweet (ahem) spring-break-ready third graders are starting their string art project this week. We have prepared the boards by painting them (we are using cardboard pizza rounds purchased in bulk via Amazon) and adding texture. We also punctured holes in them to prep them stitching. Next week, we'll sketch out our designs and start stitching. Here's the video I created to introduce the kids to this process. Feel free to use and share in your art teacherin' world.
Even if you don't do this project with the kids, you might wanna watch it for the needle threading trick alone. Or you can just follow me here and catch a short clip.
There are many methods of string art but I'll be introducing my kids to ones that I call Spectrum and Radiating Design. I found the above, the one I call Radiating Design, to be a little more taxing simply because you have to get more yarn to make the lines go all the way around the board.
This one I'm calling Spectrum. This one is fun because you can use a lot of different colors. It's up to the artist just how much stitching happens within the design.
My third graders were at the end of this project when I introduced this new one. So during the second half of one art class, when they were finished with their candy sculptures, I had them quickly color, paint and scrape a texture onto their boards.
Today, the first half of class, we did this. I had a handful of kids that were absent the day so they worked on coloring and painting while the majority did this. Thankfully, we had this project to also work on. Have I ever told y'all that I have a habit of having the kids work in exactly 37 projects at once? I ain't proud.
The kids are stoked! I can't wait to share with you what they create.
Join us tonight right here at 8pm CST on Wednesday to chat about BURNOUT. We've all been there. Let's share our stories and talk about ways of lifting ourselves out of burnout and getting the fire back into our art teacherin'. See you real soon! Hey, y'all! Just thought I'd do a wee update on this incredibly fun project my students just wrapped up. They learned all about contemporary artist Peter Anton, created a heart-shaped box armature, covered it in papier mache and made fun plaster-cast chocolates. We are finishing them off this week and I thought I'd share.
Here's the lesson video I shared with my students. This project took us about three one-hour art classes.
Supplies: * Tag board for heart: one 8" square * Tag board for sides of heart: 1" X 24" * Stapler * Tape * Newspaper cut into strips on the paper cutter * Papier mache paste. We used wheat paste after checking for gluten allergies. * Paint for the heart * Plaster. We used Art Plaster by Activa Products * Containers to make the "chocolate". We used ice cube trays and egg cartons * PUFFY PAINT!
Day One: We made the armature. We were in the middle of wrapping up another project so we did the armature in one class and early finishers completed their previous project.
Day Two: We did our papier mache! It was good messy fun. Then we did an insanely fun clean up...
I hosed the tables down with shaving cream and let the kids spread it out and draw and play in it for a good five minutes. Then we had a Clean Up Game. Here's how it worked: I placed a tub of water and sponges on each table. I told the kids that WITHOUT TALKING, they were to wipe down their tables and get their table the cleanest in the room. I even provided old hotel key cards for the kids to scrape off the glue. You have never seen kids work so hard! If you go here, and scroll down a pinch, you can catch a couple short clips of my kids in action.
Day Three: We picked out three to four plaster cast chocolates and painted them in a couple different shades of brown. While those dried, we painted our heart-shaped boxes. With about 10 minutes left of class, I busted out the puffy paint...and the crowd went wild! The boxes will be sealed with sparkle puffy paint before being placed on display. This project was definitely a kid fave. Love to hear if you've given this lesson a go in your art room!
I have to share with y'all this faux box of chocolates project my third graders are working on...they are so excited! So far, we've chatted about our artist inspiration, Peter Anton, created an armature for our box of chocolates and used newspaper and wheat paste to papier mache our box. Next up, we are using our plaster cast forms to create candy! The above is my example...
And this would be Peter Anton's! Don't you love it? He's an American sculptor who is often referred to as Candy Warhol. He's created many sweet and savory sculptures but at this time of year, I'm partial to the heart shaped box of chocolates. Here's the lesson video:
Here are the supplies we used:
* Tag board cut into 1" X 24"
* Tag board cut into an 8" square
* Tape
* Newspaper
* Papier mache paste
* Plaster
* Paint
* PUFFY PAINT!
If you've never used papier mache with kiddos before, just a few things: * Check for allergies. I used wheat paste but made sure that we didn't have any gluten allergies before doing so. * Sensitivity issues. Several of my students have sensitivity issues. Meaning, they don't like the texture of papier mache. For those kids, I had buddies who finished early offer them a hand. * This stuff is MESSY. In the best possible way, says me. However, we did a very successful clean-up party after the fact that the kids loved. When most kids were finished with papier mache, I explained to them that if they were standing quietly behind their pushed in chair, I would squirt shaving cream on their table. I gave them five minutes to go bananas, be loud, have fun and draw in the cream. When the five was up, I announced that we would be having a CLEAN UP CONTEST. I placed tubs of water and sponges on each table. My rules were there was to be NO TALKING...only cleaning. The kids were to squeeze their sponges over the tub of water and use it to wipe down the table. I also provided old hotel key cards for the kids to scrape glue off the tables. You can see my kids in action over on Instagram (I'm @cassie_stephenz). Not even gonna lie, they totally rocked clean up! The best tables got the grand prize of lining up first.
I'll be sure to share an updated blog post when the kids have completed their boxes and candy. My early finishers will not only write about what they've learned but give their candy company a name, make a list of ingredients and design the lid of their box. I can't wait to see what they come up with!
With winter break right around the corner, I'm thinking ahead (for once!) about the projects my students will be working on come January. We are experiencing a break down in behavior in my classes of older students (nothing major, just more chattiness and lack of focus than what I'm used to) so we'll be returning to our start-of-the-school year chat about rules and routines. But I do want my students to still feel the love! So I'm putting together some love-themed projects for all of my classes. This here Rizzi-inspired Love Birds for my third graders is my first installment.
Lots of focus on vocabulary in this lesson. This project will really help us explore creating a gradation, mixing tints and shades, discovering value and that's just on the first day! From there, we'll be working on creating a composition of our choice. I'm excited to see what my students create when we start these next month.
I have noticed my kids respond really well to Rizzi and his colorful works of art. A couple of my third grade classes are working on large-scale Rizzi-inspired buildings to create a city. I'll be certain to share them in an upcoming post.
Rizzi's landscapes often features a gradation of light to blue as he often will have day and night in his work. I thought this would be a great tie in and give the kids a chance to learn how to create a gradation.
Aren't his bird pieces so fun and happy?
My biggest concern with kids creating at this age is that they do not draw large enough. Such is the reason I provided a guided-drawing activity for them in the video. This will help them understand the scale at which they are to create the most impact.
Do you have some favorite Valentine's Day/Celebration of Love projects? I'd love to hear about them. And if you give this lesson a go, please let me know!
I'm doing something new this winter: an art show with Artome. If you aren't familiar, it's an organization that will frame student art work and completely transform you school into an art museum for parents to enjoy and purchase the framed works of art. I'm having each of my kindergarten through fourth graders create self-portraits as I kinda think that is something all parents would want to keep forever. If you follow me here, you've seen a little of our progress. I'll be creating a video'ed lesson for each of these self portrait units. And if you wanna stay up to date on those, you can subscribe here!
For third grade, I decided to introduce them to the artist Sandra Silberzweig and her fantastically colorful works of art. I love them so! The kids have loved the process of creating their abstract selfies so far.
Here's the video'ed lesson. Feel free to use it in your art teacherin'/makerin' setting.
So far, we've done the glue portion. Someone recently suggested that mixing India ink with white glue works better. I also had black puffy paint on hand for the kids who created very fine details. The difference between the puff and glue is that the puffy paint dries with a high gloss finish and is, of course, more puffy. It also is harder to use as it doesn't come out of the bottles as easily. We had to take "hand breaks" to give our wee hand muscles a rest.
By the way, the chalk I am using in the video is a brand called KOSS. I have found it on Amazon...and it truly is the best and brightest chalk I have found to use. It isn't cheap...but we've used it for years. It is the same chalk we used to create our ceiling tiles!
When I share this video with my students, it will be divided up into two parts: one day drawing and gluing, the next chalking. I'm excited to throw color theory into this lesson.
I plan to have several of these printed (and laminated!) for the kids to use at their seats as they explore analogous colors.
I'll be certain to keep y'all updated on their colorful progress...and stay tuned for more selfie lessons and videos to come!
Hey, kids! Today I'm sharing with you the follow up to a lesson I shared a coupla weeks ago: Tissue Paper Relief. Because of the delicate nature of these tissue paper reliefs, I knew the kids would need to back them on something. So, after a review of radial balance and design, as well as the elements of art, we created these colorful backgrounds, added our tissue creations to them and, viola! Third grade successfully created their dot designs for Dot Day!
Aren't they so spectacularly colorful? I swear they practically glow in the dark! In case you missed it, here is the video I created to introduce the kids to radial balance and design as well as the process of making the tissue reliefs:
BIG SHOUT OUT to AOE and Blick for sharing this lesson at the most recent online conference.
Surprisingly, this project was a quick one. We spent one day creating our tissue reliefs which needed a day (or more) to completely dry before popping out.
Once dry, I popped the designs out as they are pretty delicate and I didn't want the kids to accidentally tear them. The following art class, they were given 10" cardboard rounds. They traced their tissue relief in pencil and then created a radial design in black marker.
I reminded them to keep their designs big because they would be coloring with these bad boys:
So I'm a sucker for all things fluorescent. And so are the kids. I love these Gallery brand oil pastels which you can find in most of your art supply catalogs and Amazon.
Creating and coloring the design took them just under an hour. Enough time to attach our tissue reliefs to the center and have them ready for a display in the hall!
What I love about this project is that it reinforced our study of radial balance...
Gave us the chance to work with a variety of art supplies...
And create something really cool! Definitely a project I see myself teaching again in the future.
I'm not usually a repeat offender when it comes to art projects but for this one, I might have to make an exception.
I know several of you purchased the rubbing plates after hearing about it from AOE. I'd love to see where you take this project!
Sometimes I do believe I am my own worst enemy. Despite the fact that the Monochromatic Self-Portrait mural is not up (and by "not up", I mean I've yet to even mount it!), I decided to plan another collaborative piece for the kids. Crazy? Def. Nobody ever said teaching art was for the sane. Y'all might recall that my theme this year is kindness which I believe begins with a love for oneself. After all, you cannot be a loving person without loving Numero Uno, right? And that's what I really love about You Be You by Linda Kranz.
It's a beautifully colorful book (where the fish are actually painted on rocks!). Not only do I love the message and the illustrations but I love that I can (re)introduce my students to the elements of art with this fun lesson. Originally I was only going to do this project with my third grade. However, it was such a hit with them (and such a fast project), I decided to have second (and possibly firsties!) create a fish as well. The more fish the better our collaborative mural, says the crazy art teacher. Here is the instructional video I shared with my students:
Feel free to use it in your art room! My students had idea sheets on their tables that really let them explore a variety of possibilities.
I encouraged them to come up with their own ideas. They are used to having "idea sheets" on their tables for inspiration. And, since there were a lot of directions given, I also provided a review of the steps on the tables as well...
In the video, I used oil pastels because that was all I had on hand at home. However, my school oil pastels are down to stubs so I gave the kids construction paper crayons to use. My third graders whizzed thru their drawing and coloring so fast that I decided to bust out the puffy paint because...PUFFY PAINT RULES.
These took us our entire hour with a little time left over to check out everyone's fish. Next up: painting the large mural that the fish will be placed in! I'll definitely share a follow up post as we work on that in the next week.
By the way, if you are curious about the circles the kids painted on...they were painted by first grade! First grade is wrapping up a dreamcatcher project where they had to use a paper plate (details on THAT project in tomorrow's Art Teacherin' 101 titled WHAT NOT TO TEACH IN THE ART ROOM. Spoiler Alert: it's dream catchers). The first grade painted paper plates and then the center was cut out to make room for their 'catcher. Instead of recycling them, I decided to have the kids use them for this project!
Let's talk about how cute and original these fish are, can we? This boy LOVED that his fish looked just like him, complete with glasses and missing teeth.
And this new student really surprised me with his level of detail. I thought for sure he'd color over all of his lines. I was happy to see that he took the time to color each section. This project served as a great assessment tool.
This project was so fun that I'm thinking of having the kids do a follow-up project that involves them painting their own rock a la Linda Kranz.
By the way, I know I recently shared my I Can board on instagram and had some inquiries...here's a close up. I don't get too specific on my board because I ain't got time for that. I do find it's helpful both for me and the students to have this visual. By the way, the pencil and the notebook came courtesy of the Target Dollar Spot. I just used black acrylic to paint the grade level and puffy paint (again, because PUFFY PAINT RULES!) on the felt notebook paper.
And there you have it, You Be YOU! Stay tuned for our completed mural...and be sure to pop by tomorrow for Art Teacherin' 101.
