Gotta Love the Impromptu Projects!

Our current science unit is on Stars and Constellations. I love studying the stars! After we finished reading a lesson today I decided that it would be fun for my students to create posters about what we have learned so far. It was random, but I love what I see coming from these students. They are following a check list and working well as groups. It is interesting to see the leaders come out, leaders clashing with each other, compromising, creativity, silliness, and art. All of these things are important in the learning process! I can't to share pictures of this project!

Here is the checklist I gave to them. 

• Title
• Information
• Correct Spelling
• Cursive
• Easy to read/Neat
• Names of people in the group
• Pictures
• Color
• Creative
• Everyone participates
• Work well as a group

Flowers

I found this idea on Pinterest and it led me to The Inspired Classroom blog. There are great ideas on this blog.
My class just finished up a unit on Plant Life. Before the test my students did these flip books. On the front they colored in a flower (which I drew and photo copied), labeled the parts, and cut them into sections. When they finished this they defined what each part does for the plant behind the flaps.

Bird Paintings

When I first started teaching I was hired to teach elementary art. This wasn't my strongest area, but I could do it. A friend of mine gave me the best book when she found out what I was teaching: "Drawing With Children" by Mona Brooks. I had heard of Mona Brooks in an art class I took at TMC, but it was a brief conversation. I didn't realize that she had so many plans for teaching children how to draw. This book is wonderful!
Mona Brooks uses basic shapes and lines to get students started in drawing. Then she gives great step by step instructions on how to draw different things: parrots, lions, still life, etc.
My 3rd grade students loved drawing their parrots. And I love that all of them are different! Once we finished drawing them we painted them with watercolors. This proved to be a little harder than planned and one of my students did have a meltdown, but all of the results were beautiful.

Glue Pictures

I love teaching art. When I was first hired at the school I am currently working at I taught elementary and jr. high art. Even though it was tricky at times I really liked teaching art. I love finding new ideas and trying them out. Some of them work and some of them don't, but hey that's life! When I first found out I was going to be teaching art 3 1/2 years ago I found this book. First of all I need to say that I love Usborne Books! This book in particular has so many great ideas! I completely recommend it for teaching art in the classroom. As you can see there are a few sticky notes in it.

One of the best ideas I found in it was "glue pictures." It takes a few days, but it is worth it!

1. The students create a picture using elmer's glue on cardstock or cardboard. You want the glue to be thick so that when it dries it stays bumpy. 
2. Once the glue is completely dried paint over it with gold paint. It is ok if the paint isn't overly thick on the paper. Let the paint dry overnight. 
3. Finally rub brown shoe polish over the entire picture. This gives the picture an antique look. They are beautiful. 

My students did this during February. I asked each one of them to do some design using hearts. They are currently looking beautiful in the windows of my classroom. 

Valentine's Day

Found a similar idea on Pinterest. 

Our memory verse this week was 1 John 4:9. 

We had a great talk about how God loves us!

The students thought of ways they could show God's love to others. I requested they list 2 ways and most of them did more. It was great to see their desire to show God's love! 

They are hanging from the ceiling in my classroom!

Snowglobes

We made this before Christmas but left them up in the window thru January. 

I traced out the shape of the black base and blue inside. 

The students cut them out. 

Each student was given white, brown, black, red, orange, and green paint, a q-tip, and a tooth pick. 

I instructed the students that they had to have at least 1 snowman. 

I love how creative these third graders were! Birds, bunnies, and SF Giants hats. 

Word Art

I loved doing this art project with my Jr. High Art students. We kinda cheated in that I had them use an overhead projector to trace the picture, but they turned out so nice. Each student chose an important person in our country's history and they came up with a list of words and phrases relating to that person. Then they used those words to make the picture of the person. This is a portrait of Ronald Reagan done by a 7th grade student. I think it looks great. I'm not teaching Jr. High Art next year and I'm trying to figure out how I can do this with my 3rd grade class next year. It might be a stretch. 

Ideas from the art festival

I'm pretty sure a kindergarten student made this. There is wire under aluminum foil and then colored with sharpies. It is quite stunning!

This project probably should have gotten a blue ribbon. I helped judge it and I feel guilty for not giving it a better rating. Not much I can do now though. The leaves are made out of paper towels and then I think they used water colors to add color. This one should be framed in someone's house! It was done by a 2nd grade student I think. 

I love this style of drawing! It is sideways, but you get the idea. :o) I love random drawings in black pen. They remind me of one of my very good friends from college. (Miss you Emily!)

I think I might try this one in my jr. high class next year. 

I'll post more from the festival another time. Have a great weekend!

Kites!

I don't have any pictures for this, but everyone should do this in their classroom. I did this last year too. 
Kites in the Classroom has awesome kites to purchase that you color or paint and then put together. The kids love this! Each student in my 1st-3rd grade classes received their own kite and colored it with crayons.  When we were all finished coloring we attached the poles and string. Then we looked at each person's kite and told them how they did a good job on their kite. It was great to hear the kids encourage each other. The  kids loved having others comment on their kids. All of the feedback was positive. 
A few days later we had a day when we flew the kites out on the playground. Those kites fly very well, as long as they don't get tangled up. :o) Thankfully that only happened with two of the kites. 
Check out their website and order some for next year! It is a great project! 
www.kitesintheclassroom.com/ 

Feeling a little sad

I'm feeling extremely torn. On one hand I'm excited and on the other hand I'm a little sad.
For the past two years I've been teaching elementary art at a Christian school here in Nor Cal. I've loved teaching art. Never thought I would be able to do it, but the Lord has helped me so much. This last year Jr. High Art was added to my schedule. That has been a huge stretch for me. I still don't feel very qualified to do it, but I'm doing my best. A few things came up at the school where I am working and Praise the Lord I have a job for this next year. My job is changing so much though! Next year I will continue teaching Jr. High Art. Along with that I will be adding a jr. high elective. That means I will be sitting in the computer lab while the students work independently with the computer program. Not too hard for me. :o) Then I will be the assistant teacher in a 2nd and 3rd grade combo class. Woah! That is new! The classes are so small for this next year that they decided to combine the classes. So I will be teaching more, but not be completely in charge of the class. I'm really excited about that. I went to school to teach elementary school, so I feel like I'll be using my education more. I'm totally happy about that! The thing I'm sad about is that I won't be teaching elementary art anymore. I've loved teaching elementary art. If I can get my act together I'll have some projects ready for the teachers at the beginning of the year. I have so many great ideas! I don't want them to go wasted.

So that's my story.


Now for some art projects!
I did this with my 2nd grade class before school got out. We spent one class time painting paper and using those wooden spoons from ice cream to make texture in the paper. The next class time we cut out the paper to make sea creatures. They loved this! Even the students who don't usually like the projects liked this one. :o) We talked about how Eric Carle does this kind of thing to make his illustrations for his books. It was very fun.

favorite

I was feeling like taking an artsy picture the other day. These are may favorite paint trays. Why do I like them? Because I don't clean them! They are plastic lids and I throw them away when I am done with them. :o) One of my least favorite things about being an art teacher is the clean up. I am so lazy! I would much rather throw things away than clean them. If only I could do that with the paint brushes too! :o) 

2010 Art Festival

I took a bunch of artwork to the ACSI Art Festival a week ago. It went really well! I was very excited! I still haven't told my students how they have placed yet, but I will soon. Here are a few of my student's pieces.

City View

This is one of my favorite things to teach my students. It is tricky and they have to pay really close attention, but the result is very cool. I found a bunch of cool lessons online, but I can't find the link at the moment. I'll have to post that later. This was done by a 7th grade student. It turned out great!  We started out with 2 parallel lines and used rulers to make a bunch of guidelines throughout the drawing. A little hard  for me to explain right now, so I'll get that link up very soon. 

Oil Pastel

This has been such a crazy time of year with so many people out sick. The other week I had something all planned out for my 4th grade class and then half of the class was home sick! Yikes! So I was flexible and changed my lesson. Instead of the planned lesson I gave the students oil pastels to experiment with. A few of the kids didn't really put much thought into what they did, but there were others who did a great job. This is one of them.

I'm realizing that kids need some time to just be creative. So I'm working on giving them the opportunity on a regular basis. I really do enjoy teaching art. I love seeing how the kids think. :o)

Patterns galore!

The class I have the hardest time "pleasing" is my 6th graders. You know that age, they think they are so ready for junior high. Getting into the awkward stage...you know what I mean. Don't get me wrong, I totally went through it too!!

This art lesson was one they actually liked!! A friend of mine from college was really into making collages of patterns like these. I have made a few in my sketchbook. I showed those samples and told the class they had to divide the circle into at least 5 sections and create different patterns for each section. We talked about what a pattern is and drew several examples on the board. Of course there were a few boys who went a little crazy on me...drawing guns and missiles. But overall the class really liked the project. These are a few that turned out really well.

skyline

I actually didn't even do this project with my 1st grade class. I was out of town for a week and the woman who subbed for me did it. I was so excited about the results! The kids did a great job! They splattered paint onto the paper for stars. And then cut out houses and windows for the skyline. One thing that I totally recommend is giving the kids a chance to experiment with splatter paint. The week before all that we did was splatter paint. Those pictures are pretty cool too. But if we wouldn't have do that I think the students would have gone a little crazy with the paint. In most classes when you are doing something special it is good to give the kids a chance to be curious and try it out.

Decisions, decisions...

All year I have known that we will be entering art work into the ACSI Art Festival. All year! All year!! So why is it that now it is right around the corner and I don't feel ready?!?! Eek! So much to decide! Which pieces should we enter? I have to decide by Monday!!

Ok, trying to trust God and not freak out! Once I decide I'll post some pictures. I'm excited to see what other schools enter to help give me some more ideas. But I also feel a lot of pressure for other art teachers to see what we enter from RVC. I know it isn't all about me, but I does, to a certain degree, reflect my teaching.

Thankfully, God is in control, and I am not. I would mess everything up! :o)

100th Day of School

A couple of ideas from the 100th day of school.

100 fingers

Each student cut out spots for "flat spot" until we had 100 spots.

Some of the spots turned out a little interesting, but this was with Kindergarten. :o)

Flat spot is made out of boxes covered with white butcher paper. Each student brought in 100 pennies and then we filled "flat spot." The money brought in was given to Haiti.

Teepees

I have to admit...I did not do this art project. The kindergarten teacher did this with her class while they were studying Native Americans. I think they are so cute! The paper she used was a partial circle with patterns on it. The kids cut them out glue/taped them and added toothpicks. I love them! And the kids loved showing them to their parents.

Patterns in Nature

One of the things I love about teaching at a Christian school is that we can relate our artwork to our faith.

I found this project on Mrs. Brown's Art Class website. I just found this site a couple weeks ago. I introduced my 3rd grade class to Andy Warhol's art style. Then we talked about the 5 main patterns in God's creation (check our Mrs. Brown's website for the 5 patterns). This is my sample, but I plan on finishing the project with the students tomorrow. We started in pencil, outlined in black, and are coloring with bold markers. The kids are doing a great job!