Hi there! Are you participating in Nic Hahn’s massive ATC swap with schools all over the world?! If you missed the sign ups for this, don’t despair. There are other ways to make and swap ATCs. You can set up your own swap with another school or your kids can swap with each other in your classroom. What is an ATC? ATC stands for Artist Trading Card. They are miniature works of art the size of a baseball card. Nic … Read more…
Today I am going to show you how I use Picmonkey.com to make header images for blog posts (like the one shown above.) I make these headers because it’s visually appealing, it makes it clear for the reader what the post is about and these images are great for getting traffic from Pinterest. I figured out how to add a voice narration! Hurray. I love learning new things. If you are reading from a blog reader or email, you may need … Read more…
I did it! I made my first sand painting. After reviewing the book Ice Cream Work by Naoshi, I decided to try out the SUNAE sand painting technique. You can read my whole review at this previous blog post. The book is very Japanese in style and reminds me of other Japanese cartoons and illustrations. Her artwork is very colorful, fun and cute! I really like her style. You can see the book on Amazon (affiliate link) Ice Cream Work, … Read more…
Halloween is almost here! We’ve been having fun with a variety of Halloween art projects. Kindergartners made collage pumpkins with a variety of tactile materials like feathers, yarn and foam shapes. First graders made texture rubbing pumpkin pictures and traced leaves from construction paper. Second graders made pumpkin patch pictures with water soluble crayons, paints and Sharpies. Happy Halloween!
While vacationing in Michigan this summer, I came across some really cool public sculptures of different themed ducks. You can see pictures of these sculptures on this previous blog post. At the beginning of the school year, I showed my students lots of examples of these public sculptures and we talked about how one of these public art exhibitions works. City of St. Joseph Public ART St. Joseph Ducks Facebook Page Then, they used a simple duck template and transformed … Read more…
I love Dr. Seuss’ art. Did you know in addition to writing books he created over 10,000 works of art. Amazing! The book The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss is a must-have for art teachers who love Seuss. My students, of course, also love Dr. Seuss and read many of his books in their language arts class. We watched a YouTube video about the Secret Art of Dr. Seuss and one with a slideshow of his artwork. The second slideshow … Read more…
Nora asked, “Hi Marcia, I love how you lay out photos on your blog! Could you please tell me how you do this? Thanks! My blog is http://www.waitsfieldart.blogspot.com” I use either Photoshop Elements or Picmonkey to create the collages of artwork for my blog posts. If I want to share several examples of artwork I often shrink them down and place them side by side or in a grid layout, like this: I also create photo collages as a “header” … Read more…
Are you teaching about LINES in art? Here is a FREE printable types of lines handout. I have been working on some quick assessment sheets for key concepts in art class. This is perfect for kindergarten, first grade and maybe higher. Click to download this free Types of Lines in Art Worksheet. Let the kids interpret the lines how they want. Curvy, wavy and scalloped could be all very similar. This is the best book I have found for teaching … Read more…
I have an interesting and quirky book to show to you today. The book is called Ice Cream Work by Naoshi and the cool thing is that the pictures are made entirely of colored sand! I was given a copy of this book to review and a copy to giveaway. To enter the giveaway for a copy of this book, simply leave a comment on this blog post. The book is very Japanese in style and reminds me of other … Read more…
One of the best parts about lesson planning and blogging is the ability to get all sorts of new ideas quickly on the Internet. This was a fun lesson I saw first on The Busy Librarian. We read the book The Dot and the students received papers with their first initial drawn in pencil. The students then used crayons to draw dots and circles on their initial. Using watercolor paints, they painted dots and circles and made marks in the … Read more…
I saw this super cute lesson on Hannah’s Art Club and I just loved it. My kindergartners have a whole “teddy bear” unit where they read books about bears, do related activities and have a teddy bear picnic (they all bring in their favorite teddy bear to attend the picnic.) At the beginning of the year, simply cutting out pieces, gluing them and following directions is a huge challenge for 5 and 6 year olds. This project introduced creating texture … Read more…
From time to time I receive comments on blog posts or emails from readers that might be interesting to other art teachers. These new Reader Mailbag posts will highlight questions and comments that I think are intriguing and you will too! Elizabeth asked, “Do you think it’s crucial to be an extremely talented artist yourself if you’d like to teach it?” Wow, that is a great question! First, I think it depends on what level you are planning to … Read more…
I usually start the year with kindergartners learning about and using lines. In previous years we have made line paintings and line sculptures with wire and pipecleaners. Another fun project we made was line windsocks by rolling up line paintings and adding tissue paper streamers. We’ve done line drawings (check out what my old blog used to look like before I moved it over to this website.) This year I was reminded by Cassie Stephens of a project I used … Read more…
Another Dot Day has come and gone. I’ve seen lots of dot projects all over the internet already. Here is what my kindergartners made this year. You can read all of the lesson details on this previous blog post. I didn’t do Dot Day with all of my classes, because I did a big Dot Day thing last year.. which you can see all of our fabulous artwork on last year’s blog post. If you don’t know, International Dot Day … Read more…
Have you heard of the artist Shinique Smith? I just love her artwork! It’s very gestural, colorful and it just draws me in to look at more closely. I love the use of fabric with graffiti-like painted marks. Her art combines traditional art media with non-traditional materials like clothing and stuffed animals. She is influenced by street graffiti and Japanese calligraphy. She works in paintings, drawings, installations, wrapped bundles, sculptures and videos. There was an exhibit of her artwork in … Read more…
