Are you nervous about starting the school year? Or are you excited to get things going? Even though this is my lucky 13th year teaching, I still get anxious to go back. It’s a combo of nerves, excitement and anxiety about getting back into a different routine. I still have dreams that the class is out of control, I forget that I am scheduled to teach or I oversleep. Recently, I asked readers to share their top tips for starting … Read more…
I have more pictures to show you from the Lego Brickworld Convention that was held in Schaumburg, IL this summer. If you love Legos, be sure to check out my first post about this convention. I know some art teachers make mosaics with their students, so I decided to group all of the photos I took of the Lego mosaic art that was at this convention. At the bottom of this post, I have a few links to some ways … Read more…
Are you a fan of Legos? Did you know there is a new documentary film coming out July 31 called Beyond the Brick: A Lego Brickumentary? You can see the official trailer here. Have you heard of the Lego Brickworld Convention? In June, I went to the Lego Brickworld Convention in Schaumburg, IL. My husband went for the entire 4 day convention as an exhibitor with his Lego User Group. I attended with my kids for the afternoon on the … Read more…
Summer is the perfect time to create art with your child. Nature provides endless inspiration for art. Here are three fun art activities using leaves that you can do with kids or just on your own! This post was created as part of the Elmer’s Crafty Bloggers team. Learning Activity Topic: Using nature to inspire art Educational Foundation: 1. Identifying and sorting items from nature 2. Using shapes and variety to create a composition 3. Learning about negative and positive … Read more…
A couple of weeks ago we took a summer trip to my brother’s cabin in Michigan. We spent some time in the lovely city of St. Joseph, Michigan. It is right on Lake Michigan and we enjoyed playing in the sand, walking on the piers, eating ice cream, playing on the beach playground, splashing on the splash pad and tinkering around in the two children’s museums. As an art teacher, I was delighted to see large public art sculptures of … Read more…
Hi friends! First of all, have you entered my BIG FUN ART TEACHER giveaway? If not, go to this blog post or the Facebook page to enter. Today’s blogpost is a cross-post. This week I was a guest blogger on Marit’s Paper World for her Quirky Dutch Summer series. In case you missed it, I thought I would share it here as well. This is a fun and easy technique you could try with your students. Masking with Watercolor … Read more…
Hello! I love giveaways and thought it would be fun to have a summer art teacher giveaway in honor of reaching 400 likes on Facebook. To enter the giveaway, leave a comment on this blog or on the Facebook post about it answering this question: “What is one tip you would give to art teachers (or other classroom teachers) to make the beginning of the year go smoothly?” or “What do you do with your students in the first weeks … Read more…
This year my professional goal was to learn more about contemporary artists and to create art lessons inspired by these artists. I taught about William Wegman and Justin Vining. We looked at contemporary artists inspired by microscopic things and living artists that used Disney as inspiration. At the end of the year, my students learned about Shinique Smith, Nicolas Lampert and various artists that used stuffed animals as a theme in their art (blog posts to come soon about all … Read more…
My third graders ended the school year learning a little about the symbolism of the sun in Mexican pottery. The sun has been used as a symbol of the life-giving energy and of good luck. Cassie Stephens has a very good Prezi here about Metepec, Mexico. To make these colorful, sunny pictures we started by tracing a circle shape for the face of the sun. Then we designed our faces with unique facial expressions, rays and other designs. We talked … Read more…
I now have “Good News Notes” in my shop. Save time with parent communication by filling out these easy positive notes. It’s always better to start with positive communication so that when you have something less positive to say you already have a relationship with the parents. I used to send out Good News notes and decided I wanted to revamp and update them for next year. Here is what one of them looks like: Send individual notes to parents … Read more…
Are you looking for an easy end-of-year art project? On the last days of school, I had some students that needed to finish up art projects and others that really just wanted to be done with the school year. This was a fun and easy collaborative project that many students opted to participate in. I got the idea from Romero Britto’s word artworks, like this one and I think I may have seem *something similar* somewhere at some time.. but … Read more…
My daughter who is in 4k comes home with at least 3 drawings every day. She can draw during free choice or nap time (she won’t nap). Plus with the drawing she does at home, we have collected hundreds of drawings. I’ve saved almost all of them. Her favorite things to draw are My Little Ponies, Paw Patrol characters and people. By far, she has more pony drawings than anything else. I don’t bother sorting them, I just take them … Read more…
I am going to introduce this summer art challenge to my students next week. I did this summer art challenge a couple of years ago and we had a lovely display in the fall. The parents of the kids who participated thanked me for the ideas. Whenever their kids said they were bored, they told them to pick something from the list. It’s been awhile since I updated the list of challenges, so I went over it today to freshen … Read more…
I am so proud of how well my first graders drew these beautiful birds and I’m excited to share them with you. We started by reading the beautiful book The Boy Who Drew Birds: A Story of John James Audubon. This book is a wonderful connection to science as Audubon was a fascinating man who studied the migration of birds and painted them. Your budding scientists will love this story. The students looked at reference photos of birds from books. … Read more…
Our Kindergarten teachers approached me with a request for an art project for the back cover of their memory books. The kids have filled out pages in their memory books all year and they wanted a colorful back cover. I found a fun and easy way to make fingerprint art on the Frogs Snails and Puppy Dog Tails blog. Then, we used a great end of year poem by Helen H. Moore. We started by dripping water in pans of … Read more…
