Australian Art: 2nd Grade
Author Archives: Marcia Beckett
Monoprinting with Markers
Thank you to Mrs. Jahnig for this wonderful idea. I had pinned this monoprinting technique on my Pinterest board, but now it appears the link to her blog is gone. Are you out there Mrs. Jahnig? Anyways, today was another one of my summer art workshops with kids at school. We did monoprinting with markers. 1. Draw on a piece of plexi-glass with washable markers. In progress design. 2. Spray your paper with water, two or three sprays. Then, flip … Read more…
Gridded Drawings– 5th/6th grade
This was another fun project at the end of the year. The 5th/6th grade students marked off a one inch grid on their white paper. Then, they chose a photo to enlarge and draw. It could be a person (some chose a parent, others chose famous people) or it could be an animal. I photocopied grids on to transparencies and these were taped on top of their photo. Then, they drew their picture square by square. There are many resources, … Read more…
Body Pictures– Summer Camp
I am teaching 3 summer art sessions. Each session is two hours long with one or two art projects. For this session, I had 2 students going into 4/5th grade, 2 students who just finished kindergarten, and one student going into kindergarten. It was a small class, which was perfect for this project, since the pictures were LARGE. To start, we traced our bodies on large butcher paper. Then, we outlined them with markers and used collage materials (magazine images, … Read more…
Starry Nights– kindergarten
This was one of my FAVORITE lessons this year. I just loved how each and every one of them turned out. They are so expressive and colorful. This is a new spin on a Starry Night lesson. I started by introducing Vincent Van Gogh’s art by showing prints of his art and by showing a movie: Then, the students drew swirls, dashed and dots to create MOVEMENT using markers. I told that this would be their night sky, so they … Read more…
What’s on Your Bookshelf?
What are you reading this summer? Check out my personal art blog for a new series called “What’s on Your Bookshelf?” Here you can read my book reviews and add your own review.
Art Teacher Blog Directory
Did you know I have an art teacher blog directory on my blog? There are over 240 art teacher blogs added. If you have not added yours, you should do so! This is probably my most viewed page on all my blog, so I know a lot of people check it out for new blog reading. I hope you are having a GREAT summer and finding time to do artsy things. My latest project is making a scrapbook of … Read more…
Clay Suns– third grade
I told you I had a bunch of lesson plans that I have not shared with you yet. I have enough to take me through the whole summer! Here are some simple clay suns. We looked at some pictures of the Metapac clay suns.
Clay Leaf Dishes– Kindergarten
Near the end of the school year we had the lovely opportunity to have the grandfather of one of our students come into the classroom to teach us more about clay. He is a ceramicist in the area. He showed the kindergartners how to form a clay slab over a styrofoam dome form. Leaves were pressed into the dish before forming the dish. Aren’t these beautiful? Three little balls were rolled and pressed on the bottom for feet. The dishes … Read more…
New Books
While on vacation, I read the book Columbine, which is about the school shooting in Colorado. I’m interested in psychology, schools and kids. A depressing and heart wrenching read, but a thoroughly comprehensive look at the psychology of the kids, how the school and community responded and how the survivors dealt with the tragedy. It makes you think about how you would respond in a similar situation. The book was written by Dave Cullen who has extensively reported and studied … Read more…
Re-Art Swap
Once a year, a local art store hosts a Re-Art Swap where anyone can drop off old art materials and then pick up things they want. All for free! Today, I volunteered for a few hours at the swap and had a blast. It was like Christmas for an art teacher! Here is a big box of stuff that I donated. It felt so good to clean out my art supplies. Little did I know that I would come back … Read more…
Disneyworld
Oh, how much fun was Disneyworld! We had a blast. We drove to Florida from Madison, WI which took us 2 1/2 days of driving. Then we went to the different Disney parks for 6 days. My daughter Daria had a blast with all the rides and meeting all of the characters. I have tons of pictures from our trip and will show you a few of them here and there. The heat was shocking to my system! Holy cow … Read more…
Organizing all those handouts!
How do you organize your handouts for school? When I started teaching I thought it would be best to organize by unit or by grade level or in binders… I tried all sorts of things. But it was always hard to remember where I filed things. I asked for advice from my friends and someone just suggested, ALPHABETICAL! DUH! So, no more separating handouts out by grade level, but everything is in a gigantic cabinet organized alphabetically… all of the … Read more…
Tessellations– 3rd Grade
We are out of school now for the summer, but I have some projects that I have not blogged about yet to share with you. I will update the blog throughout the summer with artsy thoughts, my summer activities, a couple art workshop updates and book reviews. The third graders made tessellations in art class! How fun. This is a great project to tie in with geometry and other math concepts. I knew there had to be some easy-to-follow tessellation … Read more…
Robots and Chicks
I just wanted to show you one more very cool picture.. it was another parody of American Gothic. This student was absent and had to catch up on this project. Here are the baby chicks our school hatched, which are now growing into chickens! They grow so fast! I realized that I did not show you the pictures of the chicks when they were first hatched:
