Welcome to the second post in my series On Teaching Art. The first post and the background behind this series is On Teaching Art: Art vs. Craft. The question posed for this installment is: How can we organize planning for art instruction? Carrie Birmingham said, “For instance, I can imagine planning around art elements like line and color, or planning based on great artists, or planning based on curricular connections, or planning based on children’s development. There are probably a … Read more…
Did you hear the news? My heart sunk. Tears were (almost) cried. Google is ending GOOGLE READER! On July 1st, Google is discontinuing the reader because of diminishing use. Say what? What to do with the hundreds of blogs that I follow? Yes, hundreds. (I do a lot of skimming.) I flip through blogs on my Google Reader app on my phone. I know many of you also probably use Google Reader and Friend Connect. Well, after doing a bit … Read more…
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be an elementary art teacher? Maybe you are interested in becoming an art teacher. Maybe you are curious how my day compares to yours’. I know I would love to walk a day in another art teacher’s shoes to see what it is like at different schools or in different locations. Through words and pictures, I am going to walk you through my day. Out of privacy of the students, … Read more…
Making clay mugs with 3rd graders.. This is a great lesson that can be adaptable to pretty much any age. I’ve taught this project with middle school students and had very successful results. This is the youngest I’ve taught the clay face vase project and I think they did a very good job! Clay techniques used: rolling slabs and using a straight edge to cut a clay rectangle tracing a cutting a clay circle for the base forming facial features … Read more…
Global warming is all because people don’t like purple. Help us by saving purple! Please SAVE PURPLE! Oh, how I LOVE this kindergartener’s creative imagination. Every class period I am treated to her charming drawings and interesting ideas. One of the best parts of my job.
This art project is an oldie, but a goodie. I’m not sure where I first saw this project. I think maybe one of the other art teachers taught this lesson in one of my previous school districts. I have seen some lovely variations of this project online. Here is a beautiful one from Pixels and Paintbrushes. It looks like we were both working on them at the same time. 🙂 We began by tracing mitten templates on a piece of … Read more…
Prayers and love to those in Connecticut. I pray for peace, I pray for love, I pray for our country and world. As a teacher, parent and human my heart is heavy today.
Exercise your right to vote! I just found out from Jessica over at The Art of Education that my art education blog has been selected as one of the finalists to win “Art Ed Blog of the Year!” There are so many great blogs on this list and they are all ones that I follow on my blog reader. Take a look at all the ones posted and you will get so many good ideas for your teaching. Art is Basic … Read more…
More fun collages!
The second graders had a lot of fun making these recycled city collages. I got the idea from this project on Pinterest. The second graders are studying urban and rural communities, so it ties in with their class curriculum. I precut a whole bunch of squares and rectangles from magazine pages on the cutting board. Then, the students used the shapes (and also paint chip strips) to construct buildings. Later, they added colorful tape and stickers.
I photocopied some leaves on paper for the kids to play with. This student used colored tape and marker to transform his leaves. It thought these were fun. The Alternative Art Journals book giveaway goes to mom2h who said…“I am just starting to explore art journaling, and in fact, have your art journal blog ( and a couple of others) placed at the top of my bookmarks to remind myself to seek out ideas. I haven’t taught it, but we … Read more…
Beverley Baird you are the winner of the Gelli Plate! Send me your postal address and I will mail it to you. (I used a random number generator to pick the number 5, for the 5th comment on the blog post.)Links to Check Out:I am LOVING this awesome flip book video all hand drawn. Breathtaking! What do you think about Performance Based Pay? Weigh in at the Art of Education. I need to order this kolaj magazine! I love this … Read more…
School has started! First graders stamped their sketchbook covers. In process sketchbook cover… simple initial collage Kindergarten color collage Embellished stamping Look how beautiful crayon texture rubbings and children’s watercolor paints can be!
Jennifer Grobsaid… I just hung up my sark poster today in my room. I would love those books!!! Your projects are super cute!Jenn Grob Congrats Jenn, you are the winner of the Sark books. School starts on Monday! So, I will have lots of new posts about projects coming soon. Our school is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year and in the next few years we are going to building on to the existing structure and adding new classes! … Read more…
