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…
I love non-objective art. Non-objective art means that the art does not represent or depict person, objects or places. It is a picture with lines, colors and shapes as the subject. I teach this drawing project every year and the results are always beautiful. The children learn about concepts such as types of line, organic and geometric shapes, shading, values, variety of sizes, variety in general, overlapping, texture (from rubbing plates) and how to categorize non-objective, abstract and realistic art. … Read more…
My third grade classes studied color theory by using the color wheel. They learned about many different color schemes including warm, cool, neutral, primary, secondary, rainbow, analogous, monochromatic and complementary. First, they started by coloring in this Color Wheel worksheet. (I added monochromatic and neutral to the list.) On 8.5″ x 5.5″ white copy paper, the students drew a design that had rhythm through the use of repeating lines or shapes. We talked about how rhythm in art is similar … Read more…
I was honored to be included on a list of recommended blogs from Art Mouse House. I have just recently started following Art Mouse House and it is a very new blog. It already looks like it’s going to be a wonderful blog with lots of fresh ideas and clear explanations. I read her post about setting an intention and found myself nodding my head in agreement the whole time.. thinking, yep, that’s totally what I believe too! I’ve been … Read more…
This is just a quick post to share with you a simple and fun project for the end of the year.. paper hats! The kids started with a long strip of construction paper, drew designs on their hats with construction paper crayons, punched out shapes and added fun paper extensions from the scrap box. The strip was placed around their head and stapled by me. We got more use out of our paper sculpture techniques poster (below). Easy. Fun. Practice … Read more…
I am super excited to tell you about my new pack of sketchbook prompt cards. My Art History Sketchbook Prompts have helped out a lot of art teachers and I wanted to make more. My students enjoy learning about different art works and they like getting small nuggets of information along with the chance to create artwork inspired by what they see. The new art history prompts are called Art Around the World – a set of 14 task cards … Read more…
Earlier this year, one of the second grade teachers approached me about an idea for an art/social studies collaboration. She had read a story to the children about a tribe which used talking sticks. She thought the students would be interested in making their own special talking sticks. This could be a great project to accompany character education on taking turns and listening. Talking sticks have been used in native tribes of the Northwest Coast (North America) and in Western … Read more…
