Snowman Profiles

I'm always trying to think of new ways to encourage my younger students to draw big and fill up their entire paper.  I guess because they are so small, their frame of reference is also a bit small.  Every kid loves snowmen, right?!

For this project, I demonstrated on the board how to draw a LARGE capital "B" or "R" on the paper vertically (this will serve as the face and body of the snowman).  Then students added a sideways triangle inside the face to be the carrot nose.  Next, students painted the triangle nose orange, the face and body white, and then added more white to the side to be falling snow.  We put the artwork to dry.

The next time they came to class, we used oil pastels to add the details for the eyes, mouth, arm, scarf, and hat!

Winter Tree Silhouettes

In the spirit of the season, I let my 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders paint a "winter tree silhouettes."  We live in Alabama, and rarely get snow, so the kids get quite excited about even mentioning it!

This project was really quick and easy (most kids finished it in one 30 minute class period).  First, they drew a tree silhouette and filled it in with black crayon.  Afterwards, they painted snow on the ground with white tempera paint and added some to their branches and some falling.

"Dia de los Muertos"

"Dia de los Muertos" is a very important Mexican holiday that is celebrated in Mexico and parts of the United States every year on November 2nd.  In Engllish, "Dia de los Muertos" is translated to Day of the Dead.  During this day, people celebrate by remembering loved one that have passed away.  There are many traditional ways of celebrating; some of which include building altars in remembrance of loved ones, dressing up as skeletons, dancing, eating special foods (like Pan de Muerto), a procession or parade, a name call of the deceased, and decorating gravesites with flowers and marigolds.  Often, people will also tell stories retelling fond memories of loved ones lost. 

Another big activity is making sugar skulls and using them to decorate.  A sugar skull is a skull made out of sugar that is decorated with icing.  The sugar skull image has spread through the culture of "Dia de los Muertos" to include costumes, artwork, and more.  In this lesson, students drew a sugar skull with silver sharpe on black construcion paper to create a stark contrast of lights and darks.

Every year, I attend the Day of the Dead festival at Bare Hands art gallery in downtown Birmingham.  It is a fabulous event with food, drinks, dancing, costumes and loads of wonderful art!

Aboriginal Snakes

I also did an art lesson based on the Aboriginal people with my older students (3rd, 4th, and 5th grade).  One way Aboriginal people present animals in their artwork is through their "X-ray" style paintings.  This is where you can see details inside the body of the animal just as a doctor would see the details of your bones on an x-ray.  After students finished drawing their snake in oil pastel, they added Aboriginal symbols to the background to finish their composition.

Originally, I got this idea from Art Projects for Kids, but I changed it up a little by having my students add symbols to their background!

Aboriginal Boomerangs

The Aboriginal people are the indigineous people, or first inhabitants, of the continent of Australia and their descendants.  They rich cultural heritage is very interesting and includes some beautiful artwork.  Traditionally, their artwork references stories from their "Dreamtime" as well as many dots, animals, and Aboriginal symbols.

In this art lesson, students first painted an Aboriginal boomerang with watercolors, then they added stamps of Aboriginal symbols.  To finish the composition, students filled their artwork with dots.  The examples above are from two of my second grade students!

7 Habits of Happy Kids!

This past year, our school attended a professional development to learn about Franklin Covey's leadership program, the "7 Habit of Highly Effective People."  We decided to implement a lot of his ideas into our school to foster leadership and pride among our students.  "7 Habit of Happy Kids" is a spin they did on the ideas to make the language and images more kid friendly.  Whatever you call it, it is the same ideas and principles.  This summer, I painted a large mural in the front of our school to go along with the program.  It is the 7 habits tree that outlines the 7 habits.  It is 8 feet wide by 14 feet tall.  Let me tell you, scafolding is a bit scary for a clutz like me!  No worries though, I survived!

Faux Frames

I am part of our "Office Environment" committee at one of the schools I teach at.  Our committee was given the task of coming up with a new "theme" to decorate with in the office.  We decided to display student art samples inside "faux frames" painted on the wall.  With help from a fellow teacher, I painted the frames on the walls in bright colors and we hung mounted art inside of them.  They really brightened up our office space, I think they look great!

  

Mandalas

Last week in art, all of my students learned about the ancient Asian artform of creating mandalas.  Mandala actually means "circle" in Sanskrit (an ancient Indian written language).  However, mandalas are much more intricate and meaningful than that.  Mandalas are often used to focus attention and deliniate a sacred space. 

 After looking at many variations of mandalas, we talked about concentric circles and radial symmetry. 

Some Tibetan Buddhists create painstakingly detailed mandalas out of sand (like the one below).

I gave each student a 9 x 9 square piece of heavy weight watercolor paper (90 pound).  First students drew a large circle.  Then, they divided the circle into 4 equal quadrants.  Then, the students added identical lines and shapes in each of the four quadrants; therefore crearting a concentric circle filled with a radialy symmetrical pattern.  The results?  Well, see for yourself!

Behavior Color Palette

In my classroom, I have a behavior color palette for each class that comes to art.  Each palette has their classroom teacher's name at the top with an empty palette and 8 color splats at the bottom.  Each time they come to art, a class has an opportunity to earn a color splat on their palette (the goal is to fill their palette with color by earning all 8 color splats)!  I used velcro to attach the splats.  When a class fills their palette with all 8 splats, they earn a free art day.  That means that we might go outside and do earth art, we might watch an art movie, or play an art game.  Some of the games we have played in the pass include art hangman and pin the ear on Van Gogh.

Art Wall

I have an "art wall" in my classroom that decorates a large board that hangs behind my desk.  It is filled with student art from lessons I have taught over the years as well as various art students have given me as a gift!  I love this wall, because I think it helps inspire both me and the students.  It is nice for us to look at past accomplishments and proof of our talented group!

Watercolor Magic

At the beginning of every school year, we have a "Back to School" meeting for all of the art teachers in our county at the Birmingham Museum of Art.  Alabama Art Supply always does a raffle to give away free art supplies to the teachers.  Last year, I was lucky enough to win one of the raffle drawings.  What I ended up with was a product called "Watercolor Magic" by Sargent.  I took the watercolor paints back to my classroom, where they sat on a shelf for many months.  Not so magical, huh?

Eventually I taught a lesson that called for watercolors, so I decided to give them a shot.  I soon found, that they were indeed magic.  I had been a bit skeptical because I have tried eveything from the oval watercolor palettes (which end up all a muddy brown once the younger kids get ahold of them and mix them all up) to the more professional grade watercolors out of a tube that are not only expensive, but also take a lot of prep time to mix.  I was also a little skeptical because these watercolors come already in liquid form in a bottle; which made me think that the vivid colors would be diluted and that the magical watercolors would dissapear very quickly in their very own magical act!  Poof!  However, I found them to be very bright and vivid, even after I diluted them further.  They turned what might have turned into muddy messes of art into bright and beautiful artwork!

This year, when I was planning my budget for the artroom, I bought every color I could get my hand on!  They even come in metallics and pearlescent tones.  Check them out!

Picassohead

I stumbled upon this fabulous website, picassohead.  It allows you to pick and arrange faces, abstract shapes, and facial features to create your very own virtual art image in the style of famous Spanish Cubist artist, Pablo Picasso.  What a fabulous way to incorporate technology into the classroom!  Not to mention how much fun it is.  Even if you aren't in the mood to create your own, it is neat to peruse through the gallery to see the "picassohead" creations of others.

Underwater Mural

My first year teacing in the public schools, one of my principals jokingly told me, "Ok, this is your chance to outdo the last art teacher and prove you are a better artist!"  What she meant and what she explained to me, was that she wanted me to create a mural on one of our school walls.  Not ever having done such a thing, I was a little nervous, but in the end it turned out really cute.  I love the ocean and all of the whimsical creatures that are associated.  Also, i admittedly have a bit of an obsession with coral.  It's just so neat, intricate, and beautiful.  So, naturally, I decided to do an underwater scene for the mural.  I started by sketching things out with my all time favorite art supply, a black Sharpe marker.  Then, I painted everything in with acrylic paint.  This was my very first mural, so I was pretty pleased!

Paul Klee Castles

Ocassionaly I get a little stumped as to how can I teach a familiar objective using a new lesson or idea.  So, I turn to my best friend google to lend a hand (he never lets me down)!  Through google, I have found many other art teacher blogs, art lesson plans, cultural history, craft collectives, and the like.  One of my favorite blogs, Art Projects for Kids, has contributed many ideas to my classroom; including this one!

In this lesson, we looked at art examples from an abstract artist originating from Switzerland, Paul Klee.  Klee's artwork has been associated with such art historical styles as Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism.  He loves geometric shapes.  So, I took the opportunity in this lesson to help my students differentiate abstract art from realistic art and geometric shapes from organic ones.

 

 Paul Klee's painting, Castle and Sun

I did this lesson with my younger students (K, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades).  First we talked about the different parts of a castle (turrets, towers, flags, moats, drawbridges, etc.).  Then, I encouraged the students to use the ruler to help them create straight lines and geometric shapes.  I also constantly reminded students to use a lot of shapes to add detail to their artwork.  After drawing their castles onto construction paper, they colored in each shape a different color.  Lastly, they traced around each shape with either white or black oil pastel so the colors would really "pop."

Starry Night Mural

Last year I painted my classroom a bright blue color (the actual color was called "Bay City Blue").  My favorite colors are any combinations of blues and greens, so I accented with lime green.  I have a huge blank wall in the back of my classroom, so I thought, "Why don't I paint a mural there?"  So, I did!  I sketched my humble verison of famous Dutch artist, Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night and commenced painting.

Optical Illusions

I decided to try and do an optical illusion art lesson with my older students (4th and 5th grades).  I found a lot of optical illusion images and built a flipchart for my Promethean board.  The kids got really excited about looking at all of the illusions.  We even talked about how the word optical is similar to the words Optometrest, Opthamologist, and Op (from Op Art).  We talked about how the prefix has to do with the eye and seeing.

After looking at all of the illusions on the board, I passed out 9 x 12 newsprint, plastic bowls to trace circles, pencils and rulers.  First, the students created a practice drawing.  This was very important because the concept of using a ruler to draw straight lines was a bit foreign to them and the level of difficulty on this project was fairly high.  I thought teaching them ruler skills was beneficial too, because that is a skill that they may be tested on in math.  This lesson was also a wonderful way to introduce basic perspective and the vocabulary associated with it.

First the students traced a circle anywhere on their paper using a bowl, then they made marks on two sides (one long and one short) of their paper every inch.  Next, they used the ruler to create a checker pattern in their background by drawing a line everywhere their one inch marks were.  After that, they turned their circle into a spherical form by placing vertical curved lines that all dissapear at the same vanishing point on top and bottom.  Then they repeated this for the horizontal lines.  Lastly, they colored in their image with two crayon colors of their choice!

The results were magnificent!

Welcome

I am very excited to welcome you to my blog!  Over the course of the current school year, I plan to catalog a majority of the art lessons I do with my students; as well as other happening involving my adventures in teaching art.

I intend for this blog to be both a learning experience for me and a way for parents and students to track the progress of art education throughout the year.  I can't imagine how much fun it would be to see my very own artwork floating in cyber space if I were a kid!  Feel free to leave questions, comments or suggestions.