What the Art Teacher Wore #157

Squidward Monday: I scored this Artists Only Squidward shirt at a resale shop and love it as did the kids. It was the perfect comfy thing to wear on a Monday because, let's face it, Mon-daze are no bueno. top: Buffalo Exchange but also available at Forever21; Matisse-inspired skirt: estate sale; tights: Target; shoes: Fluevog

Sup, buddies?! I do believe it's been a good coupla weeks since I've shown y'all what I've been a-wearing but it's totes not my fault. I've not worked a full week since the holidays, I swear! And it currently seems like I'm buried under my To-Do lists, swimming upstream from the piles of student artwork, stacks of personal projects and just mounds of STUFF. Every weekend, I try and catch up and every Monday, I'm all...

But, whateves. We're all busy, right? It's just a matter of managing the messes. Which, as it turns out, I'm suck-tastic at doing. Oh well. I take heart in knowing that I've got another shot at getting my life together every Monday. Wish me luck, y'all! 

Crayon-tastic Tuesday: My fourth graders are in the middle of some crayon-inspired projects. They are making three-dimensional papier mache'd crayons as well as team-work collaborative two-dimensional designs. That lesson (with video!) will be up on my blog this week. I wore this lil ensemble for some inspo! crayon sweater: made by me, DIY here; crazy art teacherin' skirt: made by me, DIY here

Honest speaking: I don't do many team projects. Okay so maybe I've NEVER done a team project. Mostly cuz I didn't know how it would pan out...would the kids get along, would I need to intervene, would they be able to pick their teams, etc. Well, I gotta say, I'm a convert! This has been such a success so far. I only had to step in to tell 'em to stop and clean up! Like I said, this lesson will be up on Tuesday this week so stay tuned (but if you wanna see the lesson video now, go here)!

If you follow me here, you've already seen a sneak preview of how these are turning out! 

Hump Day!: My mission of late is to be as comfy as possible so this sweatshirt and stretch pencil skirt is the new yoga pant, says me. Also, I'm totes on a combat boot bender, y'all. I've bought two in the last month. I love the stacked heal but also the comfort. It also reminds me of my 1990's alternative-dressin' days! Keith Haring top: Forever 21; skirt: old, Target; boots: Aldo

I shared my firsties Mad Scientist lesson with y'all here. Here was our final installment of the lesson: bubble printing! It was just about the most funnest thing ever and reminded me about everything I love about teaching art. Lemme tell you how we did it... 

Firsties at their finest!

To make the bubble printing paint use the following: aluminum pie pans, dish soap, water and paint. I add about two table spoons of soap to the pan with nearly a 1/4 cup of paint. Then stir in about 1-2 cups of water. There really isn't any exact science to it, I just dumped stuff in but for those of you that like measurements, there you go. Stir it around and it's ready! I had four students at each table with four different colors in each spot: red, blue, black and yellow. The kids were armed with a straw and a piece of construction paper (any thicker stock paper would work). 

I then told the kids our routine. When I hit my chime once, they place their paper in the corner of their table and blow into the pan in front of them. When I hit the chime again (10 seconds or so later), they were to "Smash Them Bubbles!" which quickly became our new chat. Then I would say, "Move to the right, move to the right, take your paper and your stray and move to the right, show me you're ready!". The kids would place their paper in the corner of their table again, bend down in front of their new pan and wait for the chime. It worked great! The next day, I spent about 10 minutes gluing their artwork to their new frames. They look fab, says moi!

We're Almost There, Thursday: So the rumors went to flying about bubble printing! My kindergarteners came in asking if they were going to do it because their sibs had told them all about it. Made me so happy! AND I had totes planned on them doing it as well so they were thrilled! sweater: Boden, thrifted; dress: Modcloth; boots: Frye; necklace: Paper Source; belt: Amazon

Finally Friday!: By the way, if you are curious as to why I am standing in front of the same stinkin' back drop this week, it's because my art room has become the armpit of the school. Between bubble printing, papier mache, printmaking, chalking, painting and collage, the art room looks like, well, an art room. But I thought I'd spare you the gory. sweater: old, H&M; paint drip scarf: flea market; scissor skirt: old, Modcloth; boots: Frye; palette hair clip: DIY, here

Just in case you were wondering what my cabinet said! You can take a tour of my art room if you are interested here! 

In the Art Room: Printed and Collaged Winter Self Portraits by Second Grade

So I kinda sorta told the kids that if they painted and printed their winter selfies really well, we just might get the magic of snow. Snow seems to elude us in these parts...but not this year. Turns out these cute things really DID bring on the snow which was totes fab...except for the fact that it meant we've been working on these bad boys for a coupla days weeks. But that's all right. I mean, just take a lil look-see at how stinkin' awesome these printed and collaged winter self-portraits are!

I knew I wanted to introduce my second graders to printmaking but how? I remembered that my buddy Laura over at this fab-o blog taught her students how to create adorable winter selfies last year. I thought it'd be fun to add the printmaking element to this lesson and viola! Here you have it!

This lesson was chuck full o' art teacherin' moments: we learned how to use the elements of art to create pattern, we learned how to make both marker and ink prints, we learned how to create a tint of blue and print snowflakes in the background, how to draw selfies and design a pleasing composition. In short, we was busy. 

Lemme break it down for you:

Day #1: Intro to carving a print. We used Scratch-Art Foam Board but styrofoam plates would work in a pinch. I had created hat and mitten templates so that we could move on to the pattern designing and printmaking faster. I have 30 minutes art classes so I have to take the guess work outta some things. After the first class, most of us had this:

Day #2: On the second day, we continued our pattern design with ink pen. I encouraged the kids to go over their lines more than once just to make sure they'd have a successful print. Early finishers colored with marker and we started to pull marker prints. You can see that in the video...if you've never done it, it's magical!

Day #3: We are ready to use brayers and ink to pull prints! I like to use water soluble Speedball ink because it's the jam. I usually lay out a couple of colors and the kids rotated creating two different color prints on colorful copy paper. (This video was created for my third graders but it's the same idea so I thought I'd share!)

Day #4: We learned how to create a tint of blue and painted a piece of construction paper. We also used cut pieces of mat board to dip into white paint and print snowflakes. It was fun to introduce the kids to a coupla printing processes.

 Day #5: Selfie time! The kids had mirrors, this idea sheet and sketch paper. They had to create three thumbnail selfie sketches before moving on to drawing on their final paper. Pink chalk was used to show just how cold it was outside!

 Day #6: Time to start assembling our collage. We had a long chat about composition and balance before going on this adventure. The kids could use their favorite prints, whether that was their marker or ink prints (we'll use the extra prints for another project, stay tuned!). I happened to have a ton of scrap paper from another project so many of the kids used oil pastels to create scarves!

Some of the girls used chalk for their long hair. 

So in love with this self-portrait! I love how vibrant the marker prints are, it made my happy when the kids chose them. 

Several students decided to arrange their composition on a horizontal format. 

 Last thing added was the pompom! For that, have the kids wrap an 18" long piece of yarn many times around a 2" piece of cardboard. Carefully slide it off and double knot tie another string around the middle. Trim the loops of yarn and you have a pompom!

Now...maybe sharing these snowy selfies here will get me one more snow day, eep!

Mad Scientist Creations for First Grade and Beyond!

A coupla weeks ago my first graders came into the art room full of questions about forms. They'd been learning about cylinders, spheres, cubes and the like in science and had a curious question: Can you make ANY shape into a form?  

I explained to 'em that yeah, you could. Geometric shapes become geometric forms. Circles become spheres, triangles become cones, pyramids or triangular prisms. Then our discussion turned to organic shapes and I just knew we'd be chatting forever. We were midway through this fun printing project and I knew if we kept talking, we'd never get them finished. 

"Tell you what. Our next art project will be all sorts of science experiementy. Sound good?!"  

Well, today my first graders wrapped up this project and it's been so much fun that I just had to share right away. I can't take much credit for this project at all as it was a montage of ideas from fab-o art teacherin' types. I've seen the beaker bottle project shared many times on pinterest. I decided to add the color-mixing/wet-on-wet painting portion to add more science to the mix. 

The bubble idea came from one of my all time favorite art teacherin' blogs. I always love everything that Natalie shares on her blog, she's the art teacher that I wanna be when I grow up! Make sure you visit her post to see the bubble videos she shared with her students...I know my kids loved viewing them!

Because this project took us a coupla days (I see these dudes for 30 minutes at a time so we work in baby steps) and involved so many introductions to science and technique, I created a lil how-to video for you. The instructional portion is in kid-friendly speak so you can feel free to share it with your students. Tell 'em Mrs. Stephens said hi. 

In case the sound of my voice is akin to nails on a chalk board, I thought I'd also jot down the daily steps of this here project!

Day #1: After chatting about shapes and forms, we drew them together! We looked at beakers and talked about measurements and added those lines and numbers to our beakers.

Day #2: We did a color mixing science experiment! 

After we got the experiment started, we set to painting our beaker bottles using the primary colors and the wet-on-wet method. 

 Day #3: We watched the bubble videos from Natalie's blog. I also blew bubbles and we looked at them and pointed out what we saw: that they were different sizes, sometimes they were connected, they overlapped, they were transparent and reflective. Using black paper, we started our chalked bubbles.

 Day #4: We finished off our bubbles and chatted about composition. After the beakers were cut out, the kids had to arrange them in a pleasing composition on their bubble paper before gluing them down. 

Day #5: We had a bubble printing party! It was so much fun, just check out this short clip:

To make the bubble printing paint use the following: aluminum pie pans, dish soap, water and paint. I add about two table spoons of soap to the pan with nearly a 1/4 cup of paint. Then stir in about 1-2 cups of water. There really isn't any exact science to it, I just dumped stuff in but for those of you that like measurements, there you go. Stir it around and it's ready! I had four students at each table with four different colors in each spot: red, blue, black and yellow. The kids were armed with a straw and a piece of construction paper (any thicker stock paper would work). 

I then told the kids our routine. When I hit my chime once, they place their paper in the corner of their table and blow into the pan in front of them. When I hit the chime again (10 seconds or so later), they were to "Smash Them Bubbles!" which quickly became our new chat. Then I would say, "Move to the right, move to the right, take your paper and your stray and move to the right, show me you're ready!". The kids would place their paper in the corner of their table again, bend down in front of their new pan and wait for the chime. It worked great! The next day, I spent about 10 minutes gluing their artwork to their new frames. They look fab, says moi!

Until next time, hope all y'all have a bubbly week!

In the Art Room: Super Hero Selfies

So I've been teaching for almost a million years and I'm not afraid to say that I don't love everything about teaching art. There are some things that got me all feelin' like this when I'm teaching...

 And got my students doing all this cuz they just...can't...

My two least fave thangie-muhgies are teaching figure drawing and perspective. In no particular order of distaste. I'm an equal opportunity dis-liker. 

So, what did I decide to do? Put both things together into one lesson. Because two negatives make a positive, right? Turns out they do in this case as the kids loved this Super Hero Selfie lesson!

This big fat hairy project involved color theory, wax resist, scratch-art paper making, perspective drawing, figure drawing and, finally, the creation of a super hero selfie. I decided to create a video for y'all to view on your own or share with your students. Because each phase of this project might take a class period, I broke this video up into bite sized pieces. So that you can easily find the individual lesson, I've added a header to the video. This way, if you are running a flipped classroom, you can simply have your students move on to the next clip!

 Just to break it down for you:

• Day One: The students used 12" X 18" pieces of paper, oil pastels and either warm or cool watercolor paint. I like to use 80 lbs white paper.
• Day Two: We made our scratch art paper! For this, I've found oil pastel works best. Also, when the students go to paint, use slightly diluted black tempera paint. I love Sax Versa Temp paint. We used 12" X 12" squares for this.
• Day Three: Wooden skewers and templates were used. I had a variety of those shapes you saw in the video for the kids to trace. Many kids struggled with the idea of having the windows go back into space. So we watched a couple of videos and practiced on dry erase boards until we got it.
• Day Four: We drew the kids in action in P.E.! Once we returned to the art room after about 10 minutes of gesture sketching, we used mannequins to create our own super hero pose. Lines were traced over with Sharpie.
• Day Five: We started finishing our super heroes, adding color with colored pencil and creating our compositions. This entailed cutting out the buildings and arranging them in a pleasing way with our hero. Early finishers wrote stories about their heroes!

Now with our snow days, my jury duty and holidays, we've really been on the struggle bus to finish these. Mostly because the kids have really gotten into it! They keep getting more elaborate with their heroes, adding side kicks, villains and costumes. 

I love that each phase of this project introduced them to something new.

Here's a peek after the their day. Homemade scratch paper isn't perfect as it sometimes comes off in flakes. But having made it as a kid, I wanted my students to have the same experience. 

Gesture drawing the kids in P.E. was a big hit. It really loosened up the kids and helped them have more interesting poses for their super heroes.

The wooden mannequins were also helpful. You can see this student's original drawing in pencil under her Sharpie'd lines. I love the sidekick!

Check out that pose! I can't take credit, this student draws a lot and is very talented. Not to mention, a big Star Wars fan!

Once together, the kids wrote stories that had funny and elaborate names for their heroes. 

And for once, perspective and figure drawing had me and my students all...

 What are some of your fave perspective and figure drawing lessons? Do you have some tips and tricks? I'd love to hear about 'em as I'm always in need of some help...aren't we all?

Also! Many of you have asked about my videos: how I make them, what equipment I use, etc. I'll be sharing that in a blog post this week so stay tuned!