In the Art Room: Teacher Fill-In-The-Blank for your PD!

For fun, I created these Teacher Fill in the Blank forms for our first day of professional development (I know, my nerd status just got elevated to Uber Nerd). It started with one I created after getting the idea. I ran it past my admin and she suggested I make a couple more for our opening meeting. I ended up creating these three. They were such a hit today that I thought I'd make them available for you! 

Feel free to download and use! Here they are...credit to yours truly would be greatly appreciated!

To kick off the meeting, I placed just the fill in the sheets on the tables, not the story. I did this so that the teachers would be more random in their word choices and thereby making the story more funny. The teachers worked in groups at their tables to compile their lists. After about 5-7 minutes, I passed out the paragraphs and the teachers dropped in their words in the order that they'd written them on their first sheet.

Table by table, one teacher would pop up and read their paragraph. Y'all...they were HILARIOUS! We were dying laughing and it was just about the most perfect way to start our school PD...says me. I love a good belly laugh with friends in the morning. 

If your school, or just the folks at your table during a PD, are looking for a fun time, this is it. Let me know if you do it, I'd love to hear what you think. Have fun and WELCOME BACK!

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In the Art Room: A Glimpse Inside my First Day with 1st and 2nd

Ohhhh-whey! Don't mind me, it's just the second Monday of the new school year and I've already got my feet up and I'm surrounded by Getting to Know You Sculptures. Last week, I shared with you a video where I talked you thru what I do my first day with my 1st and 2nd graders for their first 30 minutes. Today I thought I'd share with you a video of myself with my kiddos to give you more of a visual. So, here you go! My very first art class with some of my very favorite people:

Now, if you need more explaining about my very first 30 minutes and why I do what I do, you can check out this lil clip:

I love seeing how other art teachers teach. I am loud, annoying and definitely not for everyone...but that's me. That's who I am and that's how I teach. I really think finding your voice in your classroom is the best way to be your best teacher. So while I like to share what works for me, it's by no means me saying that you should do it too. It's just an offering of ideas and a little peak inside. Y'all are always welcome to my art room! So pull up a chair, roll up your sleeves and...GO CLEAN SOMETHING for heaven's sake. This place is a PIT!

All kidding aside...stay tuned...I've got more videos coming your way this week and a follow up to our sculpture lesson. Love y'all!

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In the Art Room: Finding Your WHY

 Howdy, friends! I've been busily plugging away, getting my art room ready. My students will be here in just three short weeks...which I know sounds like plenty of time. However, I go back in two weeks (and two days, but who's counting? ME, THAT'S WHO) and have decided not to come in at all next week. That leaves just this week to get my room ready...and I decided to only allow myself two days. If you follow me on Instagram, you were able to see my progress. I drank two pots of coffee AND GOT SO MUCH DONE! Proper room tour to come...once I clear the hot mess off my counters (like, did an art supply store bomb go off over there or what?!)

 In case you didn't know, I've got a book club happenin' over on my IG and my FB pages. Every Wednesday evening, I've been going LIVE around 9:15pm CST to chat with y'all about The Wild Card, our current teacherin' read by Hope and Wade King. Recently, in the book, they mentioned finding your WHY...why do you teach? During our chat, we had the idea to each come up with our own WHY (if you don't know it already), put it in kid-friendly terms and make a work of art out of it! Here, lemme 'splain:

Clear as mud?

Easy enough, right?

Sound good? Great! Even if you can't join the fun, be sure and tag me, I'd love to know your WHY! It will surely inspire others. 

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In the Art Room: A Collaborative Painting for Field Day!

Disclaimer: Since discovering Instagram and my love for it, I've gotten super bad about snapping photos with my camera and simply using my phone. So what you have in this blog post are phone photos and for that, I apologize. If you'd like to see me overshare my art room happenings (as well as just my hot mess of a life), you can find me here. 

In my last post, I shared what we did for the art station portion of Field Day...when I thought it was going to be rained out. The night before Field Day, while I was head scratching what we could do, I thought creating a collaborative canvas painting would be fun (this is what happens when your brain is fried, y'all). So I pulled this giant canvas out of my closet and went to town. 

 I've had this canvas for years. I had started a painting on it years ago and never did anything with it. So I simply painted over it with a cream color paint (cuz that's all I had on hand) and used watered down black acrylic paint to create this. Why watered down acrylic? Because it has better viscosity that way. I began by sketching out four wavy lines across the canvas. Then I wrote out the letters of our school. Once I was happy with the placement, I painted it with a flat brush and called it a night. 

 Along with our other painting station, I let the kids go to town on this. My only "rule" was that one color go in one space...and TRY to stay within the lines. As you can see above, that was a struggle. But it was field day, we were wound up and I knew I could lean up the lines by simply going back over them. So no worries. 

 This was after the first day. I was tempted to leave it this way...and then I added the little pattern on the top and thought it would be fun for the kids to add patterns the following day. 

 Again, so sorry for the grainy photo. My only rule for the patterns was that the kids had to pick one pattern and color and stick with it. For the dots, they used wine corks dipped in paint (fave part of the day? A kid saying, "oh my mom has TONS of these!" Ha!) and thin brushes for the designs. Again, other than that, little direction was given. This was on the last day of school where I had free choice centers set up around the room. This just happened to be one of them. 

 Once dry, I went back over the black to once again clean up the edges. Then I thought it might be fun to add some white highlights to make the letters pop. Look, even the edge got painted!

The admin had no idea we were creating this painting. When I was sharing it with them, our school librarian saw it and LOVED IT. It was decided that this painting would go in the library for everyone to see. AND I'm really excited to share that now the librarian and I are collaborating to create an entire ALPHABET WALL in this style! The kids will kick off the new school year painting a canvas for each letter in the alphabet to showcase in the library. Y'all I'm so stoked! This project was so easy, colorful, happy and fun. I'm looking forward to making more. LOVE to hear if you give this a go! 

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In the Art Room: Everyday Heroes!

Teacher Appreciation Week was last week and I FINALLY managed to get the fourth grader's portraits of our faculty and staff up just in time. If you recall, we created these some time ago...but I'd been saving them as a surprise for the teachers and staff on Monday of appreciation week. So I sneaked in on Sunday and got 'em all hung. They were a huge hit!

 Our theme for our art show is Superheroes...so I thought that calling this The Everyday Superheroes of Johnson Elementary would be fitting. If you recall, I did a similar project to this a couple of years ago and we called it the Gallery of Gratitude. For that, we simply created drawings. This time around, we used modeling clay. More information here. 

Here's the video I created for my students (and all y'all) to help them learn the process of creating a portrait with modeling clay:

I got a lot of questions about this project so I'll try to answer them here. 

*How did the kids pick the person they were to create a portrait of?

I had them silently draw the person's name after the video. If they knew the person, then they could go to their seat and get started. If they did not know the person (maybe they are a newer student or perhaps they simply have not had interaction with that person to know them well), then they could stay seated on the floor. After everyone drew a name, they could chat amongst the other kids on the floor and either swap names or do a redraw.

 * What about the people that didn't get their names drawn? Who did their portraits?

I had some kids who I learned were VERY fast at creating these mini portraits. And they loved creating them. So for those early finishers, I'd have them create a second or even a third portrait...or help those who were having trouble with their portraits.

 * What supplies did you use? Does modeling clay dry?

We used modeling clay from the craft stores...I found that some could be hard and some easy to manipulate. If they clay was hard, I simply told the kids to warm it up in their hands (see the video). I really found that all the modeling clay we used worked well. We used matte board cut to 3" squares as our base. Modeling clay NEVER sets so I added a varnish to the top to seal and protect it. For that, I used Crayola's Model Magic Glaze. The "frames" are actually plates from Hobby Lobby!

* How did you do the written portion? 

I didn't...the classroom teacher's handled that for me! I sent them an email letting them know what we were up to and asking if they could help me out. Not only did they talk to the kids about the written portion and have them write it up, they also had them type them! A parent volunteer then added them to the fancy paper frames. 

 * How long will this stay up?

I'd love to leave it up until the start of next school year...but I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to take it down before school's out for the summer. I'll be passing these back to the teachers and staff. 

 I think that about covers the questions I've been asked. My students loved making these so much that I followed their portraits up with a self portrait project of the same nature. They look so adorable for our art show!

 Were there tears on Monday morning? Y'all better believe it! This is one of the most favorite projects that I've done...it means so much to everyone involved!

 I loved reading the kind things our students had to say. Each and every person working in my school is so well loved!

 I'll definitely be doing this project again. I'd love to hear if you've done something similar!

Have a great week, superheroes! 

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In the Art Room: "I Am..." Mobiles

So...at the BEGINNING of the school year, I got the idea for this collaborative project...and, here we are MIDWAY through the school year and I'm finally assembling and sharing it with you. Story of my life, y'all.

At the start of the school year, I dyed a bunch of clothes pins by placing them in a bin of watered down paint. I later learned that food coloring works well also. I dyed them red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

 When the students came in, we read The Dot (yes, this was our Dot Day attempt!) and we spoke about all of the things that we are. "I am creative. I am amazing. I am silly. I am funny." You get the idea.

I had the kids get two colorful clothes pins (any color the wanted) and one plain one. On the colorful clothes pin, they were to write their name on one and a word that described them on another. 

On the plain ones, I had them with  monochromatic Sharpies and create a design. I did this project with my first and second grade students who have 30 minute art classes. My third and fourth graders, who have an hour, did a different collaborative project:

You can find out details on this project here. I at least managed to get this project finished and hung at the start of the year! 

 After the kids were done with the clothes pins, I had them sort them by color. Then I clipped them around 9" cardboard pizza rounds. I then painted the center black and used the kids' painted papers to create the I am... in the middle. Initially I was going to hang these in the hallway but I was afraid they would get damaged without a watchful eye on them.

 AND because they are so stinkin' pretty I wanted to be able to see them all the time! I used command hooks and yarn to hang them above my window. They did keep rotating which would have been fine if I'd had the kids draw on BOTH sides of the clothes pin (which you might wanna do if you do this project). To keep them forward facing, I simply hot glued them together where you see them touching/overlapping a bit. 

Another happy rainbow addition to the art room that I'm happy to finally have on display!

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Art Teacherin' 101: Episode 39

Haha!! I'm BAAAAACK with a lil Art Teacherin' 101 action, y'all. It's been since this summer that I recorded one of these bad boys. Between the podcast, the Wednesday night FB and IG LIVE chats, I kinda thought y'all might be a little bit tired of hearing what I have to say. Unfortunately for you, I STILL GOT LOTS TO SHARE (deal wit it). 

Since we are in the throes of Back to Schoolin', my social media outlets have been blowin' up with art rooms decorated to the nines. I have gotten SO MUCH inspiration...but I've also gotten the feeling that my art room ain't never, not EVER, gonna be at it's peak and/or prime. And that's okay. I'm taking is slow and steady (some turtle told me that how to win the race). I'm going with what works, throwing out what doesn't (read: all.that.clutter.) and enjoying the process. So that's what this Art Teacherin' 101 is all about this week. At the end of the clip, I'll take you on a wee tour of the parts of my art room that make me happy...and the parts that need some more lovin'. Here you go:

If you are interested in seeing more Art Teacherin' 101's then you can subscribe to my YouTube channel right here. If you'd like me to chat about something in particular during these AT's, you just let me know! 

(more looks inside my space...a game/tour from last year)

(and a video tour I created last year for my youngers...this will give you an idea of a "before" my redecorating spree!)...

Have a super week and remember: take it easy! Decorate to educate! You can take comfort in knowing that MY ART ROOM IS WAY MESSIER THAN YOURS! 

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In the Art Room: Best Back to School Projects, Part 2

Hey, friends! Tomorrow is my first day back to school where I'll have kiddos in the art room and I'm super excited. One thing I love about this time of the year is coming up with fun projects that kick the school year off right. Last week, I shared some of my favorite Dot Day projects which I occasionally use as a theme for my back to school art projects. Today I thought I'd share my favorite collaborative back to school art projects. There are a lot, so get ready! 

But before we get to that, I have some exciting news. Recently, on our Wednesday night Facebook LIVE chats (to join the fun, like/follow here), the one and only Barney Saltzberg joined us. We had an absolute blast chatting with him. You can still find our conversation archived here. He has a new book out, My Book of Beautiful Oops, and is GIVING ONE AWAY! Yay! To enter to win your FREE copy of My Book of Beautiful Oops simply do the following:

* Leave a comment below. Tell me what your plans are or what you are doing on these first days back to school. Inquiring minds wanna know!

* Leave your email address. This way I can let you know when you win, yay!

It's that easy, y'all. Big thanks to our buddy Barney for this wonderful book and fabulous giveaway. Now, let's talk Best Back to School Art Projects.

I love kicking off the school year with a good book. You Be You and Only One You by Linda Krantz are two fabulous books to bring to your art room. This is a project that can be done with all of your students...and will leave you with a beautiful work of art to showcase their efforts. More on this mural here. 

You can find out just how we created these fish here. 

Feel free to bring this how-to video to your art room!

I am in love with this wild, wacky and colorful mural that was created by my kindergarten through fourth grade kiddos. It's Okay to be Different is a favorite book of mine by Todd Parr. This mural has been up for a while now...and it still remains outside my art room door. I think it's a great message for all. You can find out about this mural here. 

Here's a short video to share the process!

You can read about our process of creating these funny faces right here. 

Monochromatic selfies are a super fun way to start the school year. I've done this a couple of different times and with a couple different themes. You can find out more about how these were created here. 

This video really helped my students during the creation of their selfies.

Last year, we used our selfies to create this large J.E.S. sign for our school. 

On year we even made our selfies into a world map! This one took some time to do...and wasn't easy but sure was pretty once it was complete. 

Our heart mural is now a couple of years old and still hangs proudly in our school office. I love it, it's really stood the test of time. And who doesn't love the message of LOVE? You can see more about the completion of this mural here. 

The details on how each heart was created and by what grade level can be found here. 

Speaking of love, this mural was created by all of my students...they actually made it one year while I was out on jury duty. It was so awesome to come back to some amazing art! Here's the complete blog post. 

Here's the video I created for my sub to share with my students.

And here's the second video in that series. 

Probably one of the more popular posts on this blog has been this wings mural project. It's a GREAT back to school project because it's low-mess and low-stress (until you get ready to assemble that is...and then it's HOLY COW, WHAT WAS I THINKING?!). But once it's up, you won't regret it! Deets here. 

Here's a video I created to share with my students...feel free to use in your art teacherin' world!

I hope y'all have gotten a couple ideas for your return to school...I'd love to know what you and your sweet kiddos are creating! Also, don't forget to enter to win Barney's new book. Just leave a comment about your first day and don't forget to include your email address. Have a great week!

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