Cassie Stephens: collaborative

Showing posts with label collaborative. Show all posts

Saturday, October 29, 2022

The Dot School-Wide Collaborative

Hello, friends! I'm excited to share that the school-wide collaborative my first through fourth grade students created at THE BEGINNING of the school year (yikes!) is finally installed. Like, finally.

Y'all, while I do love having all students creating a collab at the start of the school year, why do I do it to myself? It's so much work on my end! All the attaching to bulletin board paper and hanging...it's so much! AND I always procrastinate! And yet I do it year after year. Such a glutton for punishment, I guess.

Here's a look inside the process of hanging this beast with some of my tips:

When hanging something this heavy, it takes everything in your tool belt (as well as a helpful music teacherin' friend). Check out my tip on binder clips and long tabs of paper. It helps!

I've not done an official post on how we created these dot paintings but I'll tell you: it was super easy! In fact, it's one of my fave kindergarten lessons which you can find the details on here.

All students began with a dot in the middle of their paper. The paper was prefolded so that each dot was exactly in the middle. Meaning I quarter folded the paper, once in half one way and then in half the other. Dot was placed at the intersection of those two folded lines.

Like the kidnergarten lesson, each student was then instructed to paint concentric circles around their dot using any colors of tempera paint they liked!

Once dry, the paintings were cut along those folded lines. They were then rearranged and glued to a black piece of construction paper. This part was tricky so students helped one another.

Early finishers painted the wording of the sign!

And then the beast was hung...where it shall stay for a LONG, LONG time. Or the end of the school year where I'll have the students cut it apart to take home their circles (maybe. Or I may leave it up until next year!).

How to Create a Paint-by-Number of Your School, an Update!

Hi, my name is Cassie Stephens and I like to start projects and then wait months, sometimes even years, before I finish them.

Please tell me I'm not alone.

Case in point: this project that my students began on field day last spring. You can read all about it here. You can also check out this video unless you are reading my blog from your phone...in which case you'll need to view this post from your laptop in order to check out the vid. Technology is super cool.

We go all out on field day with collaborative projects. ANYTHING to keep me from sitting outside all day and doing sidewalk chalk or melty face painting. You can see our field day set up for the art room here.

After the kids painted it in the spring, it looked a little rough (sorry, I don't have any photos). I was a little disappointed by the look of it until I realized that all it needed was to be outlined again. That REALLY made the colors pop and cleaned it up nicely.

I went in over my fall break and really enjoyed listening to a podcast and outlining this beast. It took no time at all. And I used my fave new hack of drawing with a Q-tip dipped in ink. It works so well, provides a consistent line and holds quite a bit of ink!

I did use a Sharpie to write the name of our school. I also would STRONGLY recommend using bottles of craft store acrylic for this painting. We initially painted it with tempra and it looked so faded, translucent and chalky.

Like many schools, the front of ours is a little boring in that it has a huge parking lot out front. So I took some liberties by adding our country and state flag, our state flower and a banner with our school district logo.

And now I'm totally hooked on the idea of creating more paint by numbers with the kids for our school!

It was really easy by just snapping a photo of the school and tracing in Procreate. I am thinking that we need a giant canvas of our school mascot next!

Pretty sure this beauty will end up in the front lobby of our school. I cannot wait to see it up! Here's what it looked like the day we started painting it. I'll keep you posted on how it looks once up!

What a Wonderful World Mural

Well, this blog post has been a long time coming, as we've been working on this What a Wonderful World mural since the start of the school year! I'm excited to say that it's complete and it's up (when it wants to stay up, sigh). You can take a tour of the mural and learn all about who made what and what lessons were involved in this video right here!

We've done SO MANY school-wide collaboratives at my school. I absolutely love them. They are also my favorite way to start the school year. I'm working on creating another blog post of all our collaboratives compiled in one post...but until then, check out the video for details and THIS podcast episode on how you can use song as a collaborative inspiration!

This mural makes me so happy and I thought it was such an appropriate song for this school year. I've gotten so much of a wonderful response from the faculty and staff (and kids!) that I'm thrilled. I mean, doing a collab like this is so much work. Especially when it comes time to assemble and hang the beast!

In the podcast episode, I mentioned the painted party my students did to create the background papers. Here is the blog post all about that!

And here's the video if you'd like to see us in action:

One of the many reasons I like to start my school year with a collaborative is because it means we are all pretty much working with the same art supplies. In this case, we were working with bingo daubers and tempera paint...a lot!

Some of the lessons were tired and true like the first grade flowers you see at the start of this blog post. Some were new like the funny face clouds by kindergarten!

Our next mural is going to be based on our school song! I'm so glad we have a school song, it's so sweet and our students love to sing it. I think it will be perfect and hope to create a permanent display.

I got many requests from teachers for future songs....but next time I think I'd like to go with a song that the kids really know and love.

Adding the component of also learning the song in sign language was very fun and a great way to connect with our deaf friends. We have fabulous ASL teachers in our school who helped us learn the song.

Of course learning a song in a different language would be amazing too! The kids loved creating these painted plates with greetings in different languages for the mural. This was an easy early finisher activity for my students as they worked thru their paintings.

I know I'm totally oversharing in this post but I just love this mural so much! Funny face raindrops by second grade.

Collage and stitched houses by first!

Second grade read It's Okay to be Different by Todd Parr as their inspiration for their contribution to the mural.

Third grade created these warm color flowers!

And I got to put it all together. Lucky me! It's okay, I love it so much and can't wait to create another! You'll have to let me know if you tackle a project like this and how it goes.

School Wide Collaborative for our Library!

Way back in May, my students worked together during field day to create some artwork that was requested by our amazing librarian. Well, I'm excited to share that last week, their work was hung and the library looks incredibly colorful because of it! Check out this tour:

My excited face and vein popping neck say it all, folks.

School wide collabs (a project that all of your students work on that remains in the school as a permanent display) can be a big task. Especially when you only see your students once a week. That's why I love to do my school wide collaboratives on a day when I see all of my students at once: FIELD DAY! In the past, I was supposed to do sidewalk chalk for a day as apart of field day. You all...I did that one time in the 90 degree humidity that is Tennessee spring and I decided never again. And that's how our Field Day collaboratives was born. You can read more about it in detail here. Or you can hear more about it here:

I have about 350 students in my school. I had to have a lot of options available for them on field day so they would each be able to take part. I loved how each piece ended up turning out.

We painted on 8" X 11" canvas board for the numbers and letters. However, matteboard would have worked as well. In a pinch, cardboard might even do the trick if it were primed with gesso first.

If these look familiar to you, that's because we did our first large painting like this the year before. It was such a hit it inspired several more. You can read about our first attempt here.

The set up for the day was pretty easy. We simply used up the paint we'd had at the end of the year. My chairs were gone because we'd just had our art show . All I had to do was move some tables around, make some signs and prep. Okay. Not gonna lie...the prep did take a while...

Like making these big banners to be used at the start of the school year...

And these giant canvases...

But, you know what, totally worth it.

I think the letters make me the most happy. I drew the letters in pencil on canvas board. The kids could either paint the letters in all cool or all warm colors and then use the opposite for the background.

I thought they looked amazing...and then we framed them. Fabulous!

We've done so many school wide collaboratives now that I think I'm long overdue for a recap post! I love doing them because it's like we are leaving behind our own little fingerprint on our school. Just thought I'd share!

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School-Wide Collaborative: Positive Four Letter Word to Describe Our School

Every year, I like to start my students with a school-wide collaborative. In fact, you can find a ton of our back to school collaboratives right here, just use that search bar! You can also see my third grader's school wide collaborative here.

To kick off the school year, on the third day of art, all of my first through fourth grade students began painting. I picked up packs of large paper shapes from IKEA on a recent trip. Any construction paper would work great though. The paper from IKEA was thin so it wasn't the best for painting. It did, however, give us a variety of shapes to paint on.

If you want to hear more about my painting setup and how I introduce painting to all of my students, you can check out this blog post. Here's the break down of the lesson (keep in mind, my classes are 30 minutes in length):

Day 1 and 2: Painting! We painted patterns all over our letters. My focus for those two days was introducing my painting procedures.

Day 3: Working together in table teams, the teams of four kids had to come up with a positive four letter word to describe our school. Each table team had a dry erase board and had to write down three things: what their word was, who was going to construct what letter and what color of paper they were going to use for the letter.

The letters were created from strips of paper. Students who finished early helped their teammates. Any tables that had fewer than four kids still had to create a four letter word...they just had the help of early finishers.

Day 4: Assemble the word! For this, the kids again worked in teams. They had to glue two long strips of cut posterboard together Then they laid out their words and glued it down. This only took a short amount of time. Once complete, they wrote about their chosen word!

If you are interested in doing this lesson and would like a free copy of this bunting, here you go!

To display, I stapled four triangles together to create a pattern bunting.

The bunting was then hung between the displays.

Because I didn't want their words to get lost on the boring wall colors, I cut out flags to go behind them. Yellow and blue are the colors of our school. Yes, that was time consuming but I really like the look. Also, the bunting and the integration of writing in my art room makes me so happy!

FOR FIRST GRADE: Okay, full disclosure, getting first graders (who are really still kindergarteners) to dream up a word and create it was gonna be super difficult. So, instead, I assigned each class a word that we voted and agreed on. One class did NICE while another did KIND. These were then hung by string in the hallway.

I was so impressed by the artists during this lesson. The words are now hung throughout our school. The message they send really makes me happy.

The kids dreamed up so many wonderful words. They did outline the letters in the opposite color of paint once complete.

I love the choice of SWAG. I also had one group come up with the word ZANY which I totally hung by the art room door!

If you do this lesson, I'd love to hear from you! I can think of some things I would change...but for now, they look lovely, especially for our upcoming Open House.

And it got all of the kids painting nearly right away!

This would be the perfect project to use up any scraps of paper too. Those papers could be used as the paper for the letter making or the background shapes.