Ohio Art Scouts still available, go here to register!
Exciting news, all y'all art teacherin' types! Me and fellow art teacherin' troop leaders Laura Lohmann, Ginger Pacer and Jennifer Alvarado are calling YOU to join Art Scouts! Listen here and learn more...
Are you as excited as we are?! Just imagine: two days packed with enough clay projects, painting lessons, printmaking activities and sewing -n- weaving fun to set your art curriculum for the entire school year. All projects will be geared toward those who teach kindergarten through eighth grade art. Our theme for this two day adventure will be nature which will tie perfectly in with science, social studies and math (that's right, y'all. We're gonna get all kinds of STEAM-y!).
So, how do you sign up? Simply contact me and let me know you are interested (and if you have any questions) at cassieart75@gmail.com. Unfortunately, we can only host 50 of y'all scouts, so lemme know as soon as you can. Now let's chat about those art teacherin' badges you'll earn...
When I was a kid, summers were my time to explore all things fiber-artsy. At church camps, I learned to weave; at my grandma's house, I learned to embroider and at vacation bible school, I stitched the ugliest pillow that I was so stinkin' proud of. Kids simply love fiber arts but it's often a lost art in the art room. Let's bring it back by introducing our young artists to the math, science and social studies behind weaving, stitching, embroidery and more! If you're new to sharing this art with your students, have no fear. With this intense two day camp, you'll definitely earn your fiber artsyin' badge as well as the confidence to share with your students.
Truth or Dare Time...TRUTH: I once completely melted down a kiln. I remember it like it was yesterday: having never taken a ceramics class in college, it was just expected that I'd know how to operate this super expensive piece of machinery. After a coworker quickly showed me how to turn it on, I left for the day...only to return to find that all the pieces in the kiln had melted. It looked like a kiln full of melted marshmallows! I had never had a panic attack until that day (I immediately lost sight in one eye...and then my lunch). My incident cost the school a pretty penny and made me realize how little we actually know about what it is we are supposed to be experts on. All THAT to say, twenty art teacherin' years later, me and my troop leaders know plenty-a-thang about teaching all things clay! We'll walk you thru some awesome clay projects that scaffold on student learning. No kiln? No problem! These projects will be centered around both kiln-fired and air-dry clays. Not to mention some unique alternatives to glazing. And, I promise, the only marshmallows you'll see will be the kind you can eat!
Okay, not sure if you know this or not, but Laura Lohmann is thee painting guru in our troop. I have been a huge fan and follower of her blog for years. It wasn't until meeting and getting to know her last summer at a week long arts camp that I discovered what an amazing art educator she is! You'll learn all of her incredible painted paper tips and tricks that can be applied to your art teacherin' lesson plans.
Don't let the image fool you: we're gonna take printmaking beyond the brayer, y'all. Get ready to discover unique and unusual methods of printmaking (marker prints! gelatin printing! collagraphs! foam carving!) and learn how to manage the mess without losing your mind. Printmaking is a magical experience that all of your students will love.
Now, let's meet those troop leaders!
Laura Lohmann of Painted Paper in the Art Room is an awesome art teacherin' super star. I was a huge fan of hers before even meeting her because her projects always left me shaking my head and waving clenched fists at the sky thinking, "How are her kids creating such magnificent masterpieces?!" Well, y'all are gonna get a front row, badge-earning seat to find out just how she does it. You'll be amazed at how ingenious and easy her teaching technique is!
If you just pop on over to Ginger Pacer's blog Paintbrush Rocket and watch some of the bird's-eye view videos of her kids creating, you'll be sold on what an art teacherin' super star she is. I am always amazed at the creative projects Ginger dreams up from huge murals painted to sweet woven pouches, she covers it all! Not to mention, her mama was an art teacher so she comes from good art teacherin' stock, y'all!
Art teacher and instagram'er Jennifer Alvarado is one of the most warm and happy people I know and it shows in everything she teaches. I am always in awe of the bright and colorful pieces her students create that cover the walls of her school. Jennifer is one of those people who has a genuine love for both her "kiddos" and their art education. You'll be inspired by her energy and enthusiasm...I know I always am!
So! Do you have what it takes to be an Art Scout? Are you ready to earn your art teacherin' badges? Trust me, it's going to be a wild, crazy and amazing two days of creating of mess and memory making. If you're up for the challenge, just shoot me an email to reserve your spot!
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!
As some of y'all might know because I've been talking about it nonstop (I often wonder just how I have acquired so many nice friends that allow me to ramble on and on without complaint. My guess is that they've formed some sort of support group), I've been out of school for several days due to el jury duty-o. You can see what I wore here cuz you know you wanna. Anywho, knowing that I was gonna be out for so long, I knew I'd have to leave some legit sub plans. So I created a couple of videos and was super pleased to see that both the kids and the subs were happy with the result. AND LOOK! Check out what they made whilst I was doin' my civic duty!
This is JUST ONE of the MANY huge banners that the kids created! Each child, kindergarten through fourth, created a quarter of a heart. Students with extra time then worked on making the letters. I was so excited to see them today that I used my planning time to hot glue them into place. To do that, I "borrowed" a roll of bulletin board paper from our work room, unrolled it onto my art room floor and set to work a-gluing. Like I said, this is just one big banner...the kids also created ones with letters that spell out SMILE, HAPPY and PEACE. They'll be going up on a large wall in our school cafeteria. But this one I was so stoked about that I grabbed a couple of teacher friends in the hallway and had them help me slap it up on the wall this afternoon.
Our inspo for this project came from the artist Romero Britto and the art teacher Jenny K! Jenny has a great drawing sheet that features Britto and his designs. Knowing that I was going to be out several days, I really wanted a project that the kids could work on happily and successfully and be something that could brighten up and spread the good word of LOVE throughout our school!
On the first day I was out, I left this video for my sub to share with the students. I've never done video'ed sub plans before but I gotta tell ya, I'm NEVER going back to paper plans! This was fun and easy for both the sub and kids. And a happy sub is one that spreads the good word. I heard from my admin and teacher buds that both of my subs were thrilled to work in my room. Of course, I took the guess work out of it and made their day cake!
Today was my first day back and it's also my busiest of days. You now how it feels when you've been gone for many days, you feel completely out of the loop! I really felt relieved coming back knowing that my room was going to be in order and that my students would continue this project. Here are my kindergarten friends coloring away.
Many of you asked me about the art stix I refer to in the video. My students have a set of these and they are well loved. They are made by Prisma and are essentially the led of a color pencil. The colors are fantastically vibrant and the kids love using them.
My younger students, kindergarten through first, created the bottom of the hearts while my older ones did the top. The reason behind this is that my older students have longer art classes and therefore more time to work on the big spaces. The papers the kids used are 12" squares. My sub and I used templates to create the thick line diagonal line that you see as well as the heart hump line (I know there's prolly a better word then heart hump but you knew what I was talking about, didn't you?!).
So that they could spot their part of the heart later, the student's name was written along the edge of their design.
Once I started laying out the hearts I felt like they needed a little something more. So I flipped some upside down and noticed the diamond negative shape that was created. It was then I got the idea to have the kids create letters for those spaces. That's what this follow up video is all about...
I put the sub in charge of tracing letters and the kids cut them out before decorating them.
This was such a successful sub plan that even though I'm not finished with assembling all of the pieces, I just had to share it with you right away! You know, in case you wanna do something like this for Valentine's Day. It's definitely a no-fuss type of project. Definitely one to consider at the start of the new school year when you want to introduce all of the elements of art and start your year with that WOW! factor. If you are interested in more of my lil videos, you can subscribe to my youtube channel here.
In other fun and exciting news, you can hear my podcast interview with the INCREDIBLE Patty Palmer of Deep Space Sparkle, here! And if you do this lesson, please let me know, I'd love to hear your tips, tricks and see your student's end result!
Hi, friends! Well, it's been one of those Wild -n- Crazy art teacherin' weeks and I didn't manage to snap a single What the Art Teacher Wore photo (tho, if you follow me here, you'll see what I'm wearin', what I'm making and what's goin' down in the art room, daily). However, if YOU did, please be sure to send it my way at cassieart75@gmail.com for the What the Art Teacher Wore/Back to Art Teacherin' Contest! You're good-looking face will not only be featured here but, if chosen, also in School Arts Magazine. AND the winner-winner-chicken-dinner will get a free subscription to School Arts. So get dressed, snap a pic and send it to moi, s'il vous plait. Gracias!
In other news, if you are an art teacher with other art teacherin' buds on Facebook, then I bet your feed is just blowing up with photos of back-to-school/freshly-deocrated art rooms. I absolutely love it because it is art teacherin' eye candy! I've shared several snaps of my art room (with a blog post about my first days here) and was asked about my Line poster. If you've been around this blog for a pinch then you know that I use this poster with my kindergarten friends in my unit on line. I created this and accompanying poem years ago. It's been a great tool for me to teach line with a bit of rhyme and a whole lotta fun. So, without further ado, here's the Larry the Line poem!
So that you don't have to watch this video a million times, here's the Larry the Line poem in it's entirety.
NOTE: This poster and poem were both created by me. Please feel free to share this with your students and colleagues (credit thrown my way would be greatly appreciated). This may not be reproduced by you for profit. I feel sad that I have to add this disclaimer...but I do.
Larry the Line
Is a friend of mine
(creating a snake by opening the fingers of your hand, puppet style and there's your snake!)
He can make three
(hold up a three with your fingers)
Straight lines for me!
Ver-tickle
(create a vertical line with your forearm)
Diagonal and horizontal!
(pantomime each)
Any curve, he can learn
With a twist and a turn.
When he's out of his tangle
he makes a great...angle.
(created by placing your hand on your hip and pointing to your elbow)
Any line, he can make
After all, he's a snake!
And here's how I go about teaching the creation of line sculpture to the kids!
From there, my kindergarten friends create line sculptures like this. I have a super silly way of teaching this which I will share on my youtube channel this week. By the way, if you subscribe to my channel, you'll see my videos before I share them here!
I'm not gonna lie, sometimes after the whole Larry thing, the kids are bananas. To bring them back down, I'll often do this activity called palming. It works magically!
I love this unit on line and it's made so much more fun with this goofy poem and carnival snake! What poems and songs do you use when teaching? I'd love to have a whole collection! Too bad my songwriting skillz are seriously lacking.
So y'all might recall me mentioning that we're doing a lil Be Nice campaign at my school. Quite simply, it entails us doing something kind for others. In the art room, we created a Gallery of Gratitude for all who work in our school, we wrote letters to fellow artists praising their hard work, and my fourth graders created a Legacy Mural as a gift both to the school and our principals. And just last week, we began work on our latest creative effort in being nice: our Village of Kindness!
Our super fab cafeteria manager has been saving the morning milk cartons and rinsing them out for us (I told you she was super fab) which is great because the smell of sour milk makes me do that Ima-bout-to-heave wobbly neck chicken dance. I seriously have hundreds of 'em in my room right now all in the process of becoming this awesome. The concept is that each house in our village has a door that opens with a nice message inside. This one reads: "Your cool litraly soooooooooooooo cool." Gotta love third grade.
I'm always pushing the idea of being your unique self in my art room. It's kinda been my mantra this year what with words like original, creative, non-conformist and unique being our Words of the Week. So this message of "UR the Best YOU!" is one of my faves.
So just how did this project get started? Well, every kid in the school is creating a house for our village. To start, we did a quick review of the warm colors and in our first thirty minutes together got about this much accomplished. I only had a coupla rules: don't forget to clean your paint brush and write your name on the bottom of the house. Other than that, paint away, dudes!
On the second thirty minute art class, I read the book The Big Orange Splot. I LOVE this book and so do the kids. If you've not read it, it's about a dude who paints his house "to look like all of his dreams" and inspires his neighbors to do the same. It's a great example of conformist vs. non-conformist. And it serves to really inspire our second day of house painting.
On that day, the kids are given smaller brushes and cold colors. They were encouraged to add any sort of line designs and details they might want. These kids were also introduced to Rizzi at the start of the school year which was a great tie-in for this portion of the project.
On our third day, the kids were given a wide variety of media to work with to finish off their house. I got out the "funky monkey" scissors for cutting and creating a door and a roof. Oil pastels, paint and colored pencils were available for the kids to finish off their masterpiece. I found that by giving them a ton of media to pick from, they really got creative. When writing our messages, I told the kids to write something that they would like to hear from a friend. What kind words would really make your day? It was funny to read their responses. I got one that read, "Like your top, bro" and another that said, "You are the best gamer IN THE WORLD!" Many others said kind things about being an awesome artist or smart student. They were such a pleasure to read after the kids had cleaned up.
Since our focus is on kindness AND because I really enjoy reading aloud (just ask my mom-in-law as my fave thing to do when visiting her is read to her the Dear Abby column), I have been reading The Hundred Dresses while the kids are working. It's a chapter book (so the young kids love it for that reason alone) that's all about a girl who is teased by others for claiming to have, you guessed it, a hundred dresses. Turns out she does have that many only not in the way you might think. It's such a sweet book that all the kids (even the dudes) really enjoy. And it fits in so very well with our chats on kindness. ADDED BONUS...Here's something super interesting that I found: when reading the book, the kids don't ask for help or even reminders of what to do. They magically remember! They also magically seem to have more focus on their creation! When I discovered this on my first day reading to them, I was all "why has it taken my 17 years to figure this out?!"
I can easily say that each and every kid loved this project. And each and every house is totes presh. Our end goal is to attach our village on a painted backdrop. Usually I share with you projects at their completion but I really wanted you to see our works in progress. Mostly cuz they are just about the cutest thing everrrr.
My goal is to have our Village of Kindness up and ready by Valentine's Day but that's sneaking up on me rapidly so I'm not holding my breath. I'll be certain to come backattcha with a Part 2 so you can see the finished results.
I mean, c'mon. Is it just me or are these not the happiest lil houses? I'd totes live in this wee one.
Or perhaps this one! They are all just too happy, bright and colorful for me to pick a fave.
So until then, I hope y'all have a happy, bright and colorful week!
