This past week was our book fair and to celebrate, we had dress up days! The theme of the book fair was Enchanted Forrest and our first day was to dress in red and white for a mushroom theme. Y'all know I totally had a dress for that, right? I cannot believe I stitched it up way back in 2012! It was the one and only keyhole dress I've made. That Michael Miller gnome fabric is still my fave. Details here.
Just a little clip of me turning my kindergarten into color mixing wizards. No bid deal.
Do y'all remember that PD I lead at the start of the school year for the faculty and staff at my school? We created a piece that stated our "why we are here". Well, my FAVORITE FUNDRAISER Artome Art Shows was kind enough to donate frames for each one of these WHY's. They now hang outside of each teacher's classroom and look simply stunning.
Aside from dress up days, we had a full week of art making AND open house. Which meant we had to make stuff and keep the art room on the tidy side which is a stretch. I'm super good at making messes (and I believe that's rubbed off on my kiddos) but not great at keeping the space clean. So I tidied like crazy on Monday afternoon and we had a stern "don't even think about messing this up!" chat on Tuesday before the night's events.
Oh, and speaking of Artome Art Shows, we are having ours this December. Which means most of my classes are rockin' on their projects. We always do self portraits of some kind for Artome and this one is my favorite. We start with black glue...and you can find the complete lesson (with video!) here.
Tuesday's dress up theme was fairy or gnome...so I decided to go as Roy G. Biv and surprise the kids. When not wearing a beard and a rainbow hat, I was super comfy in my overalls. I THINK I'M ADDICTED TO OVERALLS. These bad boys are from Forever 21.
Just a lil Roy action here.
Of course, when Roy G. Biv visits, we draw his likeness! Kindergarten did a super job of following along with Roy...
And coloring these cuties in.
Wednesday was Wacky Sock day. I scored these from a shop in the mall that only sells socks...and they have the best selection. I don't own too many fun socks (surprising, I know) but when I spotted these, I had to have them.
My Unicorns are Real top is from Five Below...which is my guilty pleasure. Well, that and Dollar Tree. And in my neck of the woods, they are next to each other which means they are SUPER DANGEROUS.
For this year's open house, I made sure to hang two pieces of art for every kiddo. It was a lot of work and I'm excited to see it decorating the halls. I brought back my tree weaving lesson this year with third grade and I'm so glad I did. More details on this project soon.
Usually my fourth graders do this project for the Artome Art Show but this year, I'm changing it up a bit. For our first day, we sketched thumbnail self portraits and then began creating these with bingo daubers on 9 X 12 paper. I'm so excited to see this project progress.
Words on a shirt day was the dress up theme for Thursday. I also had Round 2 of dressing up as Roy G. Biv for my classes that had missed out...so that meant pants again. TWICE IN ONE WEEK! Kinda crazy, I know.
Friday was a half day but I had a stacked morning with five classes, kindergarten through fourth. I know my paint trays have just about run their course but were still pretty full of paint. So we did a collaborative circle painting and had a blast. All classes painted on the paper on their tables. They could only build upon the paintings that were there, not paint over them. It was a great way to spend our last day before break.
And now it's fall break time!
We have a lovely week off...it's glorious! I'll be home most of the week but on Thursday, I'm off to Florida for their art teacher convention...and I'm so excited. See y'all soon!
Let's face it, we can't always be "on" for each and every kiddo and each and every art class. And that's okay. It's perfectly fine to every now and then be the World's Okayest Art Teacher.
The key is to realize that being an "okay" art teacher is only okay if it's temporary. You can only scoot by at level 3 for so long before you and the kids start to lose interest. That's when you gotta punch that art teacherin' energy level back up to a 10 (okay, let's be honest, a 8.25 will do).
In all seriousness, if you are feeling meh, try not to beat yourself up over it. Just the fact that you are aware of it means you care. If you are experiencing guilt-free meh, then, yeah, you might wanna hang up the apron and call it a day. I remember I used to come home and tell my husband that I felt like I wasn't doing my best, that I was doing a disservice to the art education of my students. He said that even on my worst days, what those kids are getting is better than no art at all.
So on those days that you are feeling just okay, you might wanna focus on accentuating the positive at both the beginning and end of your art classes. Like I said in the video, I start each class with that little "Hello, my most amazing artists!" call and response. I also love ending it with a little "I love you" send off. It helps to bookend my classes on a happy note even if what happened during our art time was just okay. Listening to this song, a fave of mine, always lifts me outta my okayest funk. Because you ARE awesome, bringing creativity and light to your students!
I hope y'all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Know that I think you are much better than Okay, but seriously The Best.
Hey, kids! I'm just back from a FABULOUS conference in Texas that was seriously a whirlwind of fun. I'll be certain to share that experience with you soon but before I do, I thought I'd let you in on how that Romero Britto-inspired selfie project went down. In a word(s): colorfully amazing!
I wanted my fourth graders to learn how to draw a face with correct proportions but with a playful and colorful twist that reflects their personality and interests. And that's how I settled on this Romero Britto-inspired lesson. Complete video'ed lesson here:
By the way, I update my videos multiple times weekly...if you wanna stay up to date, subscribe here.
The video provides a quick introduction to Britto and his work, just enough to give them a taste for how colorful and pattern-y his work is.
The kids really respond well to learning about contemporary artists and pop art seems to be their fave.
This project took us 3 one hour classes to complete. The students used 9" X 12" sheets of drawing paper as that is what the Artome framing format allows. On our first day, we watched the first third of the video. We drew our faces along with the video, traced over our final drawings in Sharpie (I gave the kids plenty of time to return to their seats with mirrors and alter their drawings to their liking) and used lines to break up the background. Here's what we had after day one:
The following art class, we watched the middle portion of the video where I chat about pattern. I really wanted the kids to create patterns that reflected their interests. I did provide idea sheets of simple patterns like the ones Britto uses. After 30 minutes, we watched the final portion of the video and had just enough time to explore color. Here are the results after the second day:
By the third day, we'd watched all of the video and knew what we had to do to complete our masterpiece. I really thought this would be a two-day project...but with all of the details the kids created, it lasted a pinch longer.
We used both colored pencils and Prismacolor Art Stix (a class favorite for their vibrancy) to color. Art Stix are like the lead of colored pencils in oil pastel from. They are richer in color than your average colored pencil. I talk about them somewhere in this clip:
Sorry, not sure when, but I know they are in this clip somewhere!
The kids and I both were really pleased with their hard work. So often, older kids struggle with self-portraits as they want them to look "just right". Doing a self-portrait in a guided drawing format really relieved stress and insured that all selfies looked fabulous.
You know that the 10 year old crowd can sometimes be tough to please...but this one was a crowd-pleaser.
Even my students who sometimes struggle with fine motor skills or sticking with projects for long periods of time shined in this lesson.
You know they feel good about themselves with the "too cool for school" fourthies give you hugs at the end of art class.
My favorite comment: I never knew I could draw like this!
I'm shipping all of these out to Artome tomorrow and our art show is at the start of December. I'll be certain to let you know how that goes. This will be our first Artome show...I'm really excited!
Y'all know we do a HUGE end of the year art show where everything that every kid has made is hung up. I'm super stoked that for this show, I don't have to hang a thing!
I hope y'all have a fabulous week leading up to Turkey Day! I'll be in and out on this here blog with lots to share...so, during your break from stuffing runs, be sure to drop on by.
Here they come to save the day! Second grade selfies are on their way, y'all. I've been sharing with you the self portrait projects my students have been creating for their Artome art show. So far, you've seen my Royal First Grade, the third graders' abstract self portraits inspired by Sandra Silbertzweig and the fourth graders Romero Britto-inspired selfies. For second grade, I decided to do a take on this fourth grade lesson from last year. The kids LOVED creating these super hero versions of themselves so I just had to share this lesson. Here is a video of my fourth grade's lesson:
Like I said, I did alter this lesson quite a bit to fit the needs of my wee second graders. Lemme tell you how we made them.
I see my second graders for 30 minutes, twice a week. So this here lesson is broken down into bite sized bits. On day one we: chatted about Vincent van Gogh and Starry Night. We spoke about creating movement and texture in our sky with line, shape and color. Using florescent oil pastel (my favorites are these), we created an evening sky. The following art class, we used watercolor in a cool cool palette to paint our skies.
The following class, we chatted about cityscapes and silhouettes. I found that there are plenty of images of city silhouettes online if you just do a quick google search. I printed off several and placed them on tables as idea sheets. We used watered down black tempera paint and small brushes to create our cityscape. Larger brushes were used to fill in the silhouette. I watered the paint down a pinch as I find that it makes the paint have more viscosity.
By the way, as y'all know, we ALWAYS have those early finishers. For my early friends, I had a wide variety of super hero idea sheets available. I tasked the kids to start sketching ideas for their superhero selfie if they happened to finish early.
After the silhouettes were painted, I cut up a TON of Post-It notes into tiny pieces for the kids to use as windows. I thought they were a great color for windows. The kids glued those onto their buildings and resumed their super hero sketches.
By the third week, the kids had completed their oil pastel sky, watercolor painting, silhouette city making and window collage. We were ready for the best part: our super heroes! Since the kids had been practice sketching for a couple of days, they were feeling really confident about diving into this final phase of their masterpiece.
To insure that their heroes would be a good size, I asked that the kids trace a circle for their heads. From there, we chatted about using shapes to create out bodies: rectangles for the torso and shapes for the arms and legs.
We also talked about masks, capes and symbols. When the kids were finished with their super hero, they traced them in Sharpie. Before coloring, we chatted about finding our skin tone. We also talked about limiting our color palette to three colors for our super hero costume. Checking out Superman, Spiderman and Ironman really helped them understand the idea of a limited palette.
Once complete, the super heroes were cut out VERY CAREFULLY before being glued into the cityscape masterpiece. The kids were so thrilled with their hard work... cannot wait to see them in a frame at our art show! I'll let you know how they look and how the art show goes. Until then!
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