Everyday Art Room: Episode 6

Aw, Lawd, y'all. If you've not listened to this week's podcast, I PROMISE you, you won't wanna miss it. The tale I tell at the start is my VERY favorite art teacherin' story. It's also one that I was surprised that AOE was okay to let air. It's a gem...enjoy! You can find the complete podcast right here. 

Teaching kindergarten is ALWAYS an interesting ride. I thought I'd share the transcript from the podcast here. I also recently recorded myself teaching kindergarten. Here is our first day of art together...

And here is a recording of our class this week. 

We have a lot of fun together! You can find an entire unit on LINE with kindergarten projects here. Also, if you search my blog for "kindergarten" you'll get a little bit of everything from clay lessons, painting units and more! Now, on with the transcript:

Is it just me or does every really good story in the art room always begin with Kindergarten? I mean it never really seems funny or humorous at the time, let’s be honest, but they do make for really good stories. So I’ve got one for you. I had Kindergarten in my room and we were talking about ROYGBIV, and chatting about how letter in ROYGBIV stands for a color in the rainbow. But the kids were stumped on the letter V. So I gave them a clue. I said, “Okay guys. It looks like purple but starts with a V.” And this really bright girl, very artistic, her hand shot up. I could see a light bulb went off and I just knew this one had the answer. So I called on her. And here’s what she said. “Vagenta.”

I paused just like that with my jaw dropped. And in that moment, because of my pause, I guess the other children assumed that that yes, indeed was the correct answer and the next thing I know I’ve got 20 five year old said saying the word vagenta. Yo, I don’t know what vagenta is. I don’t even think I want to know. And I understand how she combined the two words, violet and magenta, very clever but never a word I want to hear spoken in my art room again. Ah Kindergarten. Today we’re going to talk about how to tame that wild beast. This is Everyday Art Room. And I’m Cassie Stephens.

I don’t think any amount of art education prepares you for the beast that is Kindergarten. Every year when they come trampling into my art room it’s like I have forgotten, once again, just how wild and crazy these wee ones can be. If you do it right, they can end up being your most favorite classes to teach. After all they are a bundle of excitement, questions, interest, and curiosity. The perfect specimen for the art room. If you can tame that beast. So today I’m going to share with you my four tips to getting you kindergarten class to the most amazing level that you possibly can.

Now you’re going to have to bear with me. It’s going to be a bumpy ride. This is a beast after all, but like I said one of the best kind to have in your art room. So let’s start with number one. My first tip for taming that Kindergarten beast, is out crazying the crazy. I mean let’s face it, they’re pretty wild. If you can get them in your art room and really ramp it up over and above their expectations you will immediately have captured their attention. And isn’t that what you need to do first? No amount of, “Please sit quiet. Please put your hands in your lap. Please make sure you’re sitting on your bottom,” none of that is going to capture all of their attention. You’re going to end up fighting a battle of the stop, quits, don’ts, and I promise you Kindergarten will win each and every time.

For those first couple of days in art class, you got to be even more wild and crazy than the kids are to really capture their attention. Here’s what I do. I start the very first day of art with my Kindergarten students, with the Larry the Lion poem. Once everybody’s seated, I show them how to hold their arms in a specific way to make a snake. Try it with me. Take your left arm, and hold it horizontally under your chest. Take your right arm and hold it vertically underneath the fingertips of your left arm. You’re essentially making a big L. The vertical line, that’s your snake. So with your hand, create a puppet mouth. And, get ready, repeat after me.

I teach them real fast that whenever they hear me clear my throat that means they’re about to repeat after me. “Larry, the lion, is a friend of mine.” In which case our Larry nods his head gives us a smooch on the cheek. “He can make three straight lines for me. Vertical,” in which case we’re holding our arm up and down. Then tilt it a little bit. “Diagonal.” Now have it lay on top of your left arm horizontally. “Horizontal. Any curve, he can learn with a twist and a turn. When he’s out of his tangle, he makes great angle. Any line, he can make. After all, he’s a snake.” Now I have a video of myself doing these motions so you can actually see the hand motions that I teach my students. It’s on my YouTube channel. You’re more than welcome to take this back to your own art teachering world. I promise you your Kindergarten friends will love it.

We do that poem about two or three times getting louder and more crazy every time. Then I really out crazy the crazy. I bring out a stuffed snake. With my stuffed snake I form different lines and review the names of the lines we just talked about. Now you want to talk about being wild and crazy and having everybody’s attention, all you got to do is pull out a stuffed snake with Kindergartners and you’ve got them hooked. So that’s tip number on. Out the crazy the crazy.

Another tip is this. If you notice, after you’re covering your rules and routines, because let’s be honest, you have to do that with your Kindergarten kids of course. In a more abbreviated manner. You might notice that they’re a little bit squirrely. And like I said, you don’t want to get into a battle of the stop, quit, don’ts because they will win. Instead, sometimes you got to go with my second tip which is ride the wave. Don’t fight it. In fact whenever I have a classroom of Kindergarten kids or any of my classes in fact, and I can tell there’s an excitement in the room that I am not going to be able to fight, it’s just present and I’m going to have to ride that wave because you can not fight it.

And if you find yourself in that kind of predicament, here’s what I always do. This works great for all of my students, but especially my Kindergarteners. I’ll say, “Okay, everybody stand up.” Once everybody’s standing, myself included, I’ll clear my throat and we do a little dance. I’ll say, “Clap your hands,” and we do it. “Clap your hands,” and they do it. “Clap them just like me.” Then, “Shake your bottom,” and I demonstrate. “Shake your bottom,” I do it again. “Shake it just like me.” We go through the twist, the mash potato, the swim, I keep on going until I feel like they’ve gotten the giggles and wiggles out. When that’s the case, we end it with “Take a deep breath, let it out. Relax just like me.” And I really turn down the tone and the speed of my voice, and I say, “Let’s see who’s sitting so nicely in the first row with their hands in their lap.”

Once you get the giggles and the wiggles out, and they’re seated on the floor you’ll notice, especially if you change the way that you’re speaking like I’ve changed mine, you’ll notice that the temperature in the room, the mood is a lot calmer. You rode the wave, you rode it out. Mission accomplished. Now granted, that’s just being silly and dancing. If you want to make it educational, why not do that? I once learned from an art teacher, have all of your kids stand up and do this. Have their arms out side-by-side and say, “Horizontal,” please forgive my singing, “Horizontal. Side to side. Side to side.” My hands are sweating because I feel so stressed singing in front of you guys. My apologies. Have their arms go up and down. “Vertical goes up and down. Vertical goes up and down.” Then have the kids lean. “Diagonal. Diagonal.” Another great way to ride the wave, wiggles and giggles begone. And it’s educational.

Now sometimes you are going to need to calm those friends down which brings me to number three. In episode four I chatted about being calm and bringing a calmness to your art room. One way to do that, I mentioned, is something called palming. Now I won’t go through palming all over again in this episode, but if you go back to episode four I share with you how to do palming. Y’all, if you have kids that you are trying to calm down, palming is the best way to do it. I can’t recommend it enough. And like I said, using your voice, the diction of your voice, and your breath is really impactful when you’re trying to relax and calm children. Kindergarteners are little mirrors of you. If you’re excited, they’re excited. If you start to bring the level down, most of them will eventually catch on and do the same.

All right. So this brings me to number four. You remember the show ER? Of course we all remember that show. And I just remember in every episode of ER they were always shouting, “We’re losing them. We’re losing them,” in which case they would bring out those paddles and give them electric shock. I every now and then have that running through my mind when my Kindergartners are either walking around, they’re painting, it’s getting a little bit dangerously close to chaos and I just think, “We’re losing them. I’m losing them,” And I want to bust out those paddles and just give them a jolt to bring them all back together.

So one way, if you notice that your bag of tricks is empty and you’re starting to lose them, here are some last resorts. One thing my students in Kindergarten and other grades as well, really respond to are videos. Especially really great singy songy videos. My favorite are created by Scratch Garden, and they can be found on YouTube. There’s a great one about lines, and colors, and shapes. We watch it enough in my room, that the children have the song memorized. So that way as soon as I turn it on, I notice that the kids are starting to clean up or they’re in different phases of creating, and some of them are coming to the floor to come back for circle time.

I just press play, and and the whole room kind of gets very calm as they all start singing the line song, or the color song. So I’d really recommend having that in your bag of kindergarten tricks. One more tip, I love the books called Look. Or Look again by Tana Hoben. These are picture books and all they are are photographic images that she’s zoomed in very close and what I do is I share that book with my students when they start to trickle to the floor, my early finishers. And we look at the blown up images and try to guess what they are pictures of.

It creates a great calming game. We bring in a lot of the element of art like line and texture. And it’s an awesome book just to have on hand when you have a couple of minutes to spare. Something for your bag of Kindergarten tricks.

All right guys. So remember, you can tame this awesome Kindergarten beast. I hate to even use that word, because they really are amazing creatures and they want to be in your room so bad. They’re so enthusiastic and absolutely delightful if you can get them tamed. This is Cassie Stephens. And this is Every Day Art Room.

Tim Bogatz: I hope you’re enjoying this episode of Every Day Art Room. I love all things Kindergarten, and if you are the same way I want to recommend the Art of Ed’s Rethinking Kindergarten online graduate course. It is a great way to give your Kindergartners the teaching that fits their developmental needs. You will study the Reggio Amelia approach, exploring your role as an educator, and the role of the arts in our young student’s education. Rethinking Kindergarten is a two credit hour course that runs for four weeks. New sections will be starting in October, November, and December, and you can see more about the course or register at the ArtofEd.com/courses. Now let’s hear what Cassie has to say as she dips into the mailbag and finishes the show.

Cassie Stephens: All right. Let’s take a little dip into the mailbag. This question I actually get a lot, and it comes from Lauren. She asks, “What program do you use to record and edit your videos for the kiddos?” Great question Lauren. Let me just start by saying that you can use what you already have. Please don’t break the budget to create videos. Just either grab your phone, grab and iPad, and try using that. I like to create videos on my iPad. It’s probably my favorite way to do it because it’s the fastest. On your phone, or your iPad, you can download the iMovie device.

Now if you have an Android phone, which is what I’ve had in the past, you can not put iMovie on there. But there are a lot of other easy movie editing apps that you could add to your Android. I just don’t happen to know what they are. So for me, I record short clips with my iPad then I open up iMovie and I just start adding those short clips into iMovie. My favorite thing to do is to silence the clip and speed up the clip. And I do that for two reasons. I like to do voiceovers so I don’t have to think on my feet when I am recording. And I also am trying really hard to make my videos shorter. So speeding them up really helps with that.

iMovie is super fun and easy to use. I can’t really tell you how to use it here, simply because you need a visual. So for that I would strongly recommend you hop on over to YouTube. You can totally find all of your answers there. And by the way, if you ever want to use any of the videos I’ve created in my art room, you can find them on my channel, which is under my name, Cassie Stephens. You’re more than welcome to use those in your art teachering world. That’s precisely why I share.

Now if you’re going to make your videos maybe a little bit more pro looking, you could record them with your camera. I would definitely invest in a tripod. You don’t have to get a fancy one, just hop on over to your big box store and pick one up. Once you’ve gotten your clips filmed on your camera, then you can upload them to your laptop and edit that way. Doing it that way adds another layer of work. However, the laptop version of iMovie has a lot more things that you can do than you can do on your iPad. So those are my tips. My strongest recommendation would to be just do it. Dive right in, grab your phone, prop your phone up on a couple of books, press record. Why not? You don’t even have to edit it. Just share that with your kids, see what works. See what doesn’t work. Go for it.

If you have any questions for me, please feel free to send them my way at EverDayArtRoom@theartofed.com. It’s been so much fun chatting with you guys about the amazing creatures known as Kindergarten. Remember my four tips. Maybe they’ll help you out. You got to out crazy the crazy. Bring the excitement, that way they aren’t as distracted by other things or each other in your room. Shine a light on yourself, and you’ll have their attention. Also remember, don’t try to fight the wave. Ride the wave. Just go with it. If they’re excited, do something exciting. Make sure to ride that wave, otherwise you’ll just fall into a battle of the stop, quit, and do nots, and let’s face it. They going to win y’all. Always and forever. You can of course bring them back down with your calm voice, slow pace, and deep breathing.

Remember to check out episode four, and listen to how to do palming for calming with your students. And last but not least, if you feel like you’re losing them, make sure you have a couple of things in your bag of tricks. Grab some favorite books. Also don’t forget about the power of some awesome videos with song. It’s been so much fun chatting with you guys about the awesomeness that is Kindergarten. Talk to you soon.

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Art Teacherin' 101: Episode 23 KINDERGARTENLAND

Ah, yes. Kindergarten. If it's one group of people that have my complete respect, it's the kindergarten teacherin' crowd. K-town comes to us all over the place: some have been in school, others have not; some know how to follow directions, others would rather roll around the floor (I mean, who wouldn't). You get the idea, it's a Big Ole Mixed Bag o' Fun. Ish. Ness. So I thought we could talk about that herd of cats we call Kindergarten in this week's 101. AND I thought I'd give you a sneak peak into a 5 minute chat with a group of 'em: 

What works the best for me: Call and Response. I use that trick with EVERY grade level, kindergarten up to fourth. It really works wonders for grabbing attention and getting kids to remember vocabulary, directions and steps to follow. Here's how I introduce it to the kids:

With kindergarten, I really like the happy/sad board. It's an instant visual and it's something easy I can keep up with. Again, I use it with everyone...but I notice I reference it most with the littles. By the time they are older, I hardly use it unless one of them reminds me. And then I'm all, "sure, would you mind keeping track of it for me?" I'm all about the distribution of power (aka, getting someone else to do my job). Here are the deets on that:

Another method I use with the wee ones is palming. I mention this in the video but you can see it in action here: 

Because we're chatting about kindergarten in this here post, I thought I'd share my most favorite lessons as well. If you've been around here long enough, you've heard my Larry the Line poem that I start my kindergarten school year with:

Larry the Lines leads us to our very first art project: Line Sculptures. From there we continue with a unit on line. You can find that entire unit here. 

I love using books with kindergarten, as I know many of us do, and one of my favorites is Mouse Paint. It's a great way to introduce color theory...and review lines to create shapes like these sweet mice! 

I love to introduce a unit on shape as you can see here. One of my favorite self portrait projects come from the artists in kindergarten land and you can see more of that here. I almost always do a variation of this landscape lesson each year. 

When it comes to clay, I LOVE introducing textures into clay creating. Check out these fun birds! We also had a lot of fun creating these clay butterflies. 

I'd love to hear what some of your favorite kindie lessons are. They are a group that is NEVER short on excitement...and if you can harness that, you've got gold. By the way, I often update my YouTube account before I share here so if you subscribe, you can get the latest, if you like! 

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In the Art Room: A Color Mixing Unit

You wanna make a whole buncha kids excited, happy and edu-ma-cated all at once? Celebrate the end of a color mixing unit with a Color Mixing Cookie Party! My kindergarten through second grade have been immersed in all sorts of color theory. We've read books, watched videos, learned songs and, of course, painted. Today I thought I'd share with you a couple ways we've been studying color!

My kindergarten friends were introduced to color with the Ellen Stoll Walsh book Mouse Paint! I love this book for a coupla reasons: it's short, to the point and full of great visuals. After that quick read, we did a lil mouse drawing of our own!

In this video, I'll show you how to draw the three mice from the book. And how to mix those primaries into secondaries. I created the video in such a way that you could share it with your students so they could draw along with me.

When I do directed drawing with the kids, they sit on the floor with clipboards, oil pastels and 9" X 12" paper. Because the drawing is repetitive, it doesn't take long for the kids to finish their three mice.

From there, we review the colors mixed in the book. We talk about creating small puddles so that we can still see our cute mice. 

 Once these masterpieces are complete, the kids will paint on 12" X 18" pieces of paper, folded in quarters, all of the secondary colors. These papers will be used for a colorful self-portrait that I'll share with you soon...although, if you follow me here, you've already seen preview! 

These have been my favorite videos to share with the kids on color mixing and color theory. I love when the kids watch and sing along. These videos have been a fabulous addition to my art teacherin' repertoire! 

Being a big ole They Might Be Giants fan from way back, I love playing their tunes in my art room. 

And this series of videos on the Elements of Art have been great to share with the kids before start our sketching at the start of class. 

My students have been working on a behavior incentive where we can earn parties for good behavior. You can read more about that here if you wanna. Well, when they earned parties (and they all eventually will), I wanted to keep it fun and educational...so we had a Color Mixing Cookie Party to celebrate our awesomeness and the end of our color mixing unit.

Here's a lil video for y'all to walk you thru the supplies you'll need and just how easy this activity is.

I happened to have a million popsicle sticks so these worked perfectly as our icing mixers!

 So much deliciousness!

If you decide to do this, just a coupla reminders:

ALWAYS check with your school nurse for allergies! We don't want to chance any child getting sick.

Do this at the END of art class because these kids will be JACKED up on sugar. Thankfully for me, my kids go to P.E. after art...so they were able to burn off all that extra energy. 

And remind the kids how awesome the party is! I like to tell em, "if you thought THAT was fun, just wait until the next party you earn". Nothing like a good bribe for good behavior.

Have ya'll done this in your art room? What spin did you put on it? I'd love to hear details, ya'll! 

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In the Art Room: A Unit on Shape for Kindergarten, Part 1

Hey guys, if you've not entered the UncommonGoods Giveaway yet, scoot yourself over here and do it! The come back for this here post. Thanks!

Hi, y'all! I'm here today to share with you some of the latest kindergarten masterpieces that the wee-est of wee ones have been creating in the art room. Because these lil dudes had never been to art before coming to me, I like to start with the super duper basics. Like the elements of art! Which is why, at the start of the year, I introduce 'em to a big fat hairy unit on line. We create paper line sculptures, paint a variety of lines, create abstract line paintings. Y'all, we are all about lines. And since a line creates a shape, shape is our next unit o' study!

But, before I get to said unit, can we chat about painting with small children for a moment, puh-lease? Let's be honest: they don't come by this kind of loveliness without a whole lotta proper painting how-to's, am I right? Namely, how not to jack up the paint tray (which also translates to "how not to drive your art teacher to drink the paint water"). My kindergarten kids pretty much hit the ground painting. And I've found that with lots of practice and constant reminders of proper painting technique, they can do just about anything. 

So, what do I tell 'em? The same thing every time we paint, from kindergarten all the way on up to fourth grade. It sounds a lil like this:

"Remember! Your paint brush is like a ballerina. She always dances on her tippy-toes. So you only need to put paint on her toes. She never scoots around on her bottom. So we would never smash our brush into our painting. It will ruin your ballerina's toes! And she won't be able to paint you a beautiful masterpiece. "

So, that's Thing One. Thing Two is all about changing colors from one to the next. I don't know what your paint set up is but mine goes a lil sumpthin like this: paint colors distributed in empty egg cartons, two per table of four children (I'm currently a Versa Temp by Sax paint convert. I looove this paint!); tray of water for cleaning and sponges for wiping excess water, two per table of four. And then my lil reminder routine for cleaning goes like this:

"Before you get a new color, your ballerina needs to take a bath. Put your brush in the cup of water and you should hear that paint brush scrub the bottom. It should sound like it's brushing it's teeth! Don't tap your brush on the cup, it will splash on your neighbor's painting! Instead, gently wipe your brush on Dirty Ole Sponge Bob (what we call our filthy painty sponges). Now you're ready for your new color!"

I have found that by making the process of painting and cleaning the brush silly and fun, the kids will do it. Sometimes we'll tell our brushes, "oh! Time to take a bath!" or "Ballerina! Do not scoot on your bottom!" It's hilarious to hear the kids having a full blown convo with their paint brush. But, hey, whatever works, right? So long as the principal doesn't walk in and wanna know why the kids are chatting with animate objects and drag 'em to the guidance counselor. 

Now! On to shapes!

So when I introduce the kids to shapes, I go about it a coupla ways. First we take a gander at this book. I love Lois Ehlert's books, don't you? This book especially is great because the shapes are bold and beautiful and easy for the kids to see. We count them, name them and count their number of sides. Going through this book with the kids helps me gain an understanding of their knowledge of shapes. As does playing a short round of this game.

I usually play this game once when I have a bit of down time with the kids. Again, it helps me gauge their shape knowledge. By this time in the school year, my kindergarten friends have learned quite a bit about shapes. So I like to spice this game up a bit. Instead of just calling out "pink triangle" I might say, "a shape that has three sides that's pink".  But even this simple game doesn't have all the shapes that are in the kinder-curriculum.

Which is why I love this lil handout from guruparents.com. My students are well beyond circles and squares and are now in deep with trapezoids and parallelograms. I used this handout to make flashcards that we run through at the start of our lessons based on shape. We even did a couple vocab games just to get those words stuck in our heads. Here's a lil clip of some of the vocab games we play.

So, what's our first shape-based creation? Well, it's a total rip off our first line-based masterpiece. But the tie-in is just perfect and it only takes one class. Our shape box!

 Now, you can go about creating this shape box a coupla ways. Either have the kids create the box from two strips of black paper (which is great because they'll learn how to make a square but also sucks because it will take them a million years to make said square). OR you can have a glorious parent volunteer bust 'em out in less than 15 minutes. Which is what I opted to do after a class of kinder-kids spent entirely too much time creating a box and not having enough time to create the rest of their shapes. 

 So, let's talk shape making. How'd they make 'em? Well first you start with a strip of paper which is a line. Then ask them..."how can this line become a circle?" Immediately, they'll respond that you need to glue one end to the other. Then show them that if you pinch it once...it's a drop shape! Pinch it twice...you have a crescent! Three times, viola, a triangle. And four, well, perhaps a square or a rectangle, you decide.

Kids found ways to create hearts and even stars. That pretty much made my day. 

What to do after that? Paint shapes, of course! We had many a chat about painting different shapes. The kids were intent on learning to paint stars and hearts. So many demos were given. I also have the tables covered in paper. I always encourage the kids to "practice and paint on the table". This way, once they feel comfortable, they can then paint on their paper. 

By the end of the first day, their paintings looked a little like this. We talked about how to create "rainbow shapes" by outlining the shapes in different colors. 

And one last painting day. It was funny, when some of the kids were finished and put their paintings on the drying rack, they asked if they could work on their shape sculptures again. Ermkay (cue Twilight Zone music).

Now, lest you think we be el finito with this here unit o' shapes, we've got some more work ahead of us. I'm 'bout to introduce organic shapes to these dudes with one of my fave artists, Henri Matisse. Tis time these kids take to creating some scissor-shapes, don't you think? 

Til then!

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In the Art Room: Kindergarten Clay Butterflies

Ya'll. I got this genius idea about a month and a half ago that all 400+ of my students should be working with clay. At the same time. And while this made for easy set up/clean up (read: We're 5 minutes late, ya'll -- Stop, Drop and Get Out! The next class is using the same thing!), all that clay left my room covered in a lovely layer of dust. Which, if you are an art teacher then you know, means two things:

1. The kids will figure skate across your dust-covered floor much to your pretend dismay (because, let's face it, you do the same thing when they're not in the room).

2. The kids will leave a path of dust covered foot prints leading a slightly disgruntled custodian to your door (ha, I totally kid as I have the most understanding custodial buddies around). 

Despite the dust-bowl-esque appearance of the art room, I love teaching clay as much as the kids do working with it. Seeing what creations they come up with is always so much fun. Howevers, with the wee ones in kindergarten-town, I like to start with the basics of hand building construction (slab, coil, sphere) in a pretty structured way.

Which leads me to this here Clay Butterfly project. If you're new to teaching clay or you simply need a quick project that teaches the basics of clay construction in a fool-proof-ish kind of way then this big bad butterfly is the thing for you. Here's what you'll need:

• Low Fire Clay (I use cone 06)
• No kiln to fire the clay? No worries. Try this out with air dry clay or Sculptey, available at craft stores.
• Skewer
• Toothbrush and cup of water
• Texture for the butterfly. We use a lot of lace, doilies and placemats in my art room.
• A butterfly template, optional
• Crayons
• Watercolor paint

 When I introduce clay, I have the kids gather around a table and do a demo from start to finish. Then I run through the entire thing again, this time having them repeat the directions after me. I thought I'd share with ya'll the start-to-finish routine...but don't worry, I won't make you repeat it back.

On auto-repeat, I tell the kids: You can make ANYTHING outta clay as long as you can make a Slab, a Coil and Sphere. With those three things, anything is possible. First, I have 'em make a slab.

1. Begin by squishing the clay as hard as you can between your two hands. Then thump it down onto your textured surface (this thumping-down business is always a hit, no matter what the age) and begin pounding the daylights outta that clay. Now, you're gonna have to remind the kids that the goal is not to punch they clay too much, it's not your brother after all. The end result should be a clay that is a consistent cookie thickness.

 Sometimes you can pound and pound that clay and it just won't get wide enough. So I tell the kids to pound their clay at a diagonal to help the clay stretch and become the desired width.

 The end result should have the texture of your pounding and be consistently cookie thick.

 2. Peal that clay off of your texture like a Fruit Roll-Up. I have to tell the kids that otherwise they'll simply dig at it with their fingernails. If you show them how to pull the clay and the texture away from each other, it's much easier. Also, isn't that texture rad? Clay is so receptive to texture that I'm always showing kids ways to incorporate that into their clay piece. Lace is my personal fave.

3. Once the clay has been pealed off of the texture, have the kids trace a butterfly template (not shown, duh). Or, if you are a Template Hater, don't. I use templates for this activity as the focus is on working with clay. If I can remove the frustration of drawing and redrawing a butterfly onto clay, them Ima gonna do it. When the kids cut into the clay, show them how to properly use that skewer stick. It should stand up vertically, like a solider. If the kids hold it like a pencil, they either just saw through the clay (leaving behind a chewed up looking edge) or don't cut all the way through. 

3. Smooth out those clay boogers. I know those rough edges aren't sharp now...but just you wait until you run your hand over that bad boy after a good bisque firing (that's a first fire for you first timers). I've sliced my hand up on such a surface. I always emphasize running a finger over the edges to smooth 'em.

4. Once they've gotten that slab butterfly body made, I teach 'em how to make a coil. For them, that's old hat. That's like the very first thing all kids make outta clay: a snake! Using my extra clay, I roll out a coil that is as long as the center of the butterfly. If I make it too long, I cut it to size with my skewer.

5. Now, I don't use a scoring tool, I use a toothbrush. I do use the terminology "slip and score" and explain to them that it's the glue that binds it all together. Without it, your clay project is sure to fall apart and you'll be so super sad. Don't let it happen to you.

 6. Stick that coil to the slab. In my demos, we chatted for a hot minute about the three parts of the butterflies body and used our pinching fingers to create them.

 7. Using spheres, we created eyes for our butterfly. Again, we toothbrushes because we didn't want our eyes to fall off. It totes sucks when that happens. Eyelashes (because all butterflies have 'em, right?) and mouthes were added along with anything else the kinderkiddos might imagine.

8.  When they brought their finished pieces to me, I wrote their names on the back and stuck two holes in the head for antennae and a hole in each wing for hanging. You might not want to do this in front of the children, especially if you fail to tell 'em what you're doing as stabbing their clay project proves to be a traumatic experience for some...not that I've ever done it or anything. Ahem.

Now, bisque or first firing these guys was cake because I could just stack 'em up on my kiln shelves. But I knew that glaze firing would involve many rounds of loading and unloading the kiln because of the flat and wide nature of the pieces (in case I'm not speaking your language: you cannot stack glazed pieces in the kiln as they'll stick together once fired). If you recall from earlier in this here post I mentioned that EVERYONE in the UNIVERSE was making something out of clay so glaze firing all of these really would have slowed my firing to a snail's pace. Therefore, I knew I had to find a glazing alternative.

I gave the kids watercolor paint and we had a chat about crayon resist. It helped that we'd dabbled in this in a previous lesson so the kids kinda got the concept. I told 'em that bright colors worked the best and that coloring super hard was the key to making this work. I likened it to putting a raincoat on the butterfly so that when it got wet with the paint, the paint would roll right off the rain coat. We also chatted about the symmetrical nature of a butterfly's design which inspired some kids. For others, they either weren't interested in that or their texture pattern made it too difficult to create a symmetrical design.

Once the crayon coloring business was through, the kids were free to paint. I asked them to pick one color (my friend above chose not to but the end result is lovely) and really like really had to stress painting away the white spots. The key is to have a moppy wet brush and to paint slow enough for the paint to sink into the crevices. Once complete, I slapped some ModPodge on 'em and my fourth grade morning helpers added the hanger. I added a dot of hot glue inside each opening at the top, inserted the antennae and, viola! Kindergarten Clay Butterfly!

What are some of your fave kindergarten clay projects? I'd love to hear, ya'll!

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In the Art Room: A Unit on Line for Kindergarten

Completed kindergarten masterpieces. That's right, I said kindergarten. The under-6 set is knockin' it outta the park, er, art room so far this year and I couldn't be more thrilled.

What I'm about to present to you right here is one Big Fat Hairy kindergarten unit on line. And color. Oh, and shape, sculpture and good craftsmanship, i.e. how-not-to-drive-the-art-teacher-crazy(-er)-by-not-grinding-your-paintbrush-into-the-paper. Because she no like-y. And, in my art room, keeping me sane-ish is at the top of my Learning Targets. Which is way harder than you could ever imagine. Just ask the kids.

Do you recall those wild and wacky paintings created on the first days of school in this post? Those large paintings have come in very handy as backdrops for our displays as you can see here.

Without getting into all of that, let's chat about the aforementioned Line Unit, shall we? I'm not gonna lie, I do this same ole project with kindergarten at the beginning of every year. Which is unusual for me because with all the other grade levels, I love to change things up. Not so with kinder'town for a coupla reasons: A. they love it; B. it covers a whole batch o' skills/techniques/vocabulary/routines and C. let's be honest, coming up with projects that the little ones can master is not my forte. So when I find something that works, I stick with it.

So on our very first day of art, after introducing ourselves to one another and an abbreviated discussion of rules and consequences (because, after all, these kids are five. They still have baby fluff, suck their thumbs and wet their pants routinely. Rules and consequences mean nada. A wicked stare and a "we don't do that in kindergarten" usually does the trick), I like to dive head first into the art-making swimmin' hole. Which means we create our very first sculpture.

Now if you're an old warhorse at this art teacher game, this lesson is nothing new to you. You might wanna skip on down to the bottom where I discuss such things as pinwheel portrait painting and bottomless basket weaving (don't worry newbies, they'll be gone a while. I don't even know what that stuff is!). For the rest of ya, lemme tell you how I go about teaching this line sculpture lesson: 

• First of all, we have a little chat about the difference between flat two-dimensional artwork and sculptures. After looking at some images of sculptures, we chat about the ones we are familiar with (ole Lady Liberty almost always comes up) and discuss how a sculpture is something we can see (rotating body at waist for emphasis) all...the way...around.
• I then tell 'em that we are going to create a sculpture with a bunch of straight lines (strips of paper cut 1" X 9" but sizes can vary). I ask them how to make a flat piece of paper pop out of their sculpture base (aka the bottom paper) to which they usually answer "glue!" It's at this point that I tell 'em that if they want their sculpture to stand, just like us, it must have feet.
• I demonstrate creating a small fold at the ends of the strip of paper thus creating feet. It's there that glue is applied (to which the strip of paper always responds, "oohh, that tickles my feet! Ohhh, that glue is soo cold!" Yes, the paper talks to us. It's kindergarten, people. They eat this stuff up). Once the glue is applied, I show the kids how to hold the paper in place on the base for about 10 seconds. 
• From there, I demonstrate adding more paper strips to the sculpture base on top, below, behind or beside the first strip. Then I turn the kids loose on their on sculptures. 
• The following art class, I introduce more lines. I demonstrate folding a zigzag line, wrapping a strip of paper around my pencil to create a spiral and creating a loop de loop. 
• I also chat about how lines create shapes and demonstrate creating a circle by gluing one end of the strip to the other. With that circle, so many other shapes can be created with a pinch. Pinch the circle once and you have a teardrop! Pinch it again and you have an ellipse! One more time, it's a triangle! Anther pinch and you have a square.
• From there, the kids go nuts on their sculptures creating lines, shapes and whatever else they can dream up.

Here! Lemme walk you through it.

On the third day of art class, I get real serious about the whole line thing. We look at each of these snake-y lines on the poster I created way back in first-year-art-teacher-land and then locate them on works of art. Any ole Kandinsky works great for this. It's at this point I introduce to the kids a lil poem I wrote some years ago about a snake named Larry that can morph his body into any line he likes. It goes a lil sumpin like this (complete with hand motions, you better believe it!):

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!

After learning the Larry the Line poem, I bust out this huge cheesey carnival snake I got years ago that happens to have a little rattle in his tail. I convince the kids that he's real (they're kindergarten so they totally buy it) and maneuver him around to create a variety of lines. If the kids guess the name of the line correctly, I let them "rattle" Larry's tail. They eat it up and learn the names of lines to boot.

After that, I give a little demo on painting. If you've read this blog for five minutes, you know that when painting, I liken the bristles of the paint brush to a ballerina: It always dances on it's toes, it never scoots around on it's bottom. After I demonstrate painting each of Larry's lines, the kids go to their seats and we do a little guided painting. Meaning, I paint and they follow along.

This school year, I have my kindergarten for 45 minutes every six days (which is different than my usual 30 minute classes, twice every six days...confused yet? That makes two of us). That slightly longer block of time makes a world of a difference in that we can accomplish so much! On the fourth day of this unit, we examine Kandinsky again and this time chat about how influenced he was by music. The kids were told that they were going to be painting a nonobjective picture of lines while listening to Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev. If you're not familiar, this piece of music introduces each character of Peter and the Wolf with a different instrument. Each character really comes to life with the music and makes for great line paintings.

On that day, the children were only given black paint. As they painted to the music, you could see them trying to capture each character in line. Once a painting was finished, I'd take it from them and hand them a new sheet of white paper. By the end of art class, each child had painted about three black and white line pictures.

The following art class, I introduced the kids to tempra cakes which you can see best a coupla photos ago. My focus was on using the art materials properly and exploration of color. I wrote about this particular painting lesson pretty extensively last year in this blog post. In that lesson, we didn't paint to music and we focused some on pattern in a follow up lesson.

Here's a collection of their finished pieces. I love how wild, bright and unique each one is, just like the artists themselves.

On the sixth and final day of this unit, the kids were introduced to Roy G. Biv and watercolor paint. Since the last lesson had just been about exploring with color and proper use of painting supplies, I really wanted to focus on the order of the colors in the rainbow. My hat helped them remember the order (even if it is missing the "B" in Roy G. Biv) as did the large rainbow I have mounted on my easel. And in case you're dying to get a rainbow hat of your own, mine is from amazon. Yes, really.

Have you read this book? I picked it up years ago at the thrift store and it's pretty cute. As you turn each page, an additional color of ribbon is added to the ribbon rainbow in the book, hence the "Magic Ribbon Book" label at the bottom.

After that chat, I demonstrate to the children how to use watercolor paints. This is an easy transition from the tempra cakes as the cleaning-your-brush-before-getting-another-color is exactly the same. We do chat about the differences between the two mediums (you know, watercolor being more translucent) and also discuss painting in Roy G. Biv order. After that demo, the kids returned to their seats with their paintings created on that third day of art class and rainbow-ize the thing. This is the first year I've added this portion to the line unit and I love the result.

And there you have it. One Big Fat Hairy line/shape/color/RoyG.Biv/sculpture/abstract Unit for the wee ones. I know these lessons are nothing new...so I'd love to hear how you approach teaching line. Also, for the sake of space, I may have not answered all of your how-you-teach-that questions, so feel free to email me or leave a comment. I may or may not get back to you. Just sayin'.

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