In the Art Room: First Grade Fiber Arts

Every year I do paper weaving with my first grade artists...and every year, when the weavings are complete, I think, "well, now what?"

This year, my first graders FLEW through weaving without much help or reteaching from me. I was so excited that I decided to throw some simple stitching into the mix and I'm so glad I did. The kids nailed it and created a beautiful heart-tastic quilt to boot.

Day 1: If you've never done paper weaving with kids before, here is how I teach them to cut their looms. We used painted paper for our looms. Cutting our looms and weaving a couple of strips took us one 30 minute class. 

Day 2: On our second day, we reviewed the weaving process. We sit in a circle and weave together. I like to use peer tutoring for those who understand weaving to help others. I find the kids do an excellent job teaching one another!

Our Love Quilt now hangs outside my art room! This is the work of two classes. My next two classes will have a different color scheme. I'll be sure to share when they are complete. 

Day 3: The next art class, students chose a 12" square piece of construction paper. We learned all about symmetry as well as positive and negative shapes and how to cut out a heart! This was then glued over our weavings. We saved the positive shape hearts for our next project. As a wrap up, we had a drawing sheet full of symmetrical and asymmetrical images for the kids to draw.

Day 4: I had to do some prep work for this day, not even gonna lie. I hot glued another square paper on the back of the artwork to anchor the weaving (see below) and I hole punched the sides. For two classes, that took about 20 minutes. Then I cut the yarn to about 18" strips and had pieces of tape on hand for the kids.

To begin, each child anchored their yarn with tape on the back. I showed them out to do a whip stitch and they went to town. To end the stitch, they added another piece of tape on the back. 

Early finishers helped those those who needed assistance. Everyone finished in under 20 minutes. This gave us time to add our names with silver Sharpie!

Once the kids were done, I laid the pieces out on the floor and decided to display the artwork quilt-style. 

For that, I simply hole punched the tops and bottoms of the weavings and tied them together with two pieces of yarn. This created long pieces of art that I hung next to each other to create the illusion of a blanket. That took a mere 30 minutes! 

I was so excited that with 4 30 minute art classes, the kids learned about weaving, symmetry and stitching...all while having a blast! I am so glad to have this beautiful masterpiece outside my art room. 

Love to hear about your favorite projects that involve paper weaving!

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In the Art Room: First Grade Bebo Birds!

Today a couple of my first grade classes finished off their Bebo-inspired birds and the kids were so pleased with themselves. Each masterpiece was as colorful, unique and fun as the wee artist who created it. If y'all recall, I had the opportunity to visit the folk artist Bebo, watch him create and film him doing so. I have been calling these filmed clips of visits to art's studios Field Trip! Here is what our Field Trip! to Bebo's home studio looked like:

After watching the video, we stood, stretched and moved around the room pretending to be some of the animals that Bebo created (this helped get our wiggles out...and was a fun review!). From there, we watched the first half of this video to learn about creating our textured paper for the background of our masterpiece.

That was our first day! The following art class, we got to do the fun part: paint our birds!

We chatted about making just one bird or two. We discussed having our paper go vertical or horizontal. The elements of art like line and shape were our big focus in this lesson. Finally, we talked about creating a pattern for a "frame" around our birds and in the background.

 The kids were so thrilled with their results. Each was so eager to share their work with their friends...but with 30 minutes in art, we didn't have time. So we placed them on the drying rack with the promise that I'd show them on the Big Screen T.V. (by placing them under the Elmo) tomorrow. 

Gotta love it when an artist requests a small brush "so I can do some detailed hearts"...well, okay then!

This artist was certain his would be going off to an art museum, it's just that good, y'all. 

 What I loved about this project was that it only took two art classes, which, in my world equals two thirty minute classes. Most of my lessons take much longer...I loved how short and sweet this one was. And the kids loved learning about Bebo. In fact, they want to create more animals inspired by him. How can I say no to that?!

 I would love to paper the halls with these happy dudes.

Until then, have a fabulous week back, y'all!

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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: Mother's Day Flower Pots

Our kindergarten students have changed so much this year that their growth reminds me of their blooming flower collages.

There are some folks that just don't get paid enough. These people include egg-inspection factory workers (speaking from experience, thank you very much), corn-detasselers (another item on my resume) and kindergarten teachers. Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoy teaching the littles but I only see them in half an hour intervals. And, sometimes, in that half an hour, I can have one empty his bladder, one start to cry for her mama, one step in said bladder-empty-outter's puddle and one decide to smack me on the tooshie on his way out the door with a "bye-bye, Mrs. Stephens!"

Overheard kindergarten convo: "I got a man's haircut yesterday but I'm still a little boy." Such sweetness, sigh.

Despite all of that, I can see why the kindergarten teachers keep coming back for more. No other group of kids is as enthusiastic about everything under the sun as kindergarten. Every new skill taught is met with an "ohhhh" and an "ahhhh" and often awarded an applause.

Take this Flowery Collage, for instance. We used the left over scraps of textured paper we had created for our Mammoth Monet Mural. For the background, we learned all about creating a tint with primary blue and white when sponge printing. Once that was dry, we chatted about our French friends Claude Monet and Henri Matisse and their love of nature and collage, respectively. And their flowers are simply tres magnifique, no?

Pretty as a petunia.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. You see, the wee ones actually painted these here flower pots before creating their collages. Every year our awesome kindergarten teachers help their students celebrate Mother's Day with a Mother's Day Tea. At the tea, each mom is presented with a handpainted terracotta with a lovely little flower inside.

We only used one 1/2 hour class to complete these. It was a whirlwind of painting fun but next year I think two art classes would be better.

I offered to help the kids paint their pots in the art room this year. I demonstrated on a couple of broken pots how to paint the middle of the flower, or stigma. We chatted about pollen (which is why we are all so sneezy) and nectar. I then showed the kids how to add the petals, stem and leaves and grass. We topped it off with some line designs around the rim.

Remember these? I guess you can see where my idea of having them paint flowers on their flower pots came from...

"My mama is going to love my pot. She's gonna say 'Did you really make it?' " ...adorable

Once the pots were painted, the kids had a big time with the collages because they could see the connection. And because we learned the word "collage" and said it in our funniest French accents complete with a "viola!" after every simple task completed. You see, I told you, it's the little things when it comes to the little ones. As long as we're not peein', cryin' or nose-a-pickin', it's a pretty fun group to hang with.

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