Well, hello there, strangers! My sincerest apologies for how quiet it has been on this here blog over the last week (let's be honest: you enjoyed the peace) but I've been super duper busy with my buddies Jennifer, Laura and Ginger getting ready for the Tennessee Camp of Art Scouts!
Laura and Ginger arrived in town on Wednesday afternoon from Ohio. Jen and I had just enough time to show them around our favorite place: Franklin, Tennessee. Franklin is a small town with a big history just 15 minutes south of Nashville. The downtown has a lovely Mayberry-esque vibe. After a stroll up and down Main Street, we took them to a local fave, Pucketts Grocery and Restaurant. The food was delish but the best part of the meal was when we walked in, Jen's husband Miguel and two sweet daughters were there. What a happy surprise! It was so fun to pull up a table and chairs to join them.
On Thursday morning, bright and early and fueled up on coffee, we began to set up Camp for our Scouts. Thankfully, we had the help of our art teacherin' friends Stephanie Preston and Jennifer Staples to get ready for the next couple of days. Those two girls were our right hand gals during Scouts and we just can't thank them enough for all they did for us and the Troops. Thank you, sweet friends! Also, a big shout out to my buddy Mr. Joe for hanging out with a bunch of wild and crazy art teachers for a couple of days.
Friday morning, folks started to arrive and, after breakfast, chatting and a super secret Art Scout ceremony (sorry, y'all. Must be present to get the scoop), we dove right into the art of making big messes!
I have to tell you, we simply have the nicest folks attend Art Scouts. We had teachers from Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, California, Florida, Alabama, Virginia, the Carolinas, Texas (and I know I'm even forgetting some)...we were blown away! These sweet, kind and dedicated art teachers are a gift to their students, faculty and staff.
Not to mention, some seriously talented (and funny!) artists.
I mean, when is the last time you saw folks having this much fun at a professional development? And we had just as much of a blast hosting them. We were so lucky!
We had a little over 50 Scouts in attendance. Laura and Ginger lead 25 Scouts on their quest to earn their painting and clay badges in my art room. They created over three clay projects and multiple painted paper pieces during their first day with Troop Leaders Laura and Ginger.
Now, y'all know that Laura is the master of all things painted paper and collage. Having the chance to learn her approach is so much fun...and I speak from experience. I had that opportunity at Tennessee Arts Academy last year. We've been friends long before that. I love and respect what she does for her students and the art education community. Not to mention, she's funny as all get out!
I loved the variety of creations that I was able to sneak a peak of when I popped down to my art room. Ginger had folks working with Amaco's air dry clays because it has a very similar texture as kiln fire clay. Ginger is such a jack of all trades but, unlike me, she's a master of all. When we were brainstorming ideas on what badges our Scouts would earn and what we'd like to share, Ginger is so versatile, she could teach it all! She did such a fab-o job sharing fun clay projects with our Scouts.
I so wanna do this with my students, I know they would have a blast!
Ginger is also our Mural Maven (if you've not seen the time lapsed videos of her students painting murals, go here). The Scouts worked on this scene of the Smoky Mountains that Ginger drew. This helped every understand her simply and impactful method of teaching mural painting to children.
I love how the colors pop on that black paper!
Back in our territory, Jen and I shared everything we could pack in on fibers and printmaking. Jennifer shared such a fun assortment of printmaking projects that are not your usual carve-into-block type of thing. What I love about what Jen shares is that she brings her bright and cheery personality to each project. The sunny sun prints and the colorful wax crayon prints are a true reflection of how colorful the projects are which she shares with her students.
Because Jen has 30 minute art classes with her kindergarten through fourth grade kids, she was able to share how she breaks her projects down into bite sized bits. She also enlightened us to some fast and easy clean up tips!
Marker prints were also thrown into the mix!
We also had a big time exploring Gelli Arts printing plates!
Those printing plates are so versatile and fun. I mean, check out these effects!
These look fabulous just as they are...however the Scouts turned them into beautiful flower collages.
Love this orchid collage by Stephanie.
And this one being cut out is fabulous. I love that the Scouts swapped flowers to add variety to their collages.
Now all y'all know that needle felting is my jam. So when I shared that we'd be taking a stab at it (wink, nudge), the Troops were thrilled. And shocked at just how easy needle felting can be. Check out the cute lil palette hair clips we made!
Because I'm secretly on a mission to have ALL art teachers dress like CRAZY art teachers.
We also learned how to do some of my favorite weaving activities, circle loom and tree weaving, to name just a few.
I always love the variety of paintings created on something as simple as a paper plate.
I mean, I wanna paper my walls in these beauties!
Remember: you can circle loom weave on anything round! Hula Hoops! Embroidery Hoops! CDs! Just make sure you have an odd number of warp threads.
To earn their fibers and painting badges, our Scouts created three printing projects and three weaving and one felting masterpieces. We were busy, y'all.
It's been such fun getting to know these new friends of ours. One of my favorite things was seeing all of the fun images shared on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Here's a collection of what was shared by our Scouts.
P.S. THAT PENCIL DRESS!! Beth, you know I love that dress, girl!
I love this collage of art teacherin' fashion that Rina created...so glad I made the cut!
Painted paper fun! Happy faces, fun projects!
Just one half of the Scouts wearing their needle felting palette hair clips!
I love this photo collage created by Scout Brandi!
We had so much fun sharing out passion of making big messes with little people...with our new best friends, the Art Scouts! We couldn't have done it without our Ohio friends Ginger and Laura! After our Scouts left Saturday afternoon, we broke down and put our feet up.
Because I live just 4 miles from my school, I had the gang over to my place for some dinner and chill time. We're already brainstorming ideas on plans to bring more Art Scouts Camps to our future Troops...and we couldn't be more excited!
To keep up with us, you can follow us on Instagram! You can also join our Facebook group where you'll find a ton of more images and be able to make inquires and chat with attendees.
Kids. It's almost the New Year. And, if you're a list-loving-maker like me, that can only mean one thing: it's time to bust out that colorful variety pack of felt-tipped pens and start goal setting! I always make Sewing Goals, Health Goals, House-Cleaning/Decorating Goals and neglect Art Teacherin' Goals. Mostly because I seem to be stuck in the mindset that anything new to do with teaching must ONLY happen at the start of a school year. Well, not this year, y'all. I'm banishing that notion and going full steam ahead with a litany of New -n- Improved Art Teacherin' Resolutions for the New Year! Who's with me?!
One of my biggest goals as an art teacher is to jam pack as much info into the limited amount of time I have with my students. And for that reason, I'll be presenting Maximize Your Minutes in the Art Room at this winter's AOE conference! There's still time for you to register to attend this online conference and hear me chat about maximizing AND see a tour of my (new and improved for the new year) art room!
So, without further ado, let's chat about my...
Art Teacherin' Resolutions for 2016, Part 1
("Part 1" because, let's face it, there's a whole lot I need to work on!)
My class schedule is not like most of y'all, I imagine. I see my kindergarteners for 45 minutes, weekly; my first and second for 30 minutes, bi-weekly and my third and fourth for an hour, weekly. Even with that limited amount of time, I don't want my students to have a watered-down art class. Instead I want to provide a super-concentrated, high fructose, protein-packed experience. One that is both fun and easy for me to build into a routine. So here are some new plans I am looking forward to putting into action once the kids return (by the way, several of these ideas came from the Queen of Pinterest, Donna Staten!): An Art Class Greeting: When I open my art room door to greet the kids waiting outside, I usually have a coupla hand-raisers (what are we doing today?), a coupla complimenters (I like your hair! [really? because it's not changed since high school, y'all]) and a coupla lost-in-space-rs (Billy. The line is moving. Joining us?). For a while I snubbed this out with my Vocab-at-the-Door routine which I love but it just didn't pack the "Art class is the JAM! Let's get in here and make stuff" punch that I had in mind. Then I saw this video and got an idea to create an Art Class Greeting...
Isn't that awesome?! Of course, I plan to change it up a pinch by saying, "Hello, my most amazing artists!" but the rest is perfection. Then I can drop into my usual vocabulary routine...or, what I'm leaning more toward for a lil change-up, teaching the kids a Walking-into-the-Art-Room song. Check out how these students gather on the floor with a song in this incredible teacher's room (watch the whole video, her methods are fantastic!)...
An Art Class Song: Did you hear the little ditty the students sang as they came to the floor? I loved it! So I wrote one of my own. I wanna keep it short, sweet and simple so that the kids can quickly memorize it and put it to use as they walk in the door. Here's what I got so far:
Walking into the art room
1-2-3
All my friends
Are here with me
Let's learn about Picasso and
Vincent van Gogh
With the best kid artists
That I know
(and repeat till all are seated)
3. Word of the Week: Keeping What Works! Of course, I'm not throwing out everything in my attempt to maximize my minutes. I do still love the Word of the Week...
and plan to continue introducing new terminology this way. However, just one word of the week doesn't begin to cover all of the art vocabulary that needs to be taught.
To remedy that situation, I plan to put my buddy Laura Lohman's Art Word Wall Cards to good use. I printed all of these words off and had them laminated at the start of the year...and just now got around to cutting them out and arranging them on my word wall cabinets.
I've got the words temporarily stuck onto my cabinets with sticky tack so that I can easily pluck them off and put them into my vocabulary pocket chart thingie.
You can score one of these bad boys from Amazon for a lil under $20. Or just shoot out a school-wide email and see if anyone has one they wouldn't mind parting with. When introducing new vocabulary with this chart, I like to do a couple of fun vocab games to get the kids comfortable with saying the words.
These games are fun and quick. I use them when introducing new words, not each art class. We are trying to keep it short and quick so the kids can get to makerin', right? Oh, here's another:
Accelerated Art History for the Littles: I once went to the doc complaining of stress and panic attacks. She asked, "What do you do?" When I responded that I'm an art teacher, she nearly fell over laughing. "It's only art! How hard can it be?!" Well, I don't have to tell YOU, my art teacherin' friends, do I? Just how do we squeeze in art history, contemporary art, techniques, proper use of materials, skillz, not to mention creativity and the cultivation of some imagination in one class period? With some Accelerated Art History, I've decided.
At the start of each art class, after our new lil greeting, entrance song and Word of the Week intro, I've started zooming this kids through art history in 120 seconds or less. My first attempts, I brought the kids over to my big art history wall and did the lil routine you see here. Which was super fun but ate into more art time than I desired. So now I show them my lil art history PowerPoint (to be shared here soon!) with a sneak peak into a new period in art each week. I've been using these books as my resource as they keep things short and sweet:
I found both used on Amazon and they have been great at highlighting the key points to share with my students. So far, we've covered cave art up through the Egyptians and the kids have loved these lil short snippets of art history. However, I recently discovered Marcia Beckett of Art is Basic's awesome TPT Art History Sketchbook prompts! Like, what?! So, now, when I am introducing this short voyage through art history, I can tie in the (older) kid's sketchbook prompts. I'm so thrilled with this idea, thank you, Marcia! (Below is a lil blurb about how I've had the kids create and use sketchbooks in my art room this year).
Sitting Still Like a Frog: One of my goals this school year was to introduce mindfulness and breath to my students. I'll be the first to admit, I've totes dropped the ball on this one! I've been reading Sitting Still Like a Frog and I think I might have made the whole thing a lot more difficult than it needed to be. When my music teacher buddy Kiera told me that she uses the concept when she plays music and has the children listen silently while focusing on their breath, I was all, EUREKA! That's what I'll do!
My thought is for my younger students who do not have sketchbooks to simply breathe and look at the art work I will have projected onto my television at the start of art class. You know, once, we've finished singing our entrance song and settled in on the floor. The plan is for that image presented to be from our lil Accelerated Art History lesson so I can segue right into that portion of art class. Of course, for the olders, it will give them a moment to reflect on their sketchbook prompt.
How do you introduce the concept of breath and mindfulness in a fun way? I plan to show this video!
For more on mindfulness, check out this clippity clip!
A Flipped Classroom Attempt: I was really inspired at the AOE conference last winter by the concept of a flipped classroom. If you aren't familiar, the concept is that early finishers can educate themselves by viewing instructional videos created by the teacher. Nic Hahn of Mini Matisse has made a whole lotta strides with this in her art room and I love seeing what she's done (for example, this video above is one she shares with her students to introduce new stations in her art room!). Now, I don't have a class set of iPads for the kids to use but I do have the ability to record lessons and project them on my big screen television. I never really thought of doing this until Nic mentioned that it allowed her to, in one viewing, say everything she needed to say (cuz you know you ALWAYS forget something!) and, for some crazy reason, the kids focus much more on the telly than they do on us! It also will provide me a hot minute or two to tend to supplies and important tasks (like drinking my now-cold coffee). I'm really loving this idea and hope to start popping more videos up on my YouTube channel which you can find here.
Alrightie. So, there you have it, just a sprinkling of my Art Teacherin' Resolutions for the New Year! I have many more new ideas in store for my young artists like a new twist on supply distribution, new messy mats that also double as educational tools and a squeaky clean clean-up routine! Stay tuned, y'all. Until then, you'll find me adding these fun and inspirational songs to my list o' tunes to play both for their lovely lyrics...
and their delish singers. HAAAAYYYYY, Bruno Marzzz. I see you! What are some of y'all's Art Teacherin' Resolutions for the New Year? I'd love to hear them! Let's inspire each other!
