Clay Coil Hearts! and Reconstituting Clay!

Here's a clay lesson I recently created for my second graders! I created a video to share the process with them and thought I'd share it with you too. Here you go:

I did change things up from the video after working with the kids...we made the heart all in one sitting. That's right, 30 minutes! We hustled! Mostly because when I did try to have them wrap the clay coils up in a plate, they were dried and too brittle the next time. The key is that the clay needs to be super soft for the kids to work with. So passing that along to you!

This lesson could easily be done with both air dry and kiln fire clay. We used kiln fire. Once fired, I will dip all of the pieces in diluted India ink, covering the piece entirely. The ink dries quickly. Then I'll pass the piece back to my students and they will use craft store metallic acrylic paints to add the color. I added holes at the top so we could hang these. I may even have them add beads to the hanger. 

And in case your clay dried out before you could use it last year, I created a video on how to reconstitute that old clay. I did this process with clay that was two years old! Not fun at all...but it can be done and it's good to know when you are in need. I hope it helps!

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My Favorite Lovey-Dovey Lessons (Just in Time for Valentine's!)

Welcome back! It's been a minute (okay, several) since I last blogged and while I missed you all dearly, you guys: I needed a break! In all truth and honesty...a couple things have been going around here on the homefront that have kept me away. First of all, I'm just not feeling it this year. There, I have said it. I've actually said it quite a bit here. And I know this is normal, a season in the art teacherin' life, it's still frustrating. I'm not hopping out of bed with excitement about the day ahead. Sure I can fake it but...I know that it's not my normal, you know? I do think a large project I'm working on has been a contributing factor. I've worked on big projects while teaching before ('member this book?) But this new thing it's, well, bigger and unlike anything I've tried. So other things are starting to slide. Blogging and being completely present and excited in the art room. 

BUT Y'ALL DIDN'T COME HERE FOR ALL THIS, did you? Sorry, not sorry. We all need to overshare sometimes and you just happened to be a good listener. Thank you

Now, let's talk about projects that are perfect for this time of year: Valentines Day-ish lessons! Be sure and click on all the following links as MANY of them have videos for you to share in your art room with your students. Here we go:

Romero Britto-Inspired First Grade Hearts this lesson was a huge hit with my students and involved line and pattern review as well as some fun color exploration with tissue paper and paint sticks!

 Heart Prints with Kindergarten was such a fun way to share printmaking with kindergarten in a way where each student was successful! 

Foil Relief Heart from Kindergarten Printing Plate this was a fun way to do a cool project with our leftover printing plates. Kindergarten then painted the background in a rainbow review.

Robert Indiana Love Prints by First and Second Grade my kids love printmaking. We explored making a ton of prints on styrofoam plates before adding the paper letters on top.

Chris Uphues-Inspired Project for All Grades You'll definitely want to check this lesson out, it's perfect for a sub, comes with a video and free handouts!

James Goldcrown Hearts for All Another easy lesson and a quick one too...and one that introduces a contemporary artist. Win-win-WIN!

First Grade Woven Hearts with Stitched Edge We just finished up weaving in my art room and we just might be doing this next. 

This Our School Has Heart mural is a blog post with so many ideas! One for each grade level, be sure and check it out!

Valentine Animals for All my kids loved this project and I'm sure yours will too. All the videos and details here!

A Contemporary Artist Review! This one was one I did with my older students and it was a blast. We learned about four contemporary artists who use hearts in their work. Video included!

But wait, there's more! So many more Valentine's lesson ideas here. Hope you enjoy!

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In the Art Room: Kindergarten Hearts, a Follow Up!

What you see here just might be my new favorite kindergarten lesson! I shared this lesson (and video!) originally here, if you recall. My students began with a foam heart shape purchased from the Dollar Tree. We then added foam sticker shapes and pulled prints (I'll get to that here in a moment but you can scroll down to get an idea). Those prints were used for one project. Then we were left with our printing plates.

 I LOVE doing this technique with our old printing plates. I've done this same process with cut paper snowflakes, leaves, round printing plates and styrofoam printing plates. I'll explain the process and supplies here...or you can just check out the video.

 I see my kindergarten kids for 30 minutes, twice a week. Here's how I broke the lesson down. 

Day 1: We read The Shape of My Heart. We learned about organic and geometric shapes. We placed sticker shapes on our foam hearts. The hearts came from the Dollar Tree and the stickers from Michaels.

 Day #2: We printed! The kids printed by themselves and did great! They were to pull at least four prints so insure they had two good ones. We used foam rollers and tempera paint. You can read more about that here. 

 Day #3: We did the 100 Dot Challenge! At least that's what I called it. Each table had 10 Sargent Paint Sticks. The kids were tasked to making 10 different color dots with the 10 sticks. This fell close to the 100th day of school so it was really fun. We also learned to count by 10s!

Day #4: We cut out our two favorite heart prints and glued them to our dotted background. Then we went to the glitter table.

 And, as predicted, GLITTER GOT EVERYWHERE. Thankfully a kid pointed out the glitter in my coffee before I took a swig!

 Day #5: We painted a rainbow! I traced hearts in the middle of the paper before the kids got to class. I did this because our focus was on painting, not tracing. I also wanted them to have enough time to pain. 

 Day #6: Our last day...I took the hearts outside. With spray glue, I added the foil on top. Thin foil works best. Then I gave the hearts a dusting of spray paint. I like the $1 a can, matte black spray paint from Home Depot. The prep time for this took me about 30 minutes for 2 classes.

 Using the finest of steel wool, the kids were tasked with "finding their shapes" by sanding off the spray paint. They LOVED this! They were so excited to see their design come to life. 

 And I hot glued their hearts in place. 

This lesson had it all: shapes, printmaking, 100 dot making, collaging, rainbow painting, metal tooling and more. This is definitely a lesson I'll be repeating. Hope you and your young artists give it a go too!

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In the Art Room: Chris Uphues Lesson for All!

 Hey, friends! A while ago, I created a Chris Uphues-inspired video for my sub to use. Because my classes are either 30 minutes in length or an hour, the video is broken up a bit. For example, as you watch, you'll see that my 30 minute kids learn about Chris and then do some sketching on dry erase boards before tackling paper. My older kids did this too...and then about 30 minutes in, met on the floor again to view the rest of the video. As I've said before, I LOVE having my students sketch on dry erase boards...it's their favorite because of the slick and forgiving surface. And it's mine as it uses less frustration and time with erasing and reworking. Here's that sub video...feel free to use it in your art teacherin' world. All I ask is that you give credit to lil ole me when you share your student's work or resources. 

Side Note: Jen and Chris Uphues are some of my most favorite folks on the planet. You'd be hard pressed to find two kinder or more down to earth people. I LOVE introducing them to my kids because I know that these are some seriously AMAZINGLY good people. And I'm super judge-y so you know I'm tellin' ya'll the true (insert winky-tongue face emoji). 

Meeting them this fall was one of the highlights of my school year!

When I initially created the lesson, I wasn't sure how I wanted the kids to finish their work...just this week did we dig the drawings back up and I started letting my early finishers work on them. All my kids are in the middle of some big projects that they all seem to finish at totaly different speeds. So this lesson has been a fun and quick in-between project. They kids love drawing these funny faces!

FOR THE FREE DOWNLOADABLE IDEA SHEETS, JUST CLICK HERE! 

FOR THE FREE HEART SHEET, CLICK HERE!

Have fun! 

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In the Art Room: Top 14 Favorite Valentine's Day Lessons

Well, hello lovies! In this blog post, I thought I'd share with you 14 of my very favorite Valentine's Day inspired lessons...perfect for these chilly and cold months. Let's let warm fuzzies abound in the art room! 

To find the lessons, just follow the link. Many of them have a video to share with your kids. Also...several of them are sub plan videos! Perfect if you have to take a day. I know I could use one. 

First up are these sweet Jim Dine-inspired heart sculptures created by my second graders. We used Celluclay and aluminum foil to make these beauties and the kids loved making them. 

Next up are these amazing LOVE prints created by my first graders. We chatted about Robert Indiana before diving into these. We had a whole lotta printmaking fun with this one. 

Last year, I did this lesson with my second graders. They were able to choose their own "kind" four letter word (we had: nice, kind, love, glow, hope, good, etc.) and used strips of paper to create the letters. Those turned out so fun. 

First grade artists created these huge Romero Britto-inspired hearts last year with bleeding tissue paper and paint sticks. We made these on huge 18" square sheets of paper. 

Speaking of first grade, here's a peak at what mine are working on right now...weaving! Heart weavings that we'll put together to create a faux quilt. This is one of my favorite lessons but mostly because I do love to teach weaving. 

Chris Uphues is one of my very favorite contemporary artists to share with my kids because 1. he's the nicest and 2. his artwork speaks to them. It's so happy! My students adored this lesson a couple years ago! 

If you need a quick one-day lesson that will introduce your kids to a new artist, you might want to try this one on for size. It's inspired by J. Goldcrown and all you need is black paper and chalk for amazing results. 

One year, we were inspired by Peter Anton's fake food sculptures to make some box of chocolates of our own. Third grade thought this was the coolest project ever. 

If you are like me, you do long art lessons...and then need a shorter one to pick up momentum again. I think my students might be the same way. This lesson is a quicker with beautiful results. Here's what we did with the paper after we cut the hearts how: filled them with a video of tissue paper!

And here's what we did with the hearts we cut out. So cute, right? 

This lesson is similar to the first I shared except that there are wings added with plaster. I'm thinking of doing this lesson with my third graders super soon...just need to work out the specifics...but I'm sure they will love it. Video details and more here. 

Need a sub plan? I did this Romero Britto inspired collaborative with my kids when I was out on jury duty. Lesson and video right here. 

Need something big and happy to spread the love? My kids EACH contributed to the Our School has Heart mural. Visit this post to see what each different grade level created for this mural from embroidery to painting to sculpture and needle felting! 

My fourth graders tackled this lesson a couple years ago right after they finished the following sculpture lesson...

Boy did we have a ball with this lesson! A super fun sculpture project for the kiddos. 

This lesson I created a little while back for my kindergarten and first graders. We loved the printed hearts and the fun guided drawing animals. Video lessons for each critter. 

Looking for a fun way to introduce your kids to four contemporary artists who use hearts in their work? This video lesson just might be for you!

Oh! And if you are looking for something to do with your faculty and staff to bring the love, you might want to check out these our Clay Hearts with Wings...a huge hit with my coworkers. Video too!

Okay, y'all...that was WAY more than 14 projects so have fun! 

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