What the Art Teacher Wore #156

First Day o' Feb Monday: Are you kidding me? I've been counting the days until I could bust out my heart-tastic, LOVE-ly wares, y'all. heart print top: Buffalo Exchange; belt and palette print skirt: Pin Up Girl Clothing; hat: New Orleans; tights: Target; shoes: Fluevog

What's happening, my friends? I feel like it's been ages since we last chatted even tho it was only Tuesday. I do try my hardest to see you here three times a week but sometimes the week gets ahead of me and the next thing I know, it's Sunday. How does that even happen? Time flies when you are a procrastinator, y'all.

In other news, Monday was the first day o' Feb and I was beyond ready to bust out some heart-y/love-y outfits. I also am leaving you with my latest filmed sub plan! I had to pop outta town for a coupla days and I was thrilled to have my same sub from jury duty land. She was very excited when I told her I had another filmed lesson ready for her. Hopefully, her day went well. I thought I'd share it with y'all in case you need a quick fun project for Valentine's Day! 

Until next time, love y'all!

This lesson is based around the book Love Monster by Rachel Bright. I don't own the book so I had my sub read aloud the youtube video below and then dive into my sub video you see above! For this lesson, the kids needed Lost Love Monster sheets, glue, scissors, Sharpies, googley eyes and paper to create hearts. 

The story is super sweet and one that my sub could play for all of my kindergarten through fourth grade kids. For kindergarten, there was a modified worksheet that didn't entail as much writing. 

Sadly, I forgot to save the word doc of the sheet or I'd share it with y'all here! But I did make a couple of examples that I had on my white board which shows what the copy at the bottom of the sheet said. You can also sneak a peek in the video.

If you wanna keep up with my video'd lessons, you can subscribe here, kids!

Love and Kittens: I made this dress (and matching sweater!) a coupla years ago and it's still my fave V-day, kittentastic look. I can't believe I didn't stitch up a single Valentine's dress this year! My lil sewing machine is gather dust at the moment, boo. dress: by me, here; belt: amazon; boots: Hunter

Jim Dine Heart Dress: Okay, let's be honest: Valentine's Day in art teacherin'land is also known as Jim Dine Projects Day, amiright? Love this artist so much I needle felted this dress dedicated to him! 

Color Wheel Skirtness: I realized the other day that I'd never worn this bad boy to school! The kids loved it but mostly the big bow. The lady at the bank was not as impressed by my big bow, I'll have you know. Color Wheel Skirt and Top: DIY here

If you follow me on Instagram, then you've seen this photo already! We did some color mixing experiments in first grade this week and they loved it! I thought I'd share with y'all how. I used three clear cups for the mixture of each secondary color. In front of the kids, I put an inch of water in all three cups. Then I put drops of food coloring in the outer cups. In this case, yellow and red. I folded a paper towel up (I used Viva paper towels, if that matters), placing one paper towel from yellow to the clear cup and another paper towel from the red to the clear. Immediately, the colored water began to creep up the paper towel. To help the process, I raised the height of the outer cups with stacked CD's. By the end of art class, the kids saw some progress but the following day yielded the best results. They loved it and it was so easy! 

100 Day of School!: I forgot to share with y'all my outfit for the 100th day of school...or, as I should call it, Any Excuse to Wear My Rainbow Wig to School. The kids were curious about the rotary phone pattern so we busted out my old phone and played on it! wig: Gothic Lolita; dress: ModCloth; hat and cherry pin: vintage; faux fox sweater: DIY made by me here

Until next time, you crazy kids!

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In the Art Room: LOVE This Sub Plan Collaborative!

As some of y'all might know because I've been talking about it nonstop (I often wonder just how I have acquired so many nice friends that allow me to ramble on and on without complaint. My guess is that they've formed some sort of support group), I've been out of school for several days due to el jury duty-o. You can see what I wore here cuz you know you wanna. Anywho, knowing that I was gonna be out for so long, I knew I'd have to leave some legit sub plans. So I created a couple of videos and was super pleased to see that both the kids and the subs were happy with the result. AND LOOK! Check out what they made whilst I was doin' my civic duty!

This is JUST ONE of the MANY huge banners that the kids created! Each child, kindergarten through fourth, created a quarter of a heart. Students with extra time then worked on making the letters. I was so excited to see them today that I used my planning time to hot glue them into place. To do that, I "borrowed" a roll of bulletin board paper from our work room, unrolled it onto my art room floor and set to work a-gluing. Like I said, this is just one big banner...the kids also created ones with letters that spell out SMILE, HAPPY and PEACE. They'll be going up on a large wall in our school cafeteria. But this one I was so stoked about that I grabbed a couple of teacher friends in the hallway and had them help me slap it up on the wall this afternoon. 

Our inspo for this project came from the artist Romero Britto and the art teacher Jenny K! Jenny has a great drawing sheet that features Britto and his designs. Knowing that I was going to be out several days, I really wanted a project that the kids could work on happily and successfully and be something that could brighten up and spread the good word of LOVE throughout our school!

On the first day I was out, I left this video for my sub to share with the students. I've never done video'ed sub plans before but I gotta tell ya, I'm NEVER going back to paper plans! This was fun and easy for both the sub and kids. And a happy sub is one that spreads the good word. I heard from my admin and teacher buds that both of my subs were thrilled to work in my room. Of course, I took the guess work out of it and made their day cake!

Today was my first day back and it's also my busiest of days. You now how it feels when you've been gone for many days, you feel completely out of the loop! I really felt relieved coming back knowing that my room was going to be in order and that my students would continue this project. Here are my kindergarten friends coloring away.

Many of you asked me about the art stix I refer to in the video. My students have a set of these and they are well loved. They are made by Prisma and are essentially the led of a color pencil. The colors are fantastically vibrant and the kids love using them. 

My younger students, kindergarten through first, created the bottom of the hearts while my older ones did the top. The reason behind this is that my older students have longer art classes and therefore more time to work on the big spaces. The papers the kids used are 12" squares. My sub and I used templates to create the thick line diagonal line that you see as well as the heart hump line (I know there's prolly a better word then heart hump but you knew what I was talking about, didn't you?!).

So that they could spot their part of the heart later, the student's name was written along the edge of their design. 

Once I started laying out the hearts I felt like they needed a little something more. So I flipped some upside down and noticed the diamond negative shape that was created. It was then I got the idea to have the kids create letters for those spaces. That's what this follow up video is all about...

                  

I put the sub in charge of tracing letters and the kids cut them out before decorating them.

This was such a successful sub plan that even though I'm not finished with assembling all of the pieces, I just had to share it with you right away! You know, in case you wanna do something like this for Valentine's Day. It's definitely a no-fuss type of project. Definitely one to consider at the start of the new school year when you want to introduce all of the elements of art and start your year with that WOW! factor. If you are interested in more of my lil videos, you can subscribe to my youtube channel here. 

 

In other fun and exciting news, you can hear my podcast interview with the INCREDIBLE Patty Palmer of Deep Space Sparkle, here! And if you do this lesson, please let me know, I'd love to hear your tips, tricks and see your student's end result!

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