In the Art Room: 2017-18 Art Show, 3D Displays, Part 1

In case you  haven't noticed, things have been a lil quiet around this here blog. It's not because I've not been busy...in fact, it's quite the opposite. I've been so busy with art show prepping (and other life stuff) that I found myself unable to keep up with my usual three posts a week. This has NEVER happened before...and I think that's because this was our biggest and most time-consuming art show yet! 

 For our school-wide art show, we showcase EVERY piece of art that EVERY student has created all year. What that means is that the halls are filled from floor to ceiling with two-dimensional pieces. I'll be sharing that portion of the art show (complete with video tour!) in an upcoming blog post. Today, I thought I'd take you on a tour of the three-dimensional displays of the art show that I showcase in the art room. Here's a tour:

Yes, I know, my art room is very large! It used to be the school library before a remodel that happened well before my time. Why do you think I wanted to be at this school so badly?! I'm fortunate that my administration gives me the day of the art show "off" to set up my art room like this. My specials team also helped me out by taking some of my classes to allow extra set up time. You never realize just how long all of this takes until you start pouring weeks, days and hours in to it!

 I thought I'd give you a closer look at all of the projects and share links to videos and/or blog posts in case you'd like more details. We'll start with this fun and easy kindergarten project!

 All of our clay projects were created with Amaco's low fire cone 06 clay. We also used Amaco's Teacher's Palette Glaze, which we loved. The colors are so vibrant and shiny. The art class following our clay project, we worked with the three primary colors of Crayola's Model Magic Clay. The kids had to create the secondary colors and make them into a bead of rainbows by adding them to skewer sticks. 

From there, we used pipe cleaners to add them to our plaques with a little pony bead in between!

 The art show 3D displays were set up in four parts: kindergarten plaques, the superhero displays, the pizza pillows and, my favorite, the Art Supply Store! 

After learning about the artist Lucy Sparrow, I had each of my first through 4th grade classes create an art supply. My third graders and some of my second graders created these crayons. Complete lesson and video here!

 One fourth grade class created these glue bottles and also made little pencils. This project was so easy, it was kinda crazy! Here's the lesson with video. 

 Not only did we create these glue bottle sculptures but we also had to come up with a name for them! These were a hit at the show.

 First grade and the class of fourth who made the glue bottles created these cute little pencils! This is an easy and quick project that you can find more details on here. 

A couple of my other fourth grade classes created these tubes of paint! I'm telling you, creating these art supplies was not only fun but a great lesson on recycling as most of them were made with a toilet or paper towel tube base. You can find out more about this project here. 

 One project I never got around to blogging about were the making of these second grade scissors and glue sticks. These were super fun and easy to make...my favorite part was reading what the kids decided to call their "product" and price it. 

And that wraps up our art supply store! Join me tomorrow and I'll take you on tour of the rest of the 3D displays of our art show...or watch the video for the complete tour. 

Art Teacherin 101: Episode 2

Hey, y'all! Thank you so much for your positive response to Art Teacherin' 101 (notice how I've already failed to even remember the name of this series in the title above. Tired brain, much?). I'm excited to share with you my TOP THREE TIPS to art show success: deer mesh and Gaffer's tape, amazing parent volunteers and a day off the day of the art show! Take a listen, I promise it's short and sweet unlike me...

I will share with you two (yes, TWO) blog posts about our show with video tour. It's a big one, y'all! You'll see the 2-D show as well as our 1950's diner with our 3-D food. Until then, here's just a couple of the things mentioned in the clip:

Deer mesh and Gaffer's Tape. Both can be purchased from Amazon. About four rolls were used outside of each classroom. My hope is that the classroom teachers leave the mesh up so that 1. We don't have to rehang and 2. So they can utilize it when it's not Art Show Season. Last year it pretty much got trashed due to the annoying paperclip tangling. I'm confident that this year the clothes pins will prove to be much better. The Gaffer's tape isn't cheap...but it's the one thing that we've found to actually adhere to those annoying painted concrete walls. It's holding the mesh to the wall as well as carrying the weight of the artwork. The parents do a fabulous job of hiding the tape behind artwork. You'll also need to invest in some Blue Dapp that can anchor any fly away corners of art. 

Here's a rather fuzzy view pulled from my instagrammerz. More photos to come...but I did want to give you a sneak peak of first grade. In the clip, I was standing in front of just ONE portion of ONE second grade class. Like I said, we hang everything that every kid has made. It's wall to wall wonderment, y'all! 

I'm so fortunate to have the best administration that not only supports the art program but the art show as well! Having a day to set up clay in my room while the kids are working on other art activities with a sub in another location is super fab. I'd be a hot mess without that extra time to finalize art show displays. 

AND, most importantly, parent volunteers. I have the best...THE BEST...and the art show would not be hung without them. Special thanks to them all with a big hug to Molly, Terri and Donna. Y'all are super stars!

So, what are your fave art show tips? For more, you can visit this blog post of my other Top Ten Tips to Putting Together an Amazing Art Show!

In the Art Room: The Art Show, Part 2

 It's kinda funny to think that just a couple weeks ago, my school's hallways looked like this. Of course, now that school's out, the halls resemble some sort of institution (which, let's be honest, those last couple of weeks, we coulda all be institutionalized. The kids, the teachers, shoot even the class pets, were all a wee bit bonkers.) As I mentioned in my last art show post, all artwork that all students have created all year is hung for this show which is like hundreds of masterpieces. The World's Most Amazing Parental Volunteers hang everie-thang, can you believe that? I'm a lucky girl, this I know.

In my last art show post, I shared with ya'll the work of the wee ones in kindergarten through 2nd grade. I've yet to share with you the clay projects that were also displayed at the art show because I'm slowly putting together the how-to posts on those babies. When that's done, I'll wrap up this art show series. Oh! And if you wanna see some art shows of the past, you can see last year's show here and here.

And now, without further jibber-jabber, I present to you the masterpieces of 3rd and 4th grade with loads of linky-loos to lessons...

 For the art show, the parent volunteers hang the work outside the classroom. I don't give any directions on how to hang...just cross your fingers and use enough sticky tack to make it stay. I love how each volunteer hangs the work differently.

 In third grade, we started out the year learning about Norway and Vikings. My amazing student teacher Rebecca had just returned from a trip to Norway and this was a lesson created by her (and influenced by Painted Paper!). I wrote up a blog post all about Rebecca's adventures and this lesson here.

 My goal for this past school year was to create a mural with each grade level. I only partially achieved that goal (my younger kiddos did a collaborative mural to be shared in an upcoming post). My 3rd grade created a Magritte-inspired mural that proved to be the art project that just kept on giving. You can see examples of that in the work at the bottom of this photo.

 Here's one part of the Magritte project with tissue paper collaged landscape backgrounds.

This enormous beast of a mural hangs right outside of my art room. I think it's there to stay a while, I love seeing it when I walk out of my art room. The details of creating this mural are here.

 The paper we used to create the birds for the mural and our collage landscapes were so cool we decided to use them in yet another Magritte-y project. Final installment of Magritte series here.

 After all that Viking and Magritte-ness, I introduced the kids to the world of Asian art with a heavy dose of Ming vases and cherry blossom trees.

 This was a super fun lesson that incorporated so many thing. A review of watercolor techniques, symmetrical vase design, drawing a narrative, shading/shadow making and new ink painting methods. Full lesson here.

 

Both 3rd and 4th grade were introduced to Chinese calligraphy. We learned to grind out own ink and paint with sumi-e bamboo brushes. This was a big hit and we seriously painted tons of these characters. After a couple of classes doing that, the kids picked their fave to mount, label and frame.

 My 4th grade this year was like a dream group. We had such a good thing going, as they loved being in art as much as I did having them. Which was a bit of a problem as I was therefore always late sending them back to class. Seeing them go at the end of this school year was very hard for me, sniff. I'll miss them so much!

They kicked off the start of this school year creating this huge mural for a canned food drive. Full details here.

 I think this Viking project was one of my favorite lessons this year. I simply love all the watercolor techniques that the kids incorporated into their work. I will definitely be doing a redo of this here lesson in the future (I have a bad habit of doing a lesson only once as I get a little bored with repeats).

 Again, another lesson with many layers of stuff taught. It's like an onion, this project. Without the onion breath.

 These guys also did some Chinese calligraphy. However, theirs included a hanger with Sculptey beads on the end of a wooden dowel and a red stamp.

 Like with the wee ones, I also have these kids write an artist biography. These are slightly different though in that they are to also have friends add comments about them. I'll share more details about those bios in an upcoming post (I keep saying that, I hope I can keep up with all this "up-coming" posting!).

 When learning about Asia, we did some Suminigashi which is Japanese paper marbling. Details here.

 When I ran outta paper marbling supplies mid-way through the lesson (don't you hate that?! Argh!) I did a quick switch to chalk marbling...which I kinda liked even better!

 With those stars we used in the chalk stenciling, we created some fun narrative collages.

 Near the end of the school year, we put our sumi-e painting techniques to good use with these paintings. Students could create either bamboo, cherry blossom or pine trees after practicing on newsprint.

 I've not written up a lesson on this project yet...it's on my summertime to-do.

 A favorite was adding the tissue paper leaves or flowers. They just couldn't stop adding these, loved 'em so!

 Of course, in my absence at NAEA, the kids drew these adorable Chinese pandas. When I returned, they put their watercolor painting skills to work on the background. Lesson here.

 The day before the art show, in 30 minutes, the kids created these sweet things. On the night of the art show, we also host an ice cream social. The kids painted these for the occasion and I managed to get them up the day of the show! This was seriously the easiest 30 minute lesson ever. I'll be sharing the details in an upcoming post,

And there you have it, ya'll! The 2014 Art Show! Stay tuned for the final installment of the show which will include kid clay projects. Until then!

In the Art Room: Art Show 2016

For as long as I've been at my current school (closing in on 15 years, y'all!), we've had an end-of-the-year/school-wide/hang-everything-up-that-every-kid-has-made-all-year art show. Along the way, I've learned many a thing which I've shared with y'all here and here. This year, I learned that I have The Best parent volunteers in the world (thank you Molly, Terri and Donna for making sure every child felt like a mini-Monet!) and that deer mesh and clothes pins were a match made in Art Show Heaven. Last week, I shared with y'all the clay display portion of the art show in our 1950's style diner. This week, I thought I'd take you on a tour of the halls of my school (with links to the projects shown) which were PLASTERED from floor to ceiling with masterpieces. Like, y'all. We didn't have a space to spare. Which truly is my style of decorating. So, let me show you around! Let's start in Kindergartentown. 

I see my kindergarten students once a week for forty minutes. Our clay tacos from the diner can be seen here. We worked on lines at the start of the year and built on that knowledge throughout with lessons on abstract painting, shape castle drawing and collage, winter landscapes, self portraits and guided drawings to name a few. 

One of my favorite lessons came from my buddy Laura Lohmann of Painted Paper. Those Model Magic flowers were so fun! 

I love doing guided drawings with my younger students throughout the year. That pigeon is an example. We read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, which is short and awesome, draw together and work in watercolor paint. This reinforces line, shape and color. Not only that, but guided drawings build confidence in my students. If you've never done guided drawings with kids or are new to teaching art to children, I've really learned a lot from this book over the years. 

Of course, selfies and abstracts are something that kindergarten has down, y'all. Here's a link to my fave self-portrait lessons. 

With kindergarten, I usually stick with the same lessons, unlike all my other grades. Although, I do like to change the lessons up a bit. Here is an altered version of our winter landscape lesson. 

First grade comes to art twice a week for thirty minute blocks. I don't know how they did it, but first grade ended up with the most amount of work out of all the grades. I mean, that's ONE class, y'all! AND that's not even all of their work.

We did so many fun lessons this year. From the van Gogh-inspired trees to the Robert Indiana printed LOVE, these were a busy bunch of artists. 

 We did these selfies at the start of the year and those stars at the end. 

 Of course, they went all mad scientist on me! 

Occasionally, if we are between projects or simply have one art class before heading into a break, we'll create a guided/painted project too. That's how these Party Pandas came to be! 

 Second grade has the same schedule as my first grade: twice a week/thirty minutes. They were also super busy this year!

 Many of you have asked about the deer mesh and Gaffer's tape. You can see the tape at the bottom in this photo. More tape is used across the top just so the mesh does not sag. Then the tape is hidden behind artwork by my super crafty mama helpers. 

 One project we always do is circle loom weaving, a kid fave. And we created these Heather Galler-inspired cups of hot cocoa! 

Everyone in the school started the year learning about Rousseau. I love the second grade collaged version of his adventures! 

The bunny was their guided drawing/day-before-break project. So sweet!

Printmaking with second grade resulted in these winter-time selfies. 

 My third grade students come to art once a week for an hour. this means we do longer projects. We end up with less work...but bigger/greater things, says me!

 By the way, my early finishers worked on decorating the clothes pins that we hung the artwork from! They loved doing it and it added an extra layer of kid-created to the show. 

 My husband snapped many of the photos of the art show as I was swamped with young artists in my art room. He said this lesson was one of his faves. I realized I've not shared it with y'all...so stay tuned! I'll have a video of this lesson up soon. 

We finished off our stitching with metallic frames that added a bit of pop. And, of course, we created exactly ONE MILLION prints to achieve those printed landscapes. 

Third grade's answer to Rousseau were these painted paper tiger collages inspired by the art lessons of my buddy Laura!

Fourth grade not only created clay food and pencil/crayon sculptures, but they stitched, collaged, painted and chalked just about everything they could get their hands on. 

Instead of doing woven pouches like we usually do, our fiber arts alternative were these string art pieces. I really love them on those round pieces of cardboard and may have to do that again next year. 

 The abstract pieces the students created with artist Hannah Lane was also one of my faves. 

But who could forget the cuteness of their Rousseau-inspired pieces?!

 Or their Super Hero Selfies? 

 I've not done much collaborative projects in small groups (usually big stuff!) but this one was a crowd fave. 

Another crowd fave were these diner signs and advertisements we made for the art show! Snapping these photos and creating these pieces was a great way to build excitement for the show. You can see the video lesson of those diner signs here. 

I mean, check out all that cheesiness! If you give a kid a mustache...isn't that a book? It really should be!

Every year, I make a lil list of what I plan to do differently. Here it is in short order:

1. Start matting and framing work earlier (like, as they finish the work!)

2. Don't let the children of the parent volunteers EVER leave our school. 

There! Done and done. 

If you'd like to see Art Shows of Years Past, here you go!

* 2012 Art Show here and here

* 2013 Art Show here and here

* 2014 Art Show here and here