2019 Art Show: 2-D Work!

 Serving up the final installment of our 2019 art show for y'all today! This here is the 2D portion of our art show where every work of art that every kiddo has created all year long is on display! You can check out our Glow Gallery Tour and our Pirate Gallery Tour here! 

In this blog post, I thought I would share a link to each and every one of these lessons you see! This will give you an idea of what projects I teach (2D, that is) throughout the year. If you are interested in details on this art show: how it's hung, who does the hangin', how it's taken down and sent home, then you might want to watch this tour I created to answer those questions for you:

Please feel free to leave any questions about what you see here or on my YouTube channel and I'll be sure to answer them.

 Let's take a tour of theses projects! We'll start with kindergarten. My kindergarteners always have the biggest amount of artwork because their lessons are shorter. I started the beginning of the year with my lessons on line. Those projects did not make it to the art show as they were sent home at the start of the school year. From there, we did the rainbow lesson and Mouse Paint project. 

 One of the more popular lessons for kindergarten on my blog is this one. This lesson is always followed by my Chicka Chicka Boom Boom project which you can find here.  

 Our snowmen were a lot of fun to create this year too. We learned all about the cold colors and painting spiral lines. 

 A new lesson I came up with this year were the heart prints. We were able to get many prints created and used our two favorites for our work of art. 

With our printing plates, we created these beauties! Super fun and stunning!

 The kindergarten gallery is almost always my favorite! 

 Although first grade sure does take a close second. Let's talk about their projects. One of my favorites this year were our Mad Scientists! 

 A classic that we've done many years in a row are our Royal Self-Portraits. I love that we have two selfies in this art show: one as royalty and one as kid-genius. Perfect for my kids!

We also did those heart weavings that you see with the stitched edge. With the heart we cut out from our construction paper for the weaving, we created these Romero Britto inspired pieces. You can see a variation of that lesson here. 

All of the artwork and the kids who created them make me this happy. 

The big penguins you see were created from this lesson here. 

 Let's move on down to second grade! These kids had many works of art both in the Glow and Pirate Gallery that their wall seems a little empty. Don't let that fool you: we are always crankin' out some art!

 Our Super Hero Selfies can be found here while our Chris Uphues Hearts are here. 

 This printmaking lesson is one of our favorites. We seem to improve up on it each year! 

 And this lesson is from my String and Stitch Lab for Kids book! Check it out! 

It's a pretty colorful hallway!

Speaking of, let's move on down to third grade! You'll notice these kids also did the Chris Uphues lesson...in fact, all of my students did as it was a sub plan. 

One lesson of mine that was especially popular was the landscape project! I had run out of paper (omg, an art teacher without PAPER, hello!) and had a lot of cardboard pizza rounds...so we improvised! 

The kids also created those amazing Sandra Silberzweig-inspired self portraits!

 My students did two kinds of weaving, tree weaving and circle weaving. Two kid favorites. These are also featured in my new book! 

 One lesson that I'll be sharing soon is this one! If you can't wait, then check out this blog post as this lesson is a variation. 

 

 This is another lesson that I'm excited to share with you soon! 

 This third grade display brings me so much happiness!

 My fourth graders spent the start of their school year making pillows! We made pizza, donut and emoji pillows, all of which are in my sewing book. 

 One of my favorite lessons this year was our Snow Globe project!

 While planning our snow globes, we made tiny paintings that we later used for our marble still life lesson. 

 Our Fauve-style self portraits were a lot of fun to create too. 

I hope you enjoyed this art show tour! Be sure and check out the other posts to see all the other works of art these artists created. 

In the Art Room: Why Bingo Daubers are an Art Teacher's Best Friend

My name is Cassie Stephens and I'M IN LOVE WITH BINGO DAUBERS.

There. I've said it. It's finally off my chest. And I'm here today to tell you that if you've not discovered the magical wonders of bingo daubers and all that they have to offer your art room, allow me to introduce you to "a whooole neeeeew wooorrllllllddddd..."

If you are unfamiliar, than you might be thinking: 

What ARE bingo daubers? Simply put, they are the little dot-makin' things that folks use when playing bingo. You can purchase them with ink in them...or empty so you can fill with what you like. I prefer diluted India ink but other art teachers have also used liquid watercolor. TEMPERA PAINT, even when diluted, does not work...I know...I tried.

Why are they magic? Because they provide a seamless line, much like that of a marker. In fact, in my art room, we call them "paint markers" and have three rules for using them properly: DO NOT SHAKE THEM, DO NOT PRESS HARD but, most of all, DO NOT SQUEEZE THEM as an endless stream of ink my flow out of the bottle if you do. Sometimes, the ink dries at the tip providing a scratchy line. If I know my kids are going to be using them, I test each one out during my plan time making sure they work and GENTLY squeezing them to get the ink to flow. 

Where can I get them? Here and here is where I get 'em!

How do I fill and refill them? Like I said, I put slightly diluted India ink in mine (I don't have a brand recommendation because it seems all India ink is created equally). When it comes to refilling them, I know you can buy some sort of contraption to remove the top but I just use a pair of pliers to pry them off. Over time, the felt on top of the marker may become worn out. You can buy just the replacement tops!

What can I do with them? I'm so glad you asked! Here are my Top 11 Fave Things to Do with Bingo Daubers (it's a workin' title...don't judge, naughty pants).

 1. Make Giant Painting Sheets! For our upcoming art show, I wanted to inspire excitement and decorate the walls to announce the event. I sketched out my pirate-y design in charcoal and then laid out paint for the kids to go to town. 

When they were finished, I went back over the black lines on spots where they'd gotten a little excited with the paint (that's putting it mildly) and added white highlights. 

And ta-da! Giant banners to announce our art show! I've seen many art teachers create huge coloring sheets in the same manner for their art shows or art activities. 

 2. Make Welcome Back Banners! If you are like me, you have a CRAZY schedule at the end of the school year. Field day, field trips, assemblies, you name it...it's nuts! And so are the kiddos. Last year, when our field day was rained out and my station was cancelled, I decided to have the kids create Welcome Back banners so that we'd have some color on the walls come fall. They had a blast, we used up excess art supplies and made a rained-out field day super fun. 

Much like the art show banners, here is our paint set up!

3. Heather Galler-Inspired Florals! What I love about the daub is that it forces kids to draw BIG! We never use pencils first, we just dive right in. It's a little scary but it's a great chance to talk about turning a "boo-boo" into something "boo-tiful!" 

More on this lesson (with video!) here...perfect for Mother's Day!

 4. Dean Russo-Inspired Animals! Our mascot is the tiger...and it was so fun creating these massive colorful tigers for our hall. 

We finished them off with our chalk pastel in Sta-Flo trick (see video here!) and oil pastels. 

5. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! Kindergarten uses my bingo daubers the most in my art room. Many teachers have told me that they've not had success with kids and daubers...that might be because you gotta remind them of the three rules...with rule numero uno being DON'T SQUEEZE THE PAINT MARKER! This Mo Willems project is always a hit! Lesson with video here. 

6. Jasper Johns-Inspired Kindergarten Alphabet! This is a fave lesson of mine and many others. You can find the lesson details and the lesson video here. 

7. Chicka-Chicka Boom-Boom Kindergarten! We follow our first alphabet work of art with this one, a huge hit with my students. We watch the video version of Chicka-Chicka on YouTube and the kids love to sing along with it. You can find the lesson and video here. 

8. Romero Britto-Inspired Hearts! Easy and super great for learning about line, shape and pattern! All of these dauber works of art are HUGE too which I love. Details here. 

9. Fauve-Inspired Self-Portraits! Self-portraits are not my students fave thing to do...or my fave thing to teach. I think it's because the older my students get, the less confidence they have in making their artwork look "real." With that said, the bingo dauber frees them up, makes them relax and not get hung up in the details. Check out this post to see how we added color to these lovelies! 

10. First Grade Penguins! Oh yeah. These are pretty much the cutest...or, wait...are THESE cuter?!

11. Kindergarten Snowmen! I mean...look at them! Lesson and video here. 

 My third graders created these abstract name designs earlier this year with bingo daubers and I loved how they turned out. I don't have a lesson for this one yet...but will work on soon to have available for you and your kiddos!

 I've been in the middle of Art Show Prepland and the bingo dauber is saving my behind! I was able to crank out this pirate ship (which will be a photo-op prop) with a little help from the dauber. 

And I've even made SEVEN massive backdrops like this for the art show too, all with the dauber. So...if I've not convinced you yet that you need to get some bingo daubers in your life then I've just failed at life. Have a super week, y'all! 

In the Art Room: Kindergarten Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Painting

 Hello, friends! If you saw my post earlier this week, I said I'd be sharing a follow-up lesson to our Jasper Johns-inspired alphabet paintings. Here's a peak at that project:

 And the video lesson!

I see my kindergarteners for 40 minutes, once a week. I knew they'd zip through the alphabet painting...so I shared with them a super fun Chicka Chicka Boom Boom video from YouTube and challenged them to make a painting of upper and lower case letters. This resulted in beautiful black and white paintings of letters. We piled them on to the drying rack and were done for the day...two masterpieces complete!

 Once the ink is dry from the bingo daubers, my students are going to "hug" their letters with water soluble markers. Then they'll add just water right over their marker lines for this fabulous result!

 Another alternative to having them paint over their lines is simply spray them with water! Once class only had moments left so we did this trick and, while I like the other result better, these still look great. Just a tip: when spraying with water, less is best. The colors will bleed if given time.

And there you have it, two great literacy projects for kindergarten in one!