Best Back to School Art Lessons!

There is so much stress at the start of the school year. All the set up, the creating the rules and routines, the prep and organization...it just doesn't end! AND THEN the time spent in meetings and ice-breaker-land when all you can think about is

I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO!

Well, have no fear. I've put together a blog post with some of my very favorite Back to School art lessons. Many of these links to blog posts contain FREE handouts and always free videos lessons. I'm here to help, y'all!

Speaking of help...if you find yourself needing more on all things art teacherin, have you checked out my book Art Teacherin' 101? I can tell it's back to school season as I'm packing and shipping them out as fast as I can. This book walks you through everything to survive your first few weeks and create the best art teacherin' year EVER. You can pick it up here. 

As I share my fave lessons to kick off the school year, I've broken them into a couple of categories. These are my favorite ways to start the school year:

* Collaboration Projects...where students all create a piece of art that will contribute to a large scale piece. I have a blog post of my favorite collaboration lessons here. These are great for BTS time!

* All About Me Projects...what a better way to get to know your students! And for them to feel comfortable in their amazing uniqueness. Those lessons can be found in this post with plenty of links to handouts.

* Sketchbooks...I love doing sketchbooks at the start of the school year and I've done it a ton of different ways. I added all of those in this blog post. Again, lots of free handouts and videos just for you and your studetns!

* Dot Day! More to come on this as I have SO MANY Dot Day lessons. But I did add several at the end of this post. 

Collaboration!

Let's begin with my favorite way to kick off the school year: collaborative projects! This builds community and school pride. We created these painted shapes on the first few days of school. 

Working with our table team, we came up with a positive four letter word to describe our school. 

We even created a bunting to explain our word choice. This one was a lot of fun and very impactful to hang throughout the school.

One year, I got a donation of paintsticks from the hardware store. Each student either decorated or painted the stick for this large-scale piece. Tap the link to see where we hung it and how we created it!

Many of our collaborative projects are based around a theme. One year, we based it on the song Wonderful World. This was one of my all-time favorite collaborative lessons!

Busting out paint on those first weeks of school can see...bananas. So why not try your hand at a less messy collab like this one?

I mean, check out that result!

Another low-mess and low-stress lesson that yields a high impact is this one! 

All you need are colored pencils and sharpies! AND then a lotta help to put the beast together ;) But worth it, I promise!

This collaboration was a first grade lesson but, really, I think all grades would enjoy this one! We began by painting on paper plates which is perfect at the start of the year if your supply order of paper has yet to arrive. Anyone else always late with that supply order?! Lesson here. 

One of my favorite parts of creating large murals like this is getting the kids involved with creating the collage papers for the background. We call them Painting Parties and they are a fun activity for the start of the school year!

You can find out details on our Painting Parties in this here blog post!

Check out this fun Rizzi-City we did as a collaboration with our papers! 

We did a mascot-themed series of back to school lessons one year. As the tigers, each grade did a tiger lesson. I share more about all the different grade-level mascots here. 

These cuties were created by first grade. Lesson video can be found in this blog post. 

I love doing Monochromatic Selfies with ALL o f my students at the start of the school year. And the video I created to teach this lesson is one of my most viewed on my YouTube channel. You can find the complete lesson and video here!

Now how you decide to display those selfies is up to you! We created a map and featured them all. I explain the process in this blog post. 

Encouraging individuality is this collaborative lesson based on the book You Be You! We each created a colorful fish and added the to a large collaborative mural. Check it out here! And for a look into how we created these, check out this blog post. 

A collaborative mural that I put up and just could never take down because it was right outside my art room door and I LOVE it is the It's Okay to be Different mural!

I mean...SO CUTE!

All About Me!

Back to school time is the best time to get to know your students...and for them to get to know one another! That's why Get to Know Me lessons are always a hit. I've done this a couple of different ways. One is by having the kids create a sketchbook with designs that share a little about them. This page was ultimately added to their sketchbook so they could share with family and friends when they took it home. Free sheet can be found here. 

If you want to take it a step further or have older students, why not have them create their own decoder sheet? I know they would love it!

I REALLY love doing the same lesson with all grades at the start of the year (have you noticed?!). There's just so much stress at the start of the school year already. Why not make one thing a whole lot easier and set up the art room for a lesson for all. 

I mean look how pretty! This is another lesson I shared that was a big hit: Getting to Know Me paper sculptures! Lesson details here. 

We work on these for the first 3 art classes (where we learn rules, routines and the rest) before calling them complete. Then they immediately go in the hallway for the most colorful and fun display! See more here. 

This is the same lesson I love to do with kindergarten...but without the decoder sheet. It's always a hit!

Sketchbooks!

Sketchbooks is another great way to kick off the school year. I've done sketchbooks many different ways. One of my favorites was upcycling file folders that were donated from the school secretary and let the kids experiment with paint and texture tools on the first days of art. Then we proceeded to add paper, staple and decorate them with fun Duct tape. All the details you could ever ask for right here. 

Looking for something a little less messy? We did our names on our sketchbook covers one year. I also tried my hand at having the kids use folders that they could add paper and handouts too. I liked this process a lot. You can find the free handout in this blog post. 

Did I mention I like to change things up?! Here's another version of our sketchbooks. These are half the size. On the first days of school, we used tempera sticks to decorate the papers which was a lot of fun. Each line told the view a little about us! You can see that lesson here. 

And if you're uncertain how you'd set up Sketchbook Town (as I call it), I got you! I lay it all out here. 

I also...created my own sketchbook series with my pals at Prang! You can buy them on Blick, Amazon or any place you buy your art supplies! My kids loved these the best. I actually have created two sketchbooks. One is sold in packs of 12 called Sketch Smart and it's designed for the art room. The other is called Amazing Artist Sketchbook and it's sold individually...but has great pages that would be perfect sheets for Early Finishers!

Dot Day!

I actually have so many blog posts on the different Dot Day back-to-school lessons we have done that I think I may have to make it into a separate post! I'll drop several of them here...but stay tuned. Or, if you just can't wait, you can use the search bar on my blog and most of them will pop up.

One of my most recent first day/Dot Day lessons was done on pizza pans! This was a HUGE hit with my students and it got everyone, kindergarten through fourth, painting within the first days of art class. You can check out the lesson here. 

Seriously, y'all. There's a rabbit hole of art lessons about The Dot on this here blog! I promise a whole post is coming sometime this week. For now, here's another super easy Dot Day lesson!

Let's be real: covering all that you need to on those first days doesn't always leave a lot of time for big and elaborate lessons. So...try this one on for size! I have a great handout here. All you need are markers, crayons and circle stickers from the dollar store!

Still want more?! Here's a post on Dot Day ideas.

More first day of school lessons that I may have forgotten can be found here.  And here! Oh, my....and HERE. This is what happens when you've been blogging and teaching FOREVER. 

The lesson I ALWAYS do with kindergarten on their first day!

First Days of Art with Kindergarten!

I have found that nearly every art teacher has struggled with teaching kindergarten at some time. I think the reason is that they are like a magical bag of tricks: you never EVER know what to expect! That's why I dedicated an entire section of my book Art Teacherin' 101 just to them! I share all of my tips and tricks of working with that herd of cats. 

As an art teacher, I like to change things up. I don't repeat a lot of lessons (unless I know they are kid-faves) but with kindergarten, I have a routine that I use at the start of every year. In fact, if you've been following my YouTube channel then you may experience deja-vu when you watch these next couple of videos I'm going to share as this is my same song-n-dance routine for kindergarten. If you tap the link A Glimpse Inside on my playlist, you can find many more videos just like these! I've also been sharing snippets of these on my Instagram! 

Just a little backstory: my art classes are 30 minutes long. I see my students twice a week. I have no more than 20 students in each class (I know, I'm very lucky). We work on these paper sculptures for two art classes and then dive into painting the third week. At the bottom of this post, I'll add more links to kindergarten lessons and project ideas for you. Until then, here's a glimpse inside my first day of art with kindergarten:

My second day of art, I introduce some of my behavior routines. I use a happy/sad board to help manage behavior. I use an open/closed sign to help keep the chatting to a minimum because, hello!, 30 minute art classes here! Here's my second day:

Want to hear more about the happy/sad board? You can check out this video. I will say that I'm doing an extension to my board this year which I'll share in a blog post later this week. I'm really excited about it!

I'll be sharing more of a look inside other grade levels first days of art soon but, if you just can't wait, try these blog posts! This one is from 2019-2020 (I just shuddered at that one...we all know how that ended!) and this one from last year! 

Need more info on this line project by kindergarten? Check out this blog post! And if you want to know where we go from here, look at this blog post. Have a great week, friends! 

Kindergarten Rainbows and Self-Portraits!

Hello, friends! My kindergarten is wrapping up a self-portrait lesson and it's one that I've never done before with them. I'm super happy with the result and I wanted to share with y'all. Mostly I wanted to share some of the tips and tricks and things I learned in hopes that it may help you, if you decide to go down this rainbow/self-portrait path. 

But first, let's chat about where this lesson falls in my kindergarten line of projects. We start the school year in kindergarten with Line Sculptures. From there, we moved on to Dot Painting. Following this, we painted Rainbows! Now, in the past, I completed this Line Unit before moving on but the last couple of years I've mixed it up a bit. I will bounce back to those lessons but for now, we are painting. We've also not finished our rainbows (by adding the sun and clouds) but that will happen this week. 

My favorite supply for painting with kindergarten are tempera cakes. This is a little what my set up looks like. I always serve up paint (or have the kids get their own paint) on trays. This helps us carry the supplies easier and contain the mess incase there are spills. If you know me and my paint set up, then you know that we normally use dog dishes for water and a sponge. But sometimes we are using them for other things so this is my back up set up: water pot (these are my favorite and you can find them here, they are NO SPILL!), sponge for 'drying' our brush (sponges are called Dirty Ole Sponge Bob and I get them from the Dollar Tree) and a tray to hold the sponges (old sushi dishes!).

My tempera cakes are usually a mess. You can purchase tempera cakes in a set but they always end up getting crumbly or with a big hole in the middle. The tray the cakes come in is crap and a thing plastic. I noticed huge messes of paint left on tables a couple of years ago...which was from the thing plastic tray splitting and paint leaking out the bottom! So now I NEVER order the whole tray, just the refills like I do my pan watercolor paint. I love Prang's tempera cakes as well as Jack Richesons. I order all the colors in the rainbow. I use muffin tins and plastic condiment cups to create a palette for the kids. When we are painting our skin tone, the palette is changed to have only red, orange, yellow, white, brown and black. For painting rainbows, this is how I set up the palette. 

We spend a LOT of time listening to this song and this song as well as learning the ASL for all of the colors in the rainbow! Then we hit the ground running and paint our rainbows. 

Even in 30 minutes (the length of all my art classes), I always have early finishers! So early finishers are given another sheet of paper and told to paint a rainbow pattern. We wrap those up the following art class. 

Hot Tip: Cut 2" off the paper that you plan to frame that way it's ready to frame on traditional size construction paper! I plan to frame these self-portraits on black construction paper 12"X18".

The following art class, we learn what a self-portrait is! This video REALLY helped and we loved it! 

After listening, dancing and singing with the song, I demonstrated drawing a large self-portrait as the kids directed me. I asked "what should I draw first? What shape should I use? How big should I draw?"

Afterward, they were given paper and a permanent marker (I wished I would have had them use a regular black marker as the line would have been thicker). They did an amazing job! 

The following art class, we learned all about scissor safety! And how to carry and wear our scissors correctly. Below is a video on how I explain scissor safety to my students (if you cannot see this video, try viewing this blog post from your laptop):

After cutting out, kindergarten glued their selfies to their rainbow backgrounds!

This is definitely a project I'll be doing again!