Zany Scientist Week! A Combination of Art AND Science Class!

 Well, hello, y'all! I had so much fun creating robots with you during Robot Week (all videos from last week are now up and able for you to view on my YouTube channel!) that I'm excited to share the theme for this week: Zany Scientists!

If you notice, I even decided to step it up a notch by combining art AND science. That's right, every day, I'll go LIVE on my Facebook and my Instagram and share with you both an art project and a science experiment! Because I know we are all trying to conserve the materials we have, you can either join in on the experiment or simply watch. Because the videos will be archived on my YouTube channel, you can always travel back in time and rewatch the fun. 

 Again, I'm using simple supplies that I hope you can find around the home. But, if not, know that you can swap out supplies with whatever you have on hand. No paper? How about newspaper or old magazines? No glue? What about a glue stick? Art making is all about thinking outside the box which is exactly what we'll be doing this week!

 Because some of our experiments are a little messy, look around your house for a cookie sheet or some sort of tray with a lip to it. This will help to contain any mess you make. Also, consider doing this portion of the art making outside! It's good to get a little fresh air and keep them mess at bay.

 The best part about creating is having fun. All of these projects were created with fun in mind. Don't worry about being perfect because there is no such thing! Just focus on the fun, y'all!

 We'll end our week with some clay that you can use over and again! This should keep you busy and creating until next the following week. 

Mark your calendars, y'all! And I hope to see you there. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this FREE coloring sheet! 

Robot Week: Let's Make Collagraph Robots and Pull Prints!

Hi, friends! In this blog post, I'll be sharing two projects from Robot Week because one leads right into the other! On Wednesday, we used cereal boxes, scissors and glue to create a collagraph that we used to create a rubbing. In case you don't know what a collagraph is or how to make one, you should pull up a chair, grab your supplies and join me here: 

Yesterday we did something super cool with our collagraphs and that was print with them! It was pure magic and so fun to do it live on Facebook and Instagram just to hear everyone's reaction! 

I hope you'll join us today! Here's what you'll need:

See you real soon!

Robot Week! Let's Draw 3-D Robots!

Robot Week continues! In case you missed out on our LIVE art class (which happens every weekday at 11am CT right here and here), all robot videos are archived on my YouTube channel! You should totally subscribe because new videos drop at random times because yours truly is mighty random. Here's our video from Tuesday: Drawing 3-D Robots!

I hope you enjoy! Today's robot supplies are listed right below. I hope to see you real soon.

For Monday's video, be sure and check out this post. And for how to draw sheets, coloring sheets, writing prompts and more, go here! 

Robot Week! Let's Draw Robots with Shapes and Markers!

In case you missed the news...it's Robot Week! All week I am going LIVE at 11am CST drawing, creating, printing and making robots with YOU. You can watch me LIVE here or here! However, if you miss the video or want to create with me all over again, I've got the videos on my YouTube channel. Here you go: 

You might want to subscribe so you can keep up with the weekly videos! 

Initially, I was only going to go LIVE a couple of days but I've had such an overwhelming response from artists all over the world, I decided to keep it going! Here's the line up for the rest of the week:

 Simple supplies for tomorrow's LIVE!

 Then keep that creation handy for Thursday! We'll be using it for marker printing!

And on Friday, we'll create a collage! No paper? No problem! Let's recycle some old envelopes with fun patterns and designs!

Parents and teachers, looking for an extension? Here you go! Some writing prompts for when the robots are complete! 

Also, for free PDFs with a coloring sheet, how to draw robots and an idea sheet, go here! 

Robot Week! Home-Based Art Making

Knowing that so many of us are teaching and creating remotely, I thought it would be fun to do a little art teacherin' online. I shared yesterday all of the resources of mine that are free and able for you to use if you need to prepare art lessons for at home artists. However, I wanted to create something fresh and new and do a little LIVE art teaching as well. So...here's what I came up with: Robot Week!

What's Robot Week? Well, it will be a daily dose of creating centered around the theme of Robots. I'll kick it off on Monday this this lesson that I'll be doing LIVE but I will also attempt to archive to my YouTube channel. 

 For this first LIVE, I'll probably go for about 30-45 minutes. We'll just play it by ear. If you and your young artists can make it, great! 
You can join me on my Facebook page here or on my Instagram here!

Big thanks to our sponsor Dixon Ticonderoga for joining the fun!

Free How to draw Robots resource for you! To practice, inspire or color! 

 In my art room, we call these Idea Sheets. This one is yours here!

Mitch said I should make y'all a coloring sheet...so here you go! 

On Tuesday, I won't be live but I will be posting a video on how to create robots that look more three-dimensional on my YouTube channel! Again, simple supplies can be used or swapped out for whatever you have on hand. 

I am super stoked about this one, stay tuned!

I know we probably all have a couple of cereal or snack boxes laying around. For that reason, why not try your hand at a collagraph rubbing? It's when you cut and glue shapes to a surface, lay a piece of paper on top and then, using a "sleeping" crayon (one on its side), rub over your design. I then added a watercolor wash to some of mine! 

It's a Build-Your-Own-Bot kind of Wednesday!

What to do with that cereal box collage? Well, on Thursday, I'll show you how to cover it in foil and make a print with just markers and water!

Oh yeah, this one's magical!

On the final day of Robot Week, we'll make a collage with one of my favorite papers to collage with: business envelopes! They have the coolest patterns and designs. 

I do hope you'll join the fun! If you do, I would love to see what you and your awesome artists create. You can email me your images at artteacherin101@gmail.com and I'll try to feature them right here!

Printingmaking Made Easy!

Since I've spent the last couple of weeks in Printmaking Land with my second and third graders, I thought I'd share everything I know about printmaking in the elementary art room! I started to record a podcast episode which quickly turned into TWO podcast episodes. There's a lot to printmaking in the elementary art room but none of it is scary, difficult or even all that messy! My kids love it and so do I. So I'll be sharing both podcast episodes here as well as my favorite lessons. Be sure and click the link as it will take you directly to the lessons which often feature a video for you and your students!

In the first episode in this series, I focus a lot on printing with Styrofoam sheets. They are a great alternative to having small children carve into linoleum or wood blocks (lord, I can see the lawsuit now!) and can produce beautiful results. Here's everything I could think of about printing with Styrofoam sheets!

My favorite tip is to have kids use ink pens when incising the lines into the foam. I have them use a blue pen first and a black pen second. This ensures that they'll incise the lines deeply enough by doing it twice. When I see the black ink pen, I know they've traced their lines not once but twice. 

In this episode, I talk a lot about supplies and set up. Here's a visual! My second graders are doing a rainbow roll in this photo. Notice the dollops of ink at the top of the tray where they are to dip their brayer, not roll through the ink. Then, in the space below, they are to roll their brayer up and down only (so as not to mix the colors) to cover the brayer before rolling it onto their printing plate. Messy mats are used to help keep the table clean. Students also place all of their prints on the messy mat during clean up (without stacking them as they will stick together) and slide the entire mat onto our drying rack. Then we toss our printing plates in one sink, brayers and trays in another for me to do a quick wash after school.

In the episode, I also mention printing on newspapers, painted papers, wrapping paper, metallic papers and much more. The results are stunning!

 

In the follow-up episode, I talk about printing in 30-minute classes. On the first day, we do a single color print like these third-grade robots you see here. The following art class, we do a rainbow roll like you saw above. 

 On our third day of printing, we spend a hot minute adding more designs to our printing plates before doing a reduction print. The kids were fascinated by this process. 

And on the last day, we make these! Never throw away those printing plates or simply send them home. You can make such cool works of art with them with inexpensive foil sheets, steel wool and spray paint. Take a listen to find out how!

 Third Grade Cities! This lesson was a hit as the kids were allowed to swap cities to create some diversity in their finished piece. The complete lesson in the link!

Winter Portraits by Second Grade  Need a fun way to introduce printmaking and patterns?  Check out this self-portrait project!

Egyptian God Portraits Fourth grade students used their knowledge of Egyptian gods and symbols to print the designs in the background of these portraits. 

Positive Four Letter Word Collages with Prints! This is a lesson I return to year after year and seem to change and tweek each time. You can see alternatives to this lesson here. 

Gelatin Prints  I don't do this kind of printing anymore with homemade gelatin printing plates for a couple of reasons: I don't like using the gelatin (it's an animal product that I'm not comfortable using) and it's labor-intensive. BUT the results! There are recipes for making your own more permanent printing plates that don't seem to be difficult at all. I found several on YouTube. 

 Sushi Collage with Gelli-Plate Prints I do have a class set of Gelli-Plates and we love them. The best thing to do is just let your kids go crazy exploring different methods of printing on the surface with stencils and texture and color. In the end, you'll have a fun stack of papers like you see below that can then be used to create collages like you see above!

 If you would like a video to walk you through more of these processes, be sure and check out this blog post! 

Collagraph Prints are ones created by adding things to a surface. This is different that the Styrofoam prints which are a subtractive kind of printing. Collagraphs are additive. My fourth graders created these prints a couple years ago in celebration of dot day!  

That project was very similar to one I did just last year with my kindergarten friends! We used foam hearts from the Dollar Tree as the base and sticky-backed foam stickers for the design. You can see the complete lesson here. 

 We collaged our completed hearts for these sweet masterpieces.

We then wrapped our lesson by wrapping our hearts and doing a little burnishing as I mentioned at the start of this blog post! I hope that gives you a bunch of ideas for printmaking in your art room and removes any fear that you may have! Happy Printing!