Saturday, October 12, 2019

Sketchbooks in the Art Room!

Here we go, trying sketchbooks once again in the art room! This time around, I'm calling it Sketchbook Town. If you'd like a tour, then here you go: 
My face says it all, don't you think?! 
To kick off sketchbooks, we created our covers! We used 18" X 6" pieces of drawing paper, paint sticks and these decoder sheets. More information (and a download of those sheets!) can be found here. 
Inside each sketchbook are six handouts that I created for my students. I'll be sharing these soon. My students are loving them! Also included are 10 sheets of 6" X 9" pieces of drawing paper. 
In the past, the problem with sketchbooks was storage and accessibility. Where would I store them? How would I make them easy to access? How will the kids know when they can sketch? AND what will they do in their sketchbooks. 

SO MANY QUESTIONS! Let's start with storage. I began by painting this abandoned cabinet I found in an unused classroom. More on how I painted that right here. 
 The cabinet only came with four shelves but I'm thinking of having more made as this seems like a whole lot of wasted space. But, for the time being, each shelf holds a different grade level. Now, I do work in a small school with just 4 classes of each grade (with only 3 of fourth grade!). That means sketchbooks for me are a little more doable. However, the whole 30 minute art class does make it kind of tricky. All that to say, we all got our struggles, right? Here's my solution to one of em: storage. 
Fun fact: if I find a blank surface, I'll paint on it. Usually after a long day at school. While Netflixing. Back to Sketchbook Town!
 I decided to place the cabinet in a rather strange place: right next to the door that leads outside. It works here because it is close to all of our sketching supplies (which I'll get to in a minute). Here you can see the set up. 
 This week, I came up with three rules for sketchbook down. We've had a bit of a "soft opening" over the last month. This has helped me see what issues we'll have in Sketchbook Town...and these were some of them. Finishing too quickly and leaving my S.T. a bit of a mess. NO MORE, artists. No.More.
To insure that my artists are ready for S.T., they gotta follow those steps: finish their work, clean their area and write an exit slip (more about that in my video). Then they are free to draw from observation, instruction or imagination!
I'm hoping to expand this area of options but for now, I'm happy with it. If you'd like to see more, be sure and check out the video. 

Welcome to Sketchbook Town!
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Thursday, October 10, 2019

Simple Embroidery for Day of the Dead

Last Friday, I hosted a Halloween craft night and it was a whole lot of fun. We created super simple embroidery and needle felted decorations. My theme for mine was Day of the Dead but, since I was hosting a bunch of art teachers, I decided to just share the basics and leave the options and creativity up to them. Here's what they came up with: 
 So fun, right?! After sharing these images on my Instagram, I got a lot of questions about embroidery and needle felting basics. This project is all about the basics so I thought I'd create a little easy-peasy tutorial for you and the crafty folks in your life. I do believe children as young as 7 years old could handle this craft with you by their side. Here you go:
If you are not familiar with Day of the Dead and would like to read more, you might want to start here. 
 Supplies needed:

* Embroidery hoop (ours were about 6" wide)
* Fabric (scraps work great for the background!)
* Embroidery floss
* Embroidery or chenille needle
* Craft store felt in a variety of colors

Optional:
* Wool Roving
* Needle felting tool
* Needle felting cushion
 Instead of needle felting, you could always just glue on flowers, jewels or Halloween decor! The fun part on craft night was having a ton of supplies on hand for everyone and just seeing what all they could dream up!
 I like to keep my Calaveras (skulls) in the hoops and then hang them that way. I have a Halloween Tree (yes, I'm that person) and they look so cute on there.
I hope that tutorial helps. Have a wonderful time creating!

If you like this, you might want to grab MY BOOK, right here!
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Monday, October 7, 2019

In the Art Room: Teaching Line (and more!) to Kindergarten

 Hey, y'all! I've been sharing a lot about my kindergarten friends here lately as I feel as though that it a weakness of mine...and just might be a weakness of yours. While I LOVE teaching kindergarten, I find that I often drop the ball when it comes to teaching them my routines. I know they have a shorter attention span and I love to get them creating when they come to art. It's my weakness and it's something I'm working on...because when I don't, I tend to make those same faces as shown above. 
 One of the most popular posts on this blog was the one I wrote on my Kindergarten Line Unit. It has a ton of lessons, poems and info if you have not checked it out. And while I still do many of the lessons from that unit, I decided to change it up a bit this year with a little Line Game for my kindergarten's first line study. Here's how it worked: 
 Before the kids arrived, I cut paper into 12" squares. Then I added two black dots on each side of the paper (you can kinda see them now, right?). Then, working with the person seated next to them, they were to pick a start dot and their neighbor was to pick their end dot. Then they had to take their line for a walk from one line to another. When all the dots had lines, they had to go on a shape hunt. Lines make shapes! They had to find those shapes and color them in. We used paint sticks to fill in the shapes. 
I loved their final results. One the third 30 minute art class, we learned about collage and created the shape monsters you saw at the start of this blog post. They LOVED that! Here's a little video from one of those art classes:
And if you'd like to see more videos like this or hear my podcast episodes about my dear kindergarten friends, you can hop over here. 

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Sunday, October 6, 2019

In the Art Room: Favorite Fall Art Lessons!

Hey, y'all! It's finally fall-ish feeling around here and I thought it would be the perfect time to share with you some of my very favorite fall art lessons! If you follow the links, most of these lessons include videos for you to use in your art makin' world. To kick it off, here is a fave fall lesson of mine: First Grade Woven Owls!
I love this weaving lesson so stickin' much! You can find all the details both in my fibers book or right here in my blog post
Here's another fun fall lesson that I did with my first graders but would be awesome with older grades too. This one involved learning about a contemporary artist, painting, collaging and printing. So much! Details here.
If you are looking to create something a little spooky with your kids, I KNOW they will love this van Gogh inspired haunted mansion lesson. 
Marker prints are my favorite! So easy, such little mess and so stinkin' pretty! You can find out all the details on this lesson right here. 
If you need a beautiful fall landscape lesson in your life, then here you go!
All of my students loved creating these Loud Mouth Monsters last year! It rated pretty high on the fave project list. You can find out more and see a video here. 
Of course giving thanks and showing gratitude is always perfect this time of year (and all times of the year, right?!). Here are my three favorite gratitude lessons!
Another fun fall printing lesson can be found here. Instead of creating the printing pans, you can always use Gelli-Plates! 
This lesson I have done with my students as young as first grade! They love it and the results are always stunning. More details here.

I hope these fall lessons leave you feeling inspired. Happy Fall, y'all!  


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Monday, September 30, 2019

In the Art Room: Sketchbook Decoder Sheets

Hey, y'all! I'm trying, once again, to give sketchbooks a go in my art room. It's always been tricky for me with 30 minute art classes and I've tried doing sketchbooks a BAH-ZILLION different ways. Here's hoping this works. MORE sketchbook details to come (I even created insert pages, y'all...I'm crazy) but until then, I thought I'd share with you a previous post on how I have done sketchbooks in the past . AND I wanted to share with you this free PDF on how they created these sketchbook covers!
Now if these decoder sheets look familiar it is because this is the same idea I used for our Getting to Know You Sculptures!

For our sketchbook covers we used 6" X 18" paper and paint sticks. But really, this would be a great activity for sub plans, the start of abstract painting or simply Getting to Know You works of art!
 Here is one Sketchbook Cover Decoder Sheet.

And here is the other titled MORE Sketchbook Cover Decoder Sheet.

The reason for the smaller format of the sketchbook decoder sheet is that these were later added to their sketchbooks when assembled!
 The kids loved creating these and I loved how colorful and creative they were. These could be done with just about any art medium too!
You'll have to keep me posted if you give these sheets a dry with your students! A fun line and shape review as well!

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