Showing posts sorted by relevance for query larry the line. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query larry the line. Sort by date Show all posts

Sunday, August 23, 2015

In the Art Room: Teaching Line with Larry the Line!

Hi, friends! Well, it's been one of those Wild -n- Crazy art teacherin' weeks and I didn't manage to snap a single What the Art Teacher Wore photo (tho, if you follow me here, you'll see what I'm wearin', what I'm making and what's goin' down in the art room, daily). However, if YOU did, please be sure to send it my way at cassieart75@gmail.com for the What the Art Teacher Wore/Back to Art Teacherin' Contest! You're good-looking face will not only be featured here but, if chosen, also in School Arts Magazine. AND the winner-winner-chicken-dinner will get a free subscription to School Arts. So get dressed, snap a pic and send it to moi, s'il vous plait. Gracias! 

In other news, if you are an art teacher with other art teacherin' buds on Facebook, then I bet your feed is just blowing up with photos of back-to-school/freshly-deocrated art rooms. I absolutely love it because it is art teacherin' eye candy! I've shared several snaps of my art room (with a blog post about my first days here) and was asked about my Line poster. If you've been around this blog for a pinch then you know that I use this poster with my kindergarten friends in my unit on line. I created this and accompanying poem years ago. It's been a great tool for me to teach line with a bit of rhyme and a whole lotta fun. So, without further ado, here's the Larry the Line poem! 
So that you don't have to watch this video a million times, here's the Larry the Line poem in it's entirety. 

NOTE: This poster and poem were both created by me. Please feel free to share this with your students and colleagues (credit thrown my way would be greatly appreciated). This may not be reproduced by you for profit. I feel sad that I have to add this disclaimer...but I do. 

Larry the Line
Is a friend of mine
(creating a snake by opening the fingers of your hand, puppet style and there's your snake!)
He can make three
(hold up a three with your fingers)
Straight lines for me!
Ver-tickle
(create a vertical line with your forearm)
Diagonal and horizontal!
(pantomime each)
Any curve, he can learn
With a twist and a turn.
When he's out of his tangle
he makes a great...angle.
(created by placing your hand on your hip and pointing to your elbow)
Any line, he can make
After all, he's a snake!
And here's how I go about teaching the creation of line sculpture to the kids! 
From there, my kindergarten friends create line sculptures like this. I have a super silly way of teaching this which I will share on my youtube channel this week. By the way, if you subscribe to my channel, you'll see my videos before I share them here!
I'm not gonna lie, sometimes after the whole Larry thing, the kids are bananas. To bring them back down, I'll often do this activity called palming. It works magically! 
I love this unit on line and it's made so much more fun with this goofy poem and carnival snake! What poems and songs do you use when teaching? I'd love to have a whole collection! Too bad my songwriting skillz are seriously lacking. 
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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

In the Art Room: A Unit on Line for Kindergarten

Completed kindergarten masterpieces. That's right, I said kindergarten. The under-6 set is knockin' it outta the park, er, art room so far this year and I couldn't be more thrilled.
What I'm about to present to you right here is one Big Fat Hairy kindergarten unit on line. And color. Oh, and shape, sculpture and good craftsmanship, i.e. how-not-to-drive-the-art-teacher-crazy(-er)-by-not-grinding-your-paintbrush-into-the-paper. Because she no like-y. And, in my art room, keeping me sane-ish is at the top of my Learning Targets. Which is way harder than you could ever imagine. Just ask the kids.
Do you recall those wild and wacky paintings created on the first days of school in this post? Those large paintings have come in very handy as backdrops for our displays as you can see here.
Without getting into all of that, let's chat about the aforementioned Line Unit, shall we? I'm not gonna lie, I do this same ole project with kindergarten at the beginning of every year. Which is unusual for me because with all the other grade levels, I love to change things up. Not so with kinder'town for a coupla reasons: A. they love it; B. it covers a whole batch o' skills/techniques/vocabulary/routines and C. let's be honest, coming up with projects that the little ones can master is not my forte. So when I find something that works, I stick with it.
So on our very first day of art, after introducing ourselves to one another and an abbreviated discussion of rules and consequences (because, after all, these kids are five. They still have baby fluff, suck their thumbs and wet their pants routinely. Rules and consequences mean nada. A wicked stare and a "we don't do that in kindergarten" usually does the trick), I like to dive head first into the art-making swimmin' hole. Which means we create our very first sculpture.
Now if you're an old warhorse at this art teacher game, this lesson is nothing new to you. You might wanna skip on down to the bottom where I discuss such things as pinwheel portrait painting and bottomless basket weaving (don't worry newbies, they'll be gone a while. I don't even know what that stuff is!). For the rest of ya, lemme tell you how I go about teaching this line sculpture lesson: 
  • First of all, we have a little chat about the difference between flat two-dimensional artwork and sculptures. After looking at some images of sculptures, we chat about the ones we are familiar with (ole Lady Liberty almost always comes up) and discuss how a sculpture is something we can see (rotating body at waist for emphasis) all...the way...around.
  • I then tell 'em that we are going to create a sculpture with a bunch of straight lines (strips of paper cut 1" X 9" but sizes can vary). I ask them how to make a flat piece of paper pop out of their sculpture base (aka the bottom paper) to which they usually answer "glue!" It's at this point that I tell 'em that if they want their sculpture to stand, just like us, it must have feet.
  • I demonstrate creating a small fold at the ends of the strip of paper thus creating feet. It's there that glue is applied (to which the strip of paper always responds, "oohh, that tickles my feet! Ohhh, that glue is soo cold!" Yes, the paper talks to us. It's kindergarten, people. They eat this stuff up). Once the glue is applied, I show the kids how to hold the paper in place on the base for about 10 seconds. 
  • From there, I demonstrate adding more paper strips to the sculpture base on top, below, behind or beside the first strip. Then I turn the kids loose on their on sculptures. 
  • The following art class, I introduce more lines. I demonstrate folding a zigzag line, wrapping a strip of paper around my pencil to create a spiral and creating a loop de loop. 
  • I also chat about how lines create shapes and demonstrate creating a circle by gluing one end of the strip to the other. With that circle, so many other shapes can be created with a pinch. Pinch the circle once and you have a teardrop! Pinch it again and you have an ellipse! One more time, it's a triangle! Anther pinch and you have a square.
  • From there, the kids go nuts on their sculptures creating lines, shapes and whatever else they can dream up.
Here! Lemme walk you through it.
On the third day of art class, I get real serious about the whole line thing. We look at each of these snake-y lines on the poster I created way back in first-year-art-teacher-land and then locate them on works of art. Any ole Kandinsky works great for this. It's at this point I introduce to the kids a lil poem I wrote some years ago about a snake named Larry that can morph his body into any line he likes. It goes a lil sumpin like this (complete with hand motions, you better believe it!):
Larry the Line
Is a friend of mine
(creating a snake by opening the fingers of your hand, puppet style and there's your snake!)
He can make three
(hold up a three with your fingers)
Straight lines for me!
Ver-tickle
(create a vertical line with your forearm)
Diagonal and horizontal!
(pantomime each)
Any curve, he can learn
With a twist and a turn.
When he's out of his tangle
he makes a great...angle.
(created by placing your hand on your hip and pointing to your elbow)
Any line, he can make
After all, he's a snake!
After learning the Larry the Line poem, I bust out this huge cheesey carnival snake I got years ago that happens to have a little rattle in his tail. I convince the kids that he's real (they're kindergarten so they totally buy it) and maneuver him around to create a variety of lines. If the kids guess the name of the line correctly, I let them "rattle" Larry's tail. They eat it up and learn the names of lines to boot.
After that, I give a little demo on painting. If you've read this blog for five minutes, you know that when painting, I liken the bristles of the paint brush to a ballerina: It always dances on it's toes, it never scoots around on it's bottom. After I demonstrate painting each of Larry's lines, the kids go to their seats and we do a little guided painting. Meaning, I paint and they follow along.
This school year, I have my kindergarten for 45 minutes every six days (which is different than my usual 30 minute classes, twice every six days...confused yet? That makes two of us). That slightly longer block of time makes a world of a difference in that we can accomplish so much! On the fourth day of this unit, we examine Kandinsky again and this time chat about how influenced he was by music. The kids were told that they were going to be painting a nonobjective picture of lines while listening to Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev. If you're not familiar, this piece of music introduces each character of Peter and the Wolf with a different instrument. Each character really comes to life with the music and makes for great line paintings.
On that day, the children were only given black paint. As they painted to the music, you could see them trying to capture each character in line. Once a painting was finished, I'd take it from them and hand them a new sheet of white paper. By the end of art class, each child had painted about three black and white line pictures.
The following art class, I introduced the kids to tempra cakes which you can see best a coupla photos ago. My focus was on using the art materials properly and exploration of color. I wrote about this particular painting lesson pretty extensively last year in this blog post. In that lesson, we didn't paint to music and we focused some on pattern in a follow up lesson.
Here's a collection of their finished pieces. I love how wild, bright and unique each one is, just like the artists themselves.
On the sixth and final day of this unit, the kids were introduced to Roy G. Biv and watercolor paint. Since the last lesson had just been about exploring with color and proper use of painting supplies, I really wanted to focus on the order of the colors in the rainbow. My hat helped them remember the order (even if it is missing the "B" in Roy G. Biv) as did the large rainbow I have mounted on my easel. And in case you're dying to get a rainbow hat of your own, mine is from amazon. Yes, really.
Have you read this book? I picked it up years ago at the thrift store and it's pretty cute. As you turn each page, an additional color of ribbon is added to the ribbon rainbow in the book, hence the "Magic Ribbon Book" label at the bottom.

After that chat, I demonstrate to the children how to use watercolor paints. This is an easy transition from the tempra cakes as the cleaning-your-brush-before-getting-another-color is exactly the same. We do chat about the differences between the two mediums (you know, watercolor being more translucent) and also discuss painting in Roy G. Biv order. After that demo, the kids returned to their seats with their paintings created on that third day of art class and rainbow-ize the thing. This is the first year I've added this portion to the line unit and I love the result.

And there you have it. One Big Fat Hairy line/shape/color/RoyG.Biv/sculpture/abstract Unit for the wee ones. I know these lessons are nothing new...so I'd love to hear how you approach teaching line. Also, for the sake of space, I may have not answered all of your how-you-teach-that questions, so feel free to email me or leave a comment. I may or may not get back to you. Just sayin'.

Monday, March 11, 2024

My Book Larry the Line and More!

So...I can't believe I never did this but...I FORGOT TO SHARE ON MY BLOG THAT I WROTE A CHILDREN'S BOOK!

Seriously?! 

Yes, seriously, I wrote a children's book and yes, seriously...I forgot to mention it here. 

It's official: I'm the worst blogger. 

I think I was just so excited that I posted to my other social media accounts right away...and then I was so excited to pack up and send Larry the Line out that I just, well, forgot. But, better late than never, as they say and so...here we are. 

I wrote a children's book called Larry the Line!
Now for those of you who are the OG's of this here blog, you may already know all about Larry the Line. He's a friend of mine. He can make three straight lines for me!

I came up with the poem during my first year teaching when I was trying to think of a fun and engaging way to teach students about line. It's a short poem and it's aways been a wild hit with my students. I've chatted about it here and here. 
And made plenty of videos about it too. 

After writing and self-publishing Larry the Line, which you can find here, I decided to also create digital downloads to go with it. I had so many requests for them, especially that clay sheet (see below) I thought I'd make it happen. You can pick the downloads up here. 
So...sorry I was keepin' secrets from you but now you know! 


And stay tuned...because I have something big coming soon and I promise, you'll be the first-ish to know. ;)




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Tuesday, August 29, 2017

In the Art Room: My First Day with Kindergarten!

I don't often repeat my art lessons. Mostly because I get new ideas, like to try knew things and it keeps me engaged and excited to teach. However, I do struggle with the kindergarten set. I find them a challenge because they came with in so much of a broad range. It's tough to find projects that teach, engage and empower such a wide range of kiddos. For that reason, when I find something that works with kindergarten, I stick with it. Such is how I created my unit on LINE

I've been doing this unit for several years know and I always find that it works for my students. We start on the very first day of art with this project. I recently filmed myself teaching kindergarten on their first day of art. You can find that here:
For time, I did shorten the clip. Here is what you missed:

* When the kids walk in and I'm getting them seated on the floor and introducing them to our entrance routine, I play this short video on LINE

* From there, I introduce myself and have the kids say my name (as seen in clip). Then I call roll. This allows me to greet the kids and start to learn their names as well as insure that they learn mine. 

* Now we've sat for some time so from here, we stand and stretch. Hence the dance moves.

* After that, we dive into the lesson. I don't use too much vocabulary here...my focus is on getting them to correctly make an arch that stands so they can have immediate success. Success on the first day leads to a positive experience and happy kids. Things that are "too hard" or cause them to struggle and/or give up and what I try to avoid with kindergarten. I also want them to understand how I use glue in my art room. Since we paint the glue on with a brush, this will later help them know how to properly hold and use a paint brush!

* After creating, we "clean". All that means is we put our work in a designated spot and return to the floor. From there, I play the LINE video again as a wrap up and cool down. 

* Then we line it up and head on out! First day in the books.
On their second day in art, I'll introduce them to LINE vocabulary with Larry the Line!
Larry then feeds directly into learning and creating more lines!
On our third visit to art, we'll start to explore the next step in my LINE unit which is painting! You can check that out here
By the way, here is a great technique that I learned from Mona Brooks' Drawing with Children book. It's a GREAT way to bring calm back to your kindergarten art room.

Thank you for letting me share! I hope y'all have a great week. Would LOVE to hear your fave kindergarten tips, tricks and lessons!
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Sunday, December 31, 2023

25 of my Favorite Lessons for Celebrating Love!

Hello, beautiful humans!

Today I'm sharing my 25 Favorite Valentines/Love-Themed art lessons! From sub plans with handouts to clay and plaster projects, I've got something for everyone...including printmaking with kindergarten! Most of these lessons include kid-friendly videos, some have handouts and all are FREE! I hope you enjoy and...

Happy New Year!

I know next week means heading back to school...and it's just so hard to do after weeks off. I thought I'd try and ease the sting a little by offering up to you my favorite fun and easy lessons for celebrating LOVE as Valentine's Day is on the horizon. It's never too soon to start those Valentine's themed lessons and NEVER NOT a great opportunity to celebrate all things lovey dovey. Many of these lessons here come with a kid-friendly how-to video and, best of all, they're free! Just tap the highlighted link for more!

The above is a lesson I created for my kindergarten friends but it was so fun that I ended up doing it with several grade levels. It's that time of year when you really just wanna ease on back into art teacherin', right? So why not do so with a project where you just gotta get out one art supply (tempera paint and black oil pastels) and call it a day? It's much more relaxing that way...and when you are happy and relaxed, it will reflect in your teaching (and, hopefully, the students). 
One of my all-time favorite things to teach first grade is...paper weaving! And I know what some of you may be thinking: SERIOUSLY?! Yes...because I got it down to a science! They make the looms, we weave together on a big loom I created, we do this on the floor and help one another...it's so fun! Here's the full lesson!
Nearly all of these lessons here are inspired by artists! Which means that students learn a little about both contemporary artists as well as artists of the past with these projects. Here we learned about Jen Stark!
For me, back to school after a long break meant back to the basics...a review of rules, routines and expectations. I cover all of that in my book Art Teacherin' 101...it's always a good time to get a handle on classroom management. No matter how could it is, it could ALWAYS be better, right? I share all of my tips and tricks in that book, if you are interested!

With that being said, I often just used simple supplies like markers when we return to school. But 'just markers' doesn't mean you can't do something super cool! Check out the video here on how we created these optical illusion hearts!
Of course, sometimes it's fun to just jump right back in with big and exciting projects! I've been all about the plaster and Celluclay in my own artwork lately...and kids do love it! More here.
Of course, back to school usually means PD meetings. One year, I convinced my admin to let me lead a workshop on creating these clay hearts with wings! I loved doing workshops with my faculty. It was a fun way to get everyone together in a relaxed way (which we never seem to do!) and enjoy creating and each other's company. To teach such a large group, I created a how-to video. 
As you know, teachers are some of the worst students (I'd insert a laugh emoji but we all know it's true!) so having a pre-recorded video will help!
I've never met a kid who didn't LOVE printmaking! But it can be daunting and super messy...which means a lot of clean up for us. However...you CAN do printmaking with just markers and Styrofoam. Let me show you how we made these!
This lesson is probably one of my most popular Valentine's projects! I show you how to draw each of these cuties in videos you can find here. 
I'll also show you how to make easy heart stamps with scraps!
Wanna make these?! My fourth graders loved creating these giant candy hearts! I created a video for them (and you!) here. 
Wow! Did we LOVE creating these (see what I did there?!) And I have an easy method for you to make each one successful. You can check it out here!
This is a project I did with my second graders and they loved it! You can check out the video tutorial and lesson details right here!
Here's a fun lesson I put together to do in one class period! Well, for me, it took 2 classes as my class period is 30 minutes long. I did this with my fourth graders as a way to introduce them to four different artists...in one lesson! Check it out here.
Did we have fun with this one! We used old candy heart boxes and plaster to create our own faux chocolates. We also used tagboard and newspaper to create our candy boxes. It was so stinkin' fun. Full lesson here. 
Look how realistic! Did I mention we used puffy paint?! Everything is better with puffy paint.
I really like to work big with my students. The bigger the paper, the better! It's a challenge with storage...but it's so worth it. These hearts were created on huge squares of paper. We chatted about Britto and did a line review...
Speaking of line...if you need a book to teach (or review) line with your students, did you hear I wrote a children's book!? Yep! it's called Larry the Line. If you are familiar with my Larry the Line poem, let me tell you this is the longer more in-depth version with idea sheets to be printed and shared in the back! You can pick up a copy here. 
Big thanks to all of you that have purchased a copy and left a review! 83 5-star reviews is so amazing! Thank you all so much for the love and support. Okay, back to the lessons...
Another super popular lesson on my blog: My Chris Uphues Lesson! This one is perfect for a sub plan as it comes with a free handout.
Looking for a school-wide project? I have a ton of collaborative ideas on my blog (check out this post). This one involved each grade level creating a heart with a different medium!

This Britto-inspired lesson was another collaborative we did and...it was a sub plan! Check out the lesson video and process here. 
Looking for an easy one day lesson!? Look no further, I got you right here!
Check out these scrappy hearts made by first grade! This was actually a lesson with a focus on positive and negative space. The kids were so excited by the negative space their cut out hearts created that we filled the space with tissue paper on plastic. More here. 
Aren't they so pretty up close?
And this is what we did with the hearts we cut out! Just black and white painted designs. Simple and so pretty!
Do you want to explore printmaking with kindergarten students but you don't know where to start?! Try this easy and fun lesson on for size!
Once your students are done printmaking, you can take the hearts and create THESE! Aren't they so pretty?!

Got scraps of painted paper laying about?! You're an art teacher, of course you do! Spend some time teaching the kids how to cute out hearts and create these cuties! Use them to hang as mobiles, put them in windows, send to faculty as love notes...the possibilities are endless. Details here. 
Last but not least...check out these James Rizzi birds! Full lesson with video here. 

Thanks for dropping by, y'all! Know that it's TOTALLY OKAY to ease on in to this new school year. The slow you go...the more they will GROW, I promise! Slow it down, focus on what matters and enjoy art teacherin!

Love ya!

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