Favorite Lessons for Valentines Day and Celebrating LOVE!

Let's talk all things Valentine's and celebrating LOVE, shall we? I'm putting together A TON of lessons in this post from weaving to painting, sculpture to clay all for your heart-themed pleasure. So, let's get started!

This Jen Stark lesson was one my students really enjoyed last year. You can find all the details, including a video, right here! 

I did this lesson with my kindergarten and third graders last year and both LOVED it. It's so open ended and allows for big messes and exploration. Try doing this on large paper for big, colorful results. I just happened to have a ton of this large yellow construction paper so that's what we used! Full lesson with video right here. 

Wanna do some printmaking? I've done this lesson with first and second grade in the past. Each one is so sweet and allows students to really spend a lot of time exploring printmaking. A hit, I promise! Lesson right here. 

This lesson is one that everyone seems to love! AND each one of these adorable critters comes complete with a how-to-draw video. SO, all ya gotta do is hit play and walk away! Here's the video right here for all animals!

Of course, it's the Year of the Rabbit! So you could use that rabbit drawing to celebrate. 

If you are looking for a weaving project, here's one that my first graders have done nearly every year. It's a great way to introduce weaving and a little sewing too! All the details with plenty of paper weaving videos here. 

My fourth graders LOVED making these! These giant candy hearts were so fun and made quite the impact when we displayed them with a huge candy heart box. Lesson with video here. 

Follow-up blog post can be found here. 

If you want to go a little smaller in scale, you could try this candy heart drawing on for size! Info with video here. 

Many artists have been inspired by the shape of hearts to create their art. In this lesson, students explored four different artists and a variety of media. It's a fun one and we did it in one art class! Lesson with video here. 

Kindergarten had so much fun exploring printmaking with these hearts. We used a book as our inspiration. Lesson here...and check out the lesson below for the follow up project we did!

Aren't they gorgeous?! AND kindergarten made them, y'all! All the details here. 

Can you really celebrate Valentine's Day without celebrating the work of Britto? My first graders reviewed pattern and line with this lesson. We also used bleeding tissue paper and paint sticks for this. So, lots of mixed media! All the details can be found here. 

What's Valentine's Day without a box of chocolates? We learned about the artist Peter Anton and created plaster chocolates and a papier mache box in this lesson. Video right here!

Looking for simple and FUN? Try this Chris Uphues-inspired lesson. This post has a video and a free handout! You can thank me later. The kids LOVE this one!

Feeling ambitious? Try on a school-wide collaborative! In this, my students, kindergarten through fourth grade, each created a heart using a different medium. You can find out who made what and how it call came together, here. 

Several years ago, I had to do jury duty so I created this lesson for my students to do with my sub. That's right, this here is a SUB PLAN. And she rocked it! And so did the kids, of course. Video lesson here. 

This heart-themed clay project is one that I lead the faculty and staff at my school to create. It was an Our Heart Gives Them Wings project and it was so fun to come together as a staff and create. Here's the video I made for the staff to view. 

My second graders used foil and celluclay to create these hearts! I love them, they look so very Jim Dine-y, don't you think? Video lesson and more details right here.

Need a fast and furious, one day art lesson inspired by an artist? This one IS THE BEST! The kids get messy, explore chalk, learn about J Goldcrown...what more could you ask for? Video and more here!

My first graders used up scraps to create the hearts you see above and below. We also learned about positive and negative space. This was a fun one and the results were so stinkin' pretty! Lesson here. 

AND more Chris Uphues love for y'all. These were collage hearts created by second graders and they were just the cutest thing! We added them to our heart printed background, seen below. Lesson here. 

Whew! AND there you have it! I hope you find something here to get you to Valentine's Day! BUT I really believe we can celebrate love all year 'round, don't you? Enjoy!

Creating Lines with Modeling Clay

I recently shared that I created line-making stations for all of my students. You can check out a video and blog post on that here. While I was out, I created this video and sheet as a sub plan for all grades. I've since decided to add it to my early finisher centers! Check out the video I created for the kids here:

And here's how I plan to use it as an earlier finisher center. The kids loved working with it while I was away so this should be a fun activity choice for them!

Dot Day Art Lesson: Printing!

Hey, y'all!

We are officially back in school and in full swing! Our first days of art were spent printing dots after reading The Dot! We used Gelli-Arts plates to print our dots because I found that I had about 20 brand new round plates in my storage closet (wow, the things you find when you clean). Here's the video I created for my students:

If you cannot see this video then it's because you are looking at my blog from your phone. Super annoying, I know. It's a blogger thing, it's not you. So here's the direct link to my YouTube page. You should totally subscribe because I add new content all the time.

Now I know many of you don't have those Gelli Arts plates (and they are a bit expensive) so...I came up with an alternative for you: pie pans from Dollar Tree! I am using the pizza pie pans here:

Again, if you can't see it, here it is. 

First grade through fourth were printing which means I had drying racks brimming with art. So a way to keep up with everything was clipping clothes pins with the teacher's names on them between the classes on the drying rack. Once dry, the clips were used to hold the artwork together. I know...every now and then I have a decent idea. 

After two 30 minute art classes of printing, my students looked at all of their prints and picked their fave for display. They then had to give their piece a title and 'sign it' like Vashti so it could be displayed in the hallway. Here was a video I created to explain this process:

Need more Dot Day fun? Well, here is a simple one-day activity I created as a sub plan a couple of years ago. Sheet included:

And if you want to check out a big ole blog post filled with TONS of Dot Day ideas, then here you go! 

20 of My Favorite School-Wide Collaborative Projects!

Collaborative projects! Collaborative projects are one of my favorite things. I love them at the start of the year and the end. I love doing them with the whole school or just a grade level. I love using songs, themes, artist-inspiration...you name it. I just love collaboratives!

We've done a TON over the years and I thought I'd put them all together in one big ole blog post. So, here you go: my 20 Favorite Collabortive Projects. Be sure and click on the links, many of these have how-to videos. 

Check out this blog post on how we created several canvases in this style for our school and the school library!

Students worked in table teams to create these positive four-letter words to describe our school! 

Here's a simple, fast and fun project using clothes pens, paint and words that describe who we are!

A fun mural based on the book You Be You was created by nearly all of my students. You can learn about the process of creating our fish here. Read all about the making of the mural itself here!

Another book we used for inspiration is the book by Todd Parr called It's Okay to be Different. You can check out how we created these collages here!

The Our School Has Heart mural was a piece with a contribution from each student in the school. You can see the breakdown of who created what in this blog post. 

Our clay collaborative mural is a bright and shiny beauty that hangs in a prominent place in our school. Each student contributed something to this piece...you can read more about the process here. 

One year, we created a Village of Kindness as apart of our art show! Each student upcycled a milk carton that our cafeteria queen cleaned in the dishwasher. The students made little doors that opened and said kind words to those who peeked inside. Students worked together to create the landscape on the bulletin board. 

I love to do collaboratives at the start of the school year. I especially like ones where students celebrate our school and that set a postive tone. That was the idea behind this collaborative!

Another fun way to start the school year is with some selfies! We've created them for a monochromatic mural. You can check out the video here. 

Inspired by the artist Romero Britto, this mural was created by my students when I was out for jury duty! My sub just played the video and when I returned, I assembled the mural!

A collaborative mural that definitely made the rounds was this one! The kids loved creating the feathers and it was a beautiful thing while in the hallway but I will say...it was a lot of work to assemble. All the details here. 

My fourth graders created this collaborative one year that lives at the front entrance of our school. We even 'wrapped' it for Christmas and brought out admin out for them to unwrap it as it was hung on the wall of our school. 

We kicked off this school year with our What a Wonderful World collaborative mural. Details and video tour here. 

Here's another look of our school mural. Above that, you'll see our Learning for All collaborative!

During our field day one year, my students rotated through many art stations. One of them was this alphabet and number series. My librarian requested them and we just love how they turned out. Click here to see them framed and hung in our school library. 

Much like our monochromatic collaborative, this map collaborative was created with a self-portrait of each of my students! 

We are the tigers at my school so we do tiger-themed artwork every so often. This mural was created by first graders of all of their tiger drawings. You can find a how-to video right here!

In table teams, my third graders created a Rizzi City inspired by the artist James Rizzi. 

One year, we did super-sized works of art inspired by Andy Warhol and Vincent van Gogh! When these came together, they were stunning. All the details can be found here.