Museum Styled Centers

Happy 2018 everyone!
I completely powered-down during my 2 week winter break. I read, I watched Hallmark movies and I went to Nashville for a few cold days over New Year's Eve.

Besides the wonderful opportunity to visit my son and see his new house I LOVE to visit the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Which happens to be about 5 minutes down the road from his new home.

They have this incredible interactive room for children of ALL ages. And I believe many of the activities in this area would make for some incredible centers in our art rooms.

 This is a good way to learn about Abstract Art. You start off by drawing the way something looks, then you draw a simplified version of the object and then draw it exaggerated.

 What a great way to learn about public art. Display a photo of your school and have students create a sculpture for the front of the building or perhaps somewhere in the playground.

 This looks very easy to set up and I have found some really great mirrors in my local dollar store.

 Unfortunately not everyone has the room for a life size mannequin, but an area with several small mannequins would work out just as well. (BTW those are my 3 of my grandchildren from a few years ago. They loved the place so much they wouldn't tell me they were hungry because they didn't want to leave.)

 Texture plates are pretty easy to find in the School Specialty catalog. Or pretty much any other school supply company.

 I have often managed to get foam shapes from an elementary math coach,  otherwise you can cut out your own. Or have a volunteer cut some for you. Use foam or laminated paper. Maybe put magnets on the back and get some metal baking sheets.

 Set out a basket of objects for students to draw and have them draw the subject and the background.

 An animation center could be set up with iPads that have animation apps. Not too experienced with that and would need to do research. Could be fun!

 Printmaking. While that set up is rather elaborate I'm sure something on a small scale could be done.

 Watercolor. This can be set up on a table to accommodate 4-8 students.

 These shapes reminded me of Matisse cut outs. I believe these were here to assemble. But I can see them being used to inspire Matisse style art.

 

 They also had an area to explore the current Nick Cave exhibit. With a make and take. Which I took and I can't wait to do a lesson with my students about his sound suits!

I didn't include all the wonderful activities that were available as some spaces were hard to get to.

  

Turns out they will be redoing this area soon and and can't wait to get back to see it!

Centers in the art room is a great way to continue learning for those students who finish early. If you would like to see more ideas for centers visit my TPT site here for my free list of Art Centers for Extended Learning.  One of these days I might actually add to the list........ The Hallmark movies aren't helping my productivity..........

Hope you all have a wonderful new year! I still have lots of lessons to share and I'm pretty excited that I now have over 140,000 page views!!

Thanks for Reading!

Ideas for Primary Art Centers

Once in a while between projects and while other classes need to catch up I will let my students do centers. Such was the case a few weeks ago with my kindergarten and first graders. Thankfully the grade levels follow each other in my schedule, so only one set up that day was necessary. The following photos will show how I set up the tables and floor for my students.

Above the red table was set up with 4 boxes of Legos. Two students to a box.

 The yellow table had crayons, paper and some how to draw sheets.

 The blue table contained bins with 2 containers of Play Doh in the same color along with tools and some transparency sheets to work on.

 Green table had blocks and cubes to build with. And the floor had puzzles and books.

 

I explained to the students what they were doing that day. Basically each table has room for 8 students and there is additional space on the floor. They may go to any center they want so long as they have somewhere to sit. AND if they choose to try all the areas, they must clean up after themselves first.

   

 

   

 

 

It was incredible fun for the students to have time to explore and have the freedom to experiment. I have done centers in the past. Click here to find out how my centers evolved.  And click here to get a free list of suggestions for you to have Art Centers for Extended Learning.

I also want to share that I had a Clip Card published in the November issue of School Arts Magazine. (It wasn't the first time I've been published-more on that another time!)

 

Silly me, I didn't even realize that it was in the issue of the magazine sitting on my dining room table, until I received a check in the mail! Guess I've just been too busy!

Please do take note that School Arts is always looking for articles from art teachers. Soooo if you've got that one, really, special lesson, why don't you give it a try! Click here for writer's guidelines. Not only does a check come in the mail, but you will get extra copies to share and show off to your administration. I call that a win-win! Also, it doesn't hurt to let your students know that people can get paid to write!

Thanks for reading! Leave me a comment, I would love to know if you've been published!

Art Centers for Extended Learning

As art teachers we all know our students never ALL finish at the same time. I needed to have something available for them to do when some were finished and other children were still working. It occurred to me  have some activities ready for them.  At first, all I had was a drawing center and some books. 

 

 I soon realized that there were too many children competing for space and I needed to put more thought into it. As I was trying to figure things out – I was offered a Lego table. That would be perfect. 

 Now at that time I had students at 4 different tables in my room and felt I needed a center for each table so that students had room to work.  Lego table made 3. 

I still needed one more center –then I remembered seeing centers in another art room and that teacher had plasticine. So I thought I could have a Play Doh center.

The drawing center wasn't very appealing so I needed to fixed it up. I added several baskets of drawing sheets from the series: How to Draw 101 Animals, Monsters, Manga Characters, Super Heroes etc. I photocopied and laminated each of the pages from the books onto a different colored paper to be able to keep everything organized.  I added stencils and tracers, paper, basket of pencils and clipboards.

 The reading center also needed to be improved. Having books on shelves proved to be a problem as students couldn’t really see them and books weren’t being put back the right way. At the time there was a big push for classroom libraries and I was able to get bins from the reading specialist to set up this center. I also added puzzles and blocks to this center.

                                              

It occurred to me if I didn’t come up with a system for students to rotate they would all end up at Legos. What I did originally, is I printed out signs for each center. I now had a reading and puzzle center, a drawing center, a Lego center and a Play Doh center. 

 (This photo is from how it looks now……don’t have any from when I first did this.) I put the signs at the top of my white board and placed colored clips on them that represented the tables in my room. Students go to the center that matched their table according to the clip on the sign. I added photographs for the students who needed the visual representation.

Centers were working out rather well or so I thought. Two things happened that made me re-evaluate. 1-older students were doing a lot of fooling around. 2-Admin was implementing a Response To Intervention Program or RTI, to take place the first 20 minutes of specials. That's when I present my lesson and now students would be missing. Soooo do centers first! 

What about the older students? I had all these interesting books about artists and all these wonderful Scholastic Magazines that students were not looking at. I had all these artist reproduction posters that I never had the time to share and so much more that I wanted my students to learn about. And that is how I came up with the learning stations for my older students.

The space that I use for art centers double as my learning stations or what I like to call my Learn Abouts.  There is Learn About an Artist, Learn About an Art Career, Learn About Vocabulary and Learn About Artwork center.

 

 

Older students Learn About Artists by taking out a book or magazine from the bin and responding in writing on a worksheet. 

In Learn About Careers there are cards from the series Careers for Kids –ART.  Students read about a career and fill out a worksheet. Some have inter-actives with it.

Learn About Vocabulary has a poster filled with words for the students to pick from. They write the word down on a worksheet, define it, draw a picture of it and tell me how an artist might use it.

     

Learn about Artwork has an art poster hanging up for students to answer questions and write about. I have since changed to hanging up postcards of famous art to give students more of a choice.

My students have been enjoying the centers for a few years now. I was able to present My Art Centers for Extended Learning at the FAEA and NAEA conferences. Feeling brave, I have opened a store at Teachers Pay Teachers where I have posted for FREE a suggested list of Art Centers for primary and intermediate students.  

Here is that link: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Sheryl-Depp

Centers in art have been very popular. If you have centers, how are yours set up? And, if you don't have centers, was my blog or suggestion sheet helpful to you? Thanks for Reading!