Fairy Doors: Street Art My Way

Art teachers take inspiration from just about anywhere! And I was VERY inspired after watching this video Family Street Art. The family had seen a Banksy video and the 10 year old daughter insisted that she wanted to become a street artist. Well, not wanting to discourage her they decided to create art that they could leave all over their community.  Not ONCE but THREE times. I thought this was awesome. I want to do SOMETHING like this................... but what???????

Well, while recently looking through a catalog I came across these fairy doors-

AND I KNEW!!! I would have my students make Fairy Doors and we would display them through out the school!
I started off the class by talking a little about street art and how it's different from graffiti. And that it's illegal to deface other people's property. Then I showed them the video about how this family created movable street art. I explained that we would be creating art that we could display all over our school community. I then googled fairy doors and showed them a variety of images.

I made 3 different shaped tracers and inspiration sheets. Inspiration sheets are for my students to look at and be inspired. They can switch out what they see, use the best of what they see or just create from their own imagination.

 

  

They used colored pencils, markers and ultra fine sharpies. Doors were done on 4" squares of different colored paper. We also went over the function of a door and what it needed to have on it.  And they created beautiful Fairy Doors!!

 

 

 I laminated them.  And then I went around the school with students to hang them up.

 

   

 

I made these with 3rd graders and sent out an email to alert staff. Had a lot of questions as to what it was all about. Didn't really think that out...... But, it's really simple. Did it make you smile? Did it inspire you? Did it start a conversation?

Students want to know about the doors. Do they open?  How did they get there? One teacher is telling her students to check with me, because, I am the fairy coordinator! I LOVE IT!! Next week when students come to art they will be drawing the fairies that live behind those doors! Oh yeah!!

I hope that this inspires those of you that are reading this. My students really got excited about doing this project and I have a feeling it will extend beyond my 3rd graders!! ENJOY!!

Thanks for reading!
Link to my store to a free list of suggested art centers TpT Primarily Art with Mrs Depp.

Scratch a Print?

 I bought this stuff, at least, 5 years ago with money from our School Advisory Committee.

It wasn't really cheap, so I kept thinking that I needed to come up with a fabulous lesson using this. After playing with it from time to time to figure out what to do with it, I kind of gave up on it.

Well, the elementary school I work in is being renovated. We pretty much found this out with less then 4 months of school left. That was in February, 2013. Had I gotten more notice I would have had a whole lot less to pack. Translation-I WOULD HAVE MADE EVERY EFFORT TO USE STUFF UP! So that I would have less to move. Okay, maybe not............

 

Anyway, the school will be ready for the next school year and I have REALLY made every effort to use things up (and give things away). She tried to say convincingly.......
Henceforth, I REALLY needed to use this stuff and NOT move IT back.

Needing a print project for 4th and 5th graders and a lesson I wanted to use involving logos, I thought let's use this scratch a print thingie! Students were shown a power point which focused on what a graphic artist does and the importance of using a logo to brand a product. They were given newsprint paper with directions to fold paper into four sections and come up with four different logos. Logos must contain letters and an image. You may brand yourself or a company you would like to have when you grow up. 

   

The frame was taped to their chosen design, they proceeded to scratch and voilá!

 

I set up printing stations with acrylic paint. Didn't have enough stations, so set up more with tempera paint. We found out the acrylic works better. And the results!

 

   

Interestingly, while in the middle of this project, we had The Great American Teach In. I asked if I could host someone. I was given a choice of a person making pizza, chocolate or soap. Surprisingly, to those who know me, I chose the soap maker (sigh). And WHAT an appropriate choice that turned out to be!

This company was started by an eleven year old girl who designed her own logo! Each bar of soap is like a work of art! You can check them out here: Flutter Fin Soaps. That's her mom who was there to help her out!  
Anyway, since I have yet to figure out how to add a gadget to my blog (I'm working on it) here's the link to my store at  Teachers Pay Teachers. Currently featuring a free list of suggested art centers.
Thanks for reading!






    

Beginning to Print: Gumball Machines

We all know printing is a process, and a messy one at that. Again, I will reference The Art of Ed's online 2014 Summer Conference, where my inspiration came from. However, it is password protected so I can only share how I chose to use it.

Soooo, after watching that segment about printing with students, I decided to try it. Printing has not been a lesson that I do often, but I'm totally gonna do THIS again! What I really liked about it was that it was broken down into grade levels. AND, students learn a little more about printing as they moved through those grade levels. Today's blog is about the Wayne Thiebaud inspired gumball machines that I did with my kindergarten and first grade classes.

   

 First thing I did was a really short slide show with four Thiebaud paintings. With the last photo being the inspiration piece.

 We talked about the different Elements of Design, breaking it down into the different lines, shapes and colors we saw. We looked at the texture of the icing in his painting of Four Cupcakes. By then we all were VERY hungry! Children shared with me that they had gumball machines at home and that they come in all different colors. So they were given a choice of colors for their machine. However, since I decided to use this opportunity to reinforce primary colors, they used red, yellow and blue to print the gumballs.
Next, students traced a round Chinese food lid for their circle.

 Then because I really didn't want the colors to get messed up I rotated the children around the room.
The red table had red paint, blue table had blue paint and the yellow table had yellow paint. Their papers were in trays (names on the paper to get a tray) that they carried from table to table.

 

They had around a minute at each color, then they lined up for the drying rack. This was a GREAT way to instruct students on how to put their paper in the drying rack! Students used these really great dot dippers that I had gotten years ago, from Oriental Trading, and never used,

When students returned to art the following week, we reviewed what we had learned. I then modeled for students the steps to creating their gumball machines. They did have tracers for the machines, at this age I want them to feel successful and not frustrated.

   

AND, of course I had students that were absent the first week! My solution was to have them cut all the pieces out, put the gumball machine together and then print the gumballs on!

 

One student really got into it and added a shadow! We had briefly talked about lighting and shadows with some of the art work.

Soooooo, now for some controversy.............
Must every student follow directions? What were my learning goals with this project? At what point do we allow students to interpret art their own way? What if they are a Picasso and not a Thiebaud?

Just saying if art is the experience, the ability to be creative and the learning of different processes, who's to say the above art is incorrect? I've always told students that there is NO wrong way to do art! But NOW we are going to give end of course exams to students as young as kindergarten? WHY? It just doesn't make sense..............
Let me know your thoughts! Thanks for reading!
I'm going out of town for Thanksgiving and plan to leave my laptop at home!! Enjoy! Will continue to blog when I return.

Museum Marvels

Does anyone remember back in the day, when you were planning a vacation, and you needed to figure out, what you wanted to do? Were you going to sight see? Visit museums? Shop? I ALWAYS picked SHOP!!  Well, things changed back in the early 1990's when I became a museum educator for The Museums at Stony Brook. I REALLY enjoyed learning all sorts of things and making connections with history. I was even called upon to do some of the art or signage for exhibits. This was (and I'm sure still is) a really great experience. There are 3 different museums on the grounds along with a little red school house. It was fun taking students back in time, as well as behind the scenes!

 

However, I thought it would be a good change to see the same students each week and make lots of different art as opposed to doing the same thing ALL the time. That's when I decided to teach art in an elementary school. But, there was still a small part of the museum educator in me, when I created a hallway museum for my students.

 

Then a few years ago, I received a flyer from an art teacher at a local charter school asking for submissions for a display at The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, a local museum. How COOL was that? Well, it turned out there wasn't much of a response and ALL of the student work I picked out was displayed. Along with students from the charter school.

Some close ups from the first year. We did self portraits.

     

But the best part of having student work displayed  in a museum was getting permission to take students to see their work! And to experience a real museum and learn about different careers in art and different ways of making art. One of those win, wins!

For the next year students did oil pastel mono prints. I was split between schools and still took classes from both schools! It was decided that this special trip would become an annual event for our fourth graders.

 

Last year students had free choice making their art and they wrote an artist's statement to go with it.

 

 I NOW make it a point to visit museums in my travels and found a really great one in Nashville to take the grand kids who live there to. It's The Frist and they have this awesome interactive room just for children. How cool is it to sketch a giant mannequin? And for the current exhibit it has clothes on!!

And in DC over the summer 2 of my grandsons went thru the giant maze at 

The National Building Museum. Photo was taken from the second floor!

I have been able to get grants for field trips that I take my students on. Also, school district buses for local trips are cheaper to use. Do you have the opportunity to take your students to an art museum?

I would love to hear about it!
Thanks for reading!