Fairy Doors NEED Fairies!

The response at school to my Fairy Doors from last week has been amazing. Actually magical! Our younger students (k, 1st & 2nd) have been seeing the doors everywhere. Not sure that they are ONLY seeing the doors we put up.......... But it's all good!  Like I mentioned in my blog about the doors last week, I had not thought past making them and hanging them up. That is until people started to ask me about them. I'm gonna stick with: Did it make you smile? Did it start a conversation? Did it inspire creativity? Someone commented that it was a random act of art. All of which sounds good to me!!

Well, since it is the last few days before winter break........ And all the little ones have been inspired by Fairy Doors.......... I guess the next thing to do is to draw fairies!

This book was absolutely PERFECT for this lesson! All the students got what Alice was doing as she spoke about being a temporary fairy. I gathered students on the carpet and read them the book. Afterwards, I did a step by step drawing of a fairy for them, while modelling the use of shapes to draw figures. This poster was on the board and students had photocopies to work with at their tables.

Here they are drawing their fairies.

 

They added color with markers and colored pencils.

 

 

 

 I realize there is controversy over whether or not we should do guided drawing. I believe it is important to help students feel successful.  It also helps them to look more closely when producing their art.  And it's not like they still can't be creative!

 

 Bet you didn't know there are fairy aliens and fairy dogs!!

 

 

Students were encouraged to add doors. This lesson had students engaged, they were creative and a good time was had by all! I believe this is the start of a tradition!

What traditions have you started at your school?  Thanks for reading!


Visit my store at   TpT Primarily Art with Mrs Depp for a free list of suggested art centers.

Practically Free Sketchbooks

To be able to give my 4th and 5th grade students sketchbooks, is expensive and not very practical, on my budget. So, last year I wrote a grant and for the first time was able to give out sketchbooks. I bought them from Sketch for Schools. They are always giving out freebies at conventions and are very reasonably priced.  My students were thrilled, especially when told they could take them home at the end of the school year. They did all sorts of planning and experimenting in their books.

Wasn't sure that I would get another grant to do this........ HOWEVER, my son has a close friend who is the vice president of a printing firm. AND he had all this paper that he couldn't use, I'm talking 10,000 sheets that filled 5 boxes! Along with covers and backs enough for 200 books! BUT the company is in Nashville, Tennessee and I live in Spring Hill, Florida! However, it was my son's turn to have his parents visit for Thanksgiving............

 

So, across the back seat of the car is 5 boxes of paper, enough for 200 sketchbooks. Along with the paper is a ton of baby stuff, for my daughter, who is expecting in April. The trunk had our luggage and bags of baby clothes. It's amazing what a determined art teacher can fit into a small SUV.

I researched how all this paper would magically turn into sketchbooks and found out we have a production lab, at district, that would do it for free. On the Monday after break, I drove it down to district. All I needed to pay for were the plastic coils to bind the books. A whopping $13.

The books were done in less then a week and since I still had classes who had not yet printed their logos....

 

Amazing, right?  I fixed up the boxes to store each class separately and added the classroom teacher's name. I can't wait to see what fun my students will have with them.

 

I was so fortunate to have all the connections to do this for my students! I can't begin to tell you how wonderful it was to get such a generous donation of paper from my son's friend. (BTW I may even be able to hook some of you up with scraps from time to time, in you live in the Nashville area. Let me know if you are interested and I will pass along the information.)

So my practically free sketchbooks cost me a little time and trouble, but was SO, worth it to see how excited my students were. Am I the only one who does this stuff for their students? Let me hear from you, what really nice, crazy things you do.
Thanks for reading!

For a free list of art center suggestions go my store at Teachers pay Teachers .

Printing with Gelli Plates

 On a recent trip to Plaza Art Materials, actually on my first trip EVER to this awesome place, which is located in Nashville, Tennessee they had a Make it and Take it event. In other words an assortment of people letting you try their product in the hopes that you will fall in love!! Well, IT WORKED!!

There was a woman demonstrating Gelli Plates. And, did I mention everything that day was 40% off!  I don't know how it works in other states, but Florida gives their teachers lead money AND I just figured out how I was gonna spend mine!

I really couldn't wait to try it with my students. Thought I would try this with my 3rd graders. I see them at the end of the day and would have plenty of time to clean up. Really a good thing!

Had it all figured out. Here's what I did. I showed them my sample, which is at the top of this blog. Explained that I wanted them to know all the different ways artists make prints. I wanted them to understand the purpose for printing. And to have the opportunity to do a mono-print.

Then I demonstrated on my Elmo. I used a spoon to apply acrylic paint to the plate, rolled it with a brayer.

 

 Put down a paper leaf, used a stamp for a little texture. Then I pulled the print,

 

My goal was to keep it simple, as it was something new for all of us. I purchased 12 plates, because I don't believe I have more then 24 students in any class. My thinking was a 2 to 1 ratio.

I put 2 trays down on each table. Each tray contained 1 Gelli plate, 2 small cups of paint (colors that work together), a spoon, a texture stamp, a foam stamp, that ribbon that has holes and a brayer.

 BUT before putting the trays out, students were given two pieces of paper with instructions to write their names on the paper as the pencils were going away.  

                                    NO SHARP OBJECTS NEAR MY PLATES!
 Also, directions were given for cleaning the plates after printing, by using newsprint to pull off any paint still on the plate.

My students in action!

 

 

And some of the finished results!

 

  

They had a blast doing this! AND everyone was happy with the results! If anyone reading this, has used other materials successfully with their Gelli Plates, please share!
                                  I will need to step it up next time!
                                                                   Thanks for reading!

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!