Printing With Geometric Shapes

 Gotta love it when the Math Coach cleans out her stash! I snagged a big plastic bin of these wonderful foam shapes from my one day a week school last year.

 

Thought we could make some robot prints with them. I inspired them with this wonderful book check it out here on Amazon.

The first week we used Elmer's to glue the shapes down to a piece of cardboard. (Donated by one of our parents at the school.) I really enjoyed hearing the children ask for the shapes by their correct name.

   

 "Anyone have a hexagon or a trapezoid?"

 

 

The second week we were ready to print. I set up 2 tables with brayers and tempera paint on styrofoam trays.  Had the drying rack ready and waiting for artwork.

  

I demonstrated with my document camera what to do. Then went to the tables to help students print.

 

 They pulled 2 prints, one after rolling on paint and then a ghost print. Which they really loved!

 

I kind of let students do what they wanted the first day, but the colors got muddy in a hurry and I decided they needed to choose one color.  I pulled a few students at a time to do this. That meant the students back at their seats needed something to work on or chaos would be the word of the day.....

They had some worksheets in their art folders and some drawing prompts to keep them busy. Still a little hectic...... but this was kindergarten and 1st graders, not sure what I was thinking. However, the looks on their little faces made it worthwhile.  I will add that I constantly wonder what to do with students that miss the first or second week of a project. This time if they missed the first week that had a choice to make a robot with the shapes or print out one of my samples. Unfortunately if they missed the second week, then they didn't get to print because we had moved on. I feel really bad about this, but I'm one person and they just aren't independent enough to handle it on their own.

 

When the prints were dry I had students embellish their prints with markers. Some came out great and some got scribbled over.  

I loved doing this! It was really amazing for students to learn that we can print without that big thing attached to our computers...........

What's your favorite printing lesson??

BTW anyone interested in buying Gelli plates for printing can save 10%

by clicking on the Gelli Arts button on the right side of the blog.

Thanks for reading!

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!






    

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!

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.