Holiday Art: Yes or No?

Controversy: To do or not to do holiday art? Being in a title one school I sometimes feel an obligation to give my students what they need. I say need because, my students want to make things, around the holidays, to give to people they love. Then the other part of this is? There ARE people who don't celebrate holidays, OR the holidays I might choose to do with my students. AND with ALL the standards and end of the year exams: WHERE'S THE TIME?  Sometimes, just sometimes we can slip them in.

Diversity should count for something as students learn about the Day of the Dead. Learning about the different bones in your body is bringing content areas into your art room!

After all, T is for turkey, we are helping them learn to read. AND teaching them the skill of ripping paper to produce a feather like texture.

    

Mosaics! And learning about healthy food in this cornucopia!

 Mixing the color brown, cutting skills and that learning to read thing again with books like The Gingerbread Boy or The Gingerbread Girl.

I save the (science of) snowflakes and snowmen (again ripping that texture) for after Christmas when it is actually cold in Florida. But what an argument from my students, as they believe we should have done them for Christmas, not the cold weather.

 

 We were learning to mix the colors pink and purple, so what if it's February? Think of all the standards I can check off? Oh, we also learned about the artist Jim Dine!

 

 I have the most incredible pop-up book titled Imperial Surprises, a pop-up book of Faberge Masterpieces. How do I not share that with my students in the spring, right before Easter?

Unfortunately, I feel I have less time for fitting in those fun projects. My students seem to work slower lately and I don't factor in enough time for the project to happen before the holiday. It is what it is! And again, I try to respect people's differences. 

Sooooo? How many of you out there do holiday projects? What are your thoughts?

Thanks for reading!

Color: Mixing it Up!

Mixing colors whether they be primary into secondary or mixing colors that are not in the rainbow-it needs to be fun!
One of the ways I motivate my students is with literature. First I show my sample, then I read them a book and then I demonstrate mixing the color and model the lesson. I usually start with mixing orange and making pumpkins.The books I've used are Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman and The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda D. Williams.

   

 This lesson is for kindergarten and takes 2 class sessions. The first session is mixing up the color orange and the second week is for turning the pumpkins into scarecrows.  I know there are different philosophies out there about tracers, my opinion is, at this age it is important for them to feel successful. 

There was one year I decided to mix all the secondary colors in one lesson. Sorry the purple didn't photograph better. This took 3 classes and they added details from the How to Draw 101 Monsters book.

 

Mixing up purple was fun, we made chameleons. Books that can be used are The Mixed Up Chameleon by Eric Carle, Chameleon's Colors by Chisato Tashiro, Chameleon's Crazy Colors by Nicola Grant & Michael Terry. I did step by step directions using shapes to draw the chameleon. It was later in the school year and I don't always use tracers!

 

 

Did frogs for the color green. Don't have any favorites books for this one, just grabbed something from the library.

 

 My new favorite mixing up green lesson that I came up with recently and did with kindergarten and first grade, was inspired by something I saw on Pinterest. Read the book Froggy Builds a Tree House by Jonathan London. Students traced their hand, mixed green and painted the leaves of the tree. Then they added red to the green to get brown to paint the bark of the tree. The following week they added texture and details using scrap paper.

 

A couple of other mixing brown lessons have included monkeys and gingerbread people.

 

What lessons do you use with your students when teaching colors and mixing it up? 

Thanks for reading!

Dropped in My Lap

One of the reasons I love being an art teacher is the creativity aspect. People like to give you stuff instead of throwing it out. Sometimes that's good and sometimes not so much.

Three really cool projects I did with my students were the results of people getting rid of stuff.

The first one was a store going out of business. They donated a few boxes of plastic palettes that was passed along to me. Since I was not gonna let students use them for painting and then have to be washing them. Yeah, yeah I know. I should be training students to do that, but NOT with ONE sink. (Besides, I prefer to use cheap paper plates that I can throw out.) While trying to think of what to do with the palettes, I showed them to a few students and one boy asked if we could paint on 'em. WOW! Make paintings on palettes! Did I say WOW?

     

Students first did their drawings on paper, then transferred them to the palettes. They used acrylic paint and sharpies to color them. I don't think any two were the same and it was spectacular!

The second project was based on a cabinet full of empty containers. Since I had never seen this type of bowl before, I did a little research in the supermarket. They were a split container formerly holding fruit and cottage cheese or yogurt. As I held them in my hand, I realized that I could hold them in a way that would make the split on the bottom move together like a mouth opening and closing. Perfect for puppets!

 

 

I made a pattern and pre-cut the fabric. Basically, because I figured it would be too much of a headache and make the project take too long if I let students do it. However, I did want the students to see the steps it took to get it to that point.

   

Students painted the bottom or the puppet face with acrylic paint Thanks to my Elmo (or document camera) demonstrating how to thread a needle, knot the end and sew up the front seam was easy! Then students used a hot glue gun to attach a braided trim to the underside of the container. And then they sewed the body to the braided trim. The sad part is, once the containers were gone, there were no more puppets to be made.......

The third and last project were these banners.

 

 

One of the classroom teachers had bags and bags of beads in her garage she wanted to get rid of. The beads were SO small that they seemed like grains of sand. So we did sand painting! I had felt, yarn, dowels and beads for the end of the dowels. I put the beads in with watered down glue. Students then used the glue bottles to apply the different colored mixtures. There was some clogging so I cut off the white plastic piece under the orange tip and it seemed to work better. They were so beautiful!

Has anything dropped in your lap lately to inspire you?
Thanks for reading!

Red Ribbon Week

Last week was Red Ribbon Week. For those of you that aren't doing time, I mean spending time with school age children- it is the week in which we communicate being drug free. Each day we have different themes that we encourage participation in.
Monday was Give Drugs the Boot and I wore my favorite boots.

 

Tuesday was Future Career Day, teachers wore their school colors and students dressed for their future career. I couldn't help it, I added a  beret, after all I grew up to be an art teacher!

Wednesday was Be a Super Hero. This is one cool Batman shirt that I found at Kohls.

 

Thursday wear red for Red Ribbon Week. This was a shirt admin gave out a few years ago. A heads up from my AP was that she would be wearing hers-so why not wear mine?

AND on Friday was our Storybook Character Parade. My character was from the book Too Much Glue. Click here for how I put this costume together. Oh and BTW I WON most creative costume!

Years ago the guidance counselor asked me to help out by having students in kindergarten, first and second grade make posters as they learn about the danger of doing drugs. If you check out the standards or benchmarks it actually aligns on many different levels. It also covers most of the Big Ideas as it involves critical thinking, organizational structure, innovation, skills techniques and processes.
AND we have a Poster Contest! Unfortunately, I am out of town right now with a family emergency and won't know who won until I return. But here are some of my favorites.

 

Above is second grade, below is first grade.

   

And kindergarten

I talk with students about the purpose of a poster. I show them both good and bad examples. We talk about different slogans to use and to make the letters big enough to see across the room. The importance of correct spelling and to not clutter it up.

Other occasions for making posters would be to promote the music concert, art show, student government elections, food drive......
What events do your students make posters to promote?

I have actually figured out how followers can get my latest published blog. Up at the top is a way for you to enter and submit your email and voila! Time will tell if that actually works.......

Thanks for reading!