Kindergarten Gets heARTsy

What would Valentine's Day be without a little lesson about Jim Dine?  Jim Dine: I know you're out there, here's my question for you--"Do you love or hate that you've become the iconic artist that most art teachers (elementary) love talking about right around February?"  Really though...I wonder.  I searched for Jim Dine on twitter, no such luck, but boy would I love to tweet him that question.  So if anybody knows how I can get in contact with him (like maybe he's your cousin or uncle or something),  let me know it'd be pretty rad. 

I did this lesson with kindergarten last year, so go to this post to see more of the "how to" details.  There was a slight change to the lesson.  Because of time constraints, instead of using toilet paper rolls to stamp hearts around the border students just drew their own with sharpie markers.  Although, I thought the stamping was pretty cool, I love the personalities of the hearts the students drew. When a heart all of sudden turns into a little person or magically develops a weird growth--I dig it.  

  

With all the Valentine's Parties underway in classrooms this is what the Art Teacher's Valentine looks like:

If only the colored pencils were always that sharp...

What are you doing for V-day?  I'm attending a super awesome Vintage Valentine event at the Joslyn Art Museum, you can call me Zelda Fitzgerald for the night.   

Rounding out Autumn Lessons

Good grief Charlie Brown, I'm glad I got to squeeze this post in before December hit.  Before Thanksgiving break all of the final autumn-esque art lessons were finished up.  I mean it is still fall and winter won't "technically" be here for almost another month, but here in Nebraska it sure feels a lot like winter.  I'm not even mad about it, BECAUSE SNOW AND WINTER ARE MY FAVORITE.  

Well to finish off the fall themed posts for the year is a project done by 6th graders.  When developing an art project, especially for my 6th graders, because I see them so seldom I try to see how much art learning can be loaded into one art lesson in the simplest ways possible.  That's usually easier said than done, but I try. 

This here lesson is one that was inspired by the batik look.  Students created backgrounds using a wet on wet technique with liquid watercolors.  While the watercolors were still wet students crumpled up the paper, the watercolors mixed together and WA-LA these fabulous backgrounds were created.  The next step was drawing fall themed produce and filling them in with oil pastel.  Students used a similar batik process as done here, crumpling up there objects 7 to 8 times and going over with watered down black tempera paint.  

The students were so into the destruction (being able to crumple the paper) of their artwork in the background, but some were a little more reluctant when it came to the objects.  They knew the end result would be pretty awesome, but there mentality was "I just worked so hard on this and I love the way it works, why would I want to destroy it?"  For some this was a challenge, but we fought the good fight and made some pretty awesome art.  

Some of these 6th graders just rocked it.

4th graders made these fall inspired warm/cool drawings with mod podge and oil pastels.

I hope your thanksgiving was fantastic.......AND with that being said bring on my favorite season, Christmas, and PLEASE LOTS OF SNOW!

3rd Grade Owl Batik

This was kind of a long project for third graders, but it was quite the hoot (insert drum roll here).  This was about a 4-5 day project deepening on the class. 

1st day draw the owl.

2nd day use crayons to color in owl (PRESS HARD)

3rd Day watch batik demo (crumpling paper 8 times and going over with water down black tempera paint). Finish coloring with crayon and doing batik process.

4th day students were to have batik done and we did a directed painting for the background.

5th day add branch glue on owl.

There were so many steps in this project and one of the reasons why it took so long for us to finish was because this was very much a project where students kept their own pace.  We all know the work speeds of students vary tremendously! So some of the steps were prolonged to enable other students to catch up. On the 5th day it only took us about ten minutes to finish and then we started on our next project.  For those students who seemed to be waiting for the next step I had a filler activity whether that be a handout or reading they would do and if they still finished that I asked them to help someone who wasn't finished.

Overall I love the results.  I'd like to see what I could do the next go around to make the project go a little quicker.