Tie Dye Until I Die: Classroom Edition

By now if you're a regular visitor, it's no surprise that I'm a lover of tie dye.  My classroom decor reflects this passion, my tie dye inspired clothing serves as my walking advertisement, and my students CONSTANTLY beg to do it with me.  Until recently, I never pulled the trigger on it.  I used to be a Summer Camp Counselor at an all girls overnight camp (shout out to you RPC 4 G's) and I once tie dyed with over a dozen 9 year olds because they paid me in pine cones--I wish I was kidding.  Never have I ever had so many tie dye nightmares.  But fear not it's been about 6 years in the making and I've finally mastered the art of tie dying with my students.  In fact, I'm going to share with you how successful tie dying with 60 4th and 5th graders was for me.

Step 1: T-Shirts.

I thought this was going to be the most difficult part--having everyone bring in a t-shirt.  To my surprise this was not difficult at all.  The best thing about tie dye is that you don't need a new white t-shirt to do the trick, it can even be an old sports camp shirt with screen printing,  just make sure it's 100% cotton.  You'll always have those parents that send in packs of shirts for those students that forget.

Step 2: How to Tie the Shirts

Keep it simple.  For most of your kids they've probably never "properly" tie dyed before.  When I say properly they probably just took a whole bunch of rubber bands and tied it up randomly.  To guarantee a successful product I show students two very simple patterns to create:  Your traditional swirl and an accordion style fold.

Step 3: How the heck am I supposed to do this in my classroom?

Fear not.  It's possible, fun, and easy.  Break it down into steps.  I had students tie their shirts a day or two before we actually dyed them.  This is how we did it.  After showing them how to tie the shirt they brought their t-shirt (with name written with sharpie on the collar) and dunked it in the sink full of water (shirts are easier to tie if they are wet), we squeezed it out, and students practiced and secured their design with rubber bands.  To keep the shirt wet, I immediately had students put the shirt in a ziplock bag with their name on the outside.  

Step 4: The Dye

This step is so easy--BUT you must have students thinking about color theory so they don't get a muddy mess.  For first timers, I suggest limiting students to choose only 2-3 colors.  2 might even work the best so they can just coat the shirt 1/2 and 1/2.  After I showed them how to apply die, we went outside with dye, soda ash, and old file folder racks.  I have students remove their shoes (just in case), and we go.  Normally, you'd want to soak the shirt for 15 minutes in soda ash to fix the colors, but for this go around we just dunked them right before we dyed them.  Students place the shirt on the file folder rack to let the dye drip through and your in business!  After both sides are done and the excess dye has dripped off, put it back in your ziplock bag and let it sit.  This  is the most important part--if you don't let the dye set for at least 24 hrs the colors won't be very vibrant.  I didn't trust the kids to wash them at home so I just did that part, before I put them in the wash machine I hose them off to get any extra dye out. 

Step 5: Wearing Them

Beware: kids will wear their shirts for the next 5 days straight--I PROMISE.  But before they took them home I obviously made all 60 students wear them and parade around school in a line with my Tie Dye posse.  Needless to say everyone who wasn't us was jealous.  

Blooming Clay Flowers

I LOVE teaching clay.  As a personal artist, I'd consider myself to be a painter and don't get me wrong I love teaching painting lessons, in fact we do it a lot, but there's something magical about clay.  I'm excited about it, the kids are excited about it...life is good.  There's a different type of creating and learning that happens when students have clay in front of them.  An application of building and a different type of thinking is certainly evident when students are hard at work.  Isn't it amazing how much better they listen when that clay project is on the line?  There's always an exception, but most students LOVE clay.  

I still have all of my clay pieces (as well as all my other artwork) from when I was in grade school even my squished, freaky little dinosaur in kindergarten to my first time throwing on the wheel in 6th grade.  These past three years I've been kiln-less.  At times it's a total bummer, because let's face it air dry clay just isn't the same.  As a child, seeing how glazes work is one of the most magical things EVER! I've worked really hard these last 3 years to find ways to make air dry clay more like the real thing.  I've definitely learned a thing or two.  If you find yourself struggling because you're living in a kiln-less world (say that as if your singing Don't Stop Beilievin') sign up for the AOE Summer 2015 Conference, I'll be sharing some air dry clay magic! 

In the mean time, look at the shine on these beautifully created flowers by 4th graders that were made for Mother's Day.  Aren't they just awesome?  I vote for more clay gardens--think of all the time we'd have (cough, cough, MOM)! 

But then again, fresh tulips are always nice.  

CAKE, CAKE, CAKE, CAKE

Have you ever had a class who hasn't liked learning about Wayne Thiebaud? I certainly haven't.  However, after that first day of looking at his work some students do look as if they could kill me with their eyes---No, sorry guys I did not bring all 170 4th graders a slice of cake! Sorry not sorry.  But they get over it....kind of.   

I've done a lesson about Thiebaud every year with 4th graders, but it has certainly varied from year to year.  Check those out here and here.  This lesson is a combo of the two.  Thiebaud's work is a fantastic example for students to see the difference between geometric shapes and forms, and of course we hit on repetition, shadows, value, edge of page, composition, and balance. Really, it's a loaded lesson.

I'm totally biased, but I think these 4th graders created some pretty fantastical stuff.  It's rad.  Speaking of rad, check out my rad sweatshirt.

OH EM GEE when the kids realize what painting is on my sweatshirt, THEY FREAK OUT.  Have you guys heard of this company, Rad?  It's the greatest.  They take paintings and put song lyrics over top of them, it's an artistic mashup so to speak.  Some of them are just straight up hilarious.  I'm thinking about getting this one next.  

Well, now I'm off to eat the only thing that I can bake---tie dye cake.

 

PSA: EAT CAKE FOR BREAKFAST
This one time at summer camp (circa 2010) I did and it rocked. Best day of my life.

Minion Self Portraits--The Best Sub Plan EVER!

In my three years of teaching I'm yet to have a sick day (now that I've written that I will probably be bound to my bed with some sort of ailment tomorrow or next week during Spring Break).  Sure, I've had subs, but conveniently for me I've always been able to plan out lessons in advance.  As all teachers know--SUB PLANS WILL BE THE DEATH OF YOU.  When I start to write them I always ask myself, "Do I really have to be gone, this is just too much work!"  And then I have to think about "will my sub actually be an 'art' person?" Not knowing this I don't always want to continue on with our projects because you know...I don't want them to be destroyed!  Ye of little faith, I suppose.

Anywho, I try to simplify it as best I can for the sanity of the sub and myself.  This lesson here was awesome.  I was doing mono printing with 4th and 5th graders and no way was I about to continue that with a sub (my head hurts just thinking about it).  The only resource they used was this handout to draw, otherwise the rest was up to them.  

    

My favorite resource to inspire sub lessons is Art for Kids Hub.  The "how to" drawing instructions ROCK, plus the videos are pretty cool too.  We all know how I feel about erasers and the drawing how to's don't even require erasing lines!  

What are some of your go to resources when planning for a sub?

Complement Color Cityscapes

If you're a regular visitor by now you already know or have probably guessed that I LOVE COLOR. Color is my jam.  I love teaching colors, I love to look a colors, and I love wearing colors!  (sidenote: you know that whole business about seasonal colors "what colors to wear during winter?"  Let's just say that neon, rainbow, and tie dye colors are acceptable all year round.)

Here's a very simple lesson loaded with content.  Here are some of the concepts 4th graders explored in our moonlit cityscapes. Value and how value affects form and creates the illusion of three dimension.  We touched on tints and shades and lastly using my friend, the color wheel, we reviewed complement colors.   As a final touch I had some puff paint where students could add some details.

Speaking of colors, I hope you're wearing your green today!  It just so happens that I'm Irish (shout out to my mom for being an O'Brien) and green is my favorite color.  Enjoy your St. Patrick's Day, I've got a birthday to celebrate later.

Lemons, Limes, and Oranges--OH MY!

For this lesson I wanted 4th graders to think about radial balance differently than in years past.  In starting this lesson and discussing radial balance students were asked to think about what kind of objects do we see throughout our day that show this?  Some of the common answers: flowers, clocks, bicycle wheel, ferris wheel, ceiling fan, a spinner in a board game, the color wheel and the list continues.

In discussing these objects I went around the room and placed a sliced lemon, lime, and orange for students to observed the radial balance found within the objects.  Not only did the room smell so fresh and clean for once but I also think by having the tangible example they were able to understand it much better.  

As students sat a their tables and drew the citrus fruits I called three students up at a time to create a 12 in by 12 in monoprint using the gelli plate method.  Unfortunately, gelli plates are not in my budget so I made my own using the recipe found here.  THE kids loved it and so did I.  

We used the print as a background for the completed citrus drawings, I think the contrast is quite stunning.  What do you think...orange they absolutely delicious?

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!

Did Someone Say Fall? The Fall Art Edition

Halloween is over...all the tricks and treats have been upon us AND even though I'm not even mad that every store now has their Christmas stuff up (I may or may not be a winter-loving, Christmas-ite) it still is fall.  As I am finally getting around to sharing some of the projects that were started in September, I hope you're excited too see them.

I'm not really a save the best for last type of girl so let's start off with my favorite fall themed project of the season.

I bring you these beautifully done painting by 3rd graders.  This lesson was super simple, we covered some terminology looking at composition and value.

Day 1: draw pumpkins, paint pumpkins, paint background.
Day 2: oil pastels on pumpkin........AND the dreaded

glitter sky that just needed to be done.

(Oh, you say I still have glitter all over my body from weeks ago? Let me tell you it was worth it.)

Without further adieu:

I'm going to keep the rest of this simple and let the artwork (almost) speak for itself.

Here we have 4th grade patterned pumpkin beauties in their zentangle pumpkin patch.

The 2nd grade pumpkin patch has creatures and some fantastical complement colors:

With all these pumpkin patches the 1st graders came in to save the day and brought us some scarecrows.  Notice some of the silly faces brought by inspiration from The Little Scarecrow Boy

The 1st graders also wanted the scarecrows to have something nice to look at during the nighttime hours.