Week4

Week 3 I was on vacation, so my co-teacher took the reigns solo.  And then this past week, she was on vacation, so I was alone with the kiddos!  It was an awesome week. Our theme was story telling, which meant that lots of books were read, and lots of art was created! This one is going to be a long one, because I had a lot of favorites this week!

Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae is an adorable picture book about how a giraffe who thinks he can't dance. There are many great ideas all over the internet (and on pinterest) for creating these lovely giraffe pictures...I picked a few of my favorite things from various sources, including techniques from For the Love of Art...and added a few things of my own! After reading the book, they created their backgrounds using tints and shades! Students painted a moon with white, then added rings of progressively darker blue around it. They added splatter (everyone's favorite!) with white for stars. After our lunch break, we came back and busted a move.  Ok, not really, but we all took turns striking a dance pose, so that we could practice drawing stick figures in that pose.  Afterwards, students chose their favorite pose to draw their giraffe in. We discussed giraffe characteristics and what shapes they could use to draw them. After they drew a giraffe they were proud of, they transferred it to yellow construction paper, outlined it, and added details with markers.  Next they went back to their backgrounds and painted on some green for grass and added texture marks with the backs of the brushes. When all was dry (the next day) they glued their giraffes in place. They were all so proud of the finished projects...which looked fantastic!

(A lot of them decided that dancing giraffe's deserve hair...who am I to crush creativity? They are so cute!)

Besides reading stories, we wrote some of our own...in picture form.  Words were not required but could be added.  Students created a storyboard that had a beginning, middle, and end. They could use 3-6 frames to tell their story. For the backgrounds, we used a paper that we had created with some extra time earlier in the week using bubble painting. The bubble painting didn't work out quite right (Maybe the paint was too old? Maybe the consistency was off?) but the papers were nevertheless bright and beautiful, filled with abstract blobs of color!

Another story we read was The Very Busy Spider  by Eric Carle.  We spent some time creating all sorts of painted papers in stations.  Webs were created by rolling marbles covered in white paint around inside a foil pan that held their black paper.  Green papers were created using green and yellow paints: they painted a white piece of paper solid with one color, added design lines with the other, and then scratched more designs in with the backs of their brushes.  the blue papers and orange papers were created using shaving cream and acrylic paint, which I used before in this lesson: Van Gogh. After all papers were dry, we used shapes to create our spider, glued them to white paper, which we then cut out and glued to the webs. Beautiful!

 Our Self portrait for this week was painting ourselves on canvas as something we wanted to be (or wished we could be) in the future! We talked about facial proportions, and the students drew their portraits on paper. Once they practiced and had an idea, they drew them on canvas. We discussed mixing colors to make the secondaries, reviewed shades and tints, and I taught them how to mix a skin town and brown. They went to town! They used only the primaries, black, and white to create these lovely paintings. Even the youngest (a kindergartener) did a terrific job mixing colors!

And finally, another one of my favorites was creating a scenes. They folded a paper to create an X, then holding the paper so it made a diamond, they drew the floor/ground in one triangle, skipping the one next to it. The top two were their background.  Once colored and finished, they cut a slit from the bottom to the middle, slid the blank triangle under the floor/ground, so that it became a setting. Students could then add characters for their foreground.  Neither of these two are finished, this project took us to the very last second of camp.

We also created rainbow fish dishes and face pinch pots out of clay, and we did some tie-dye.  So much fun!

Week 2

Week 2 of summer camp took us around the world...

My favorite project this week was our Egyptian self portrait.  After learning about Egyptian art, students created a self portrait that featured characteristics of Egyptian art.  They drew them in pencil and colored them with colored pencil.  For the background, they created a Styrofoam printing plate by drawing Egyptian hieroglyphics and symbols. Most of them spelled out their names on a cartouche, which is an oval with a horizontal line at one end, which indicates that the name inside is an important or royal name, and offers that person protection against evil spirits. Some added ankhs or other important symbols. They printed their plates using markers and damp paper.  Finally, they put it all together, pasting the portrait to their backgrounds, and pasting that to a thicker sheet of paper. They added detailing and decorated the border in gold paint pen.

We also made Aztec inspired sun faces, Hamsa inspired hands, Islamic tiles, snow globes from our favorite places, batiks and more!

We also used a technique I've seen all over pinterest to create Japanese cherry blossoms: printing with the bottom of water bottles (with a twist, we printed again with a different color and then stamped centers with a foam dot brush, because our bottles had a larger spread between the "petals"):

Summer Camp!

Summer Camp has officially started...actually, we're heading into the 5th week! So, the next couple posts will be a recap of SOME of the MANY projects we have done the last couple weeks...

Week 1:  Identity (projects all about the artist!)

My favorite project from this week was creating faces with magnetic features! Thanks for the idea,  Freckle PhotoBlog.  The students first made facial features (or one case, funny facial hair!) out of clay. We looked at various pictures of facial expressions, and we made funny faces at each other, while talking about what our facial features do when we make a certain expression. They made various "sets" of features so that they could change them around.  Another day, they painted the background portrait on a cookie sheet (from the dollar store) that had been primed.  They painted their features and we added magnets and a coat of modge podge over everything! They came out great!

Some added accessories too! 

Love the removable facial hair.

Realism wasn't a requirement...loving the colors!

Update

Well, just thought I would post a little update!

 I completed another year of winter camp at Paintsome Pottery.  It was a fun week...here are a couple things we made:

magic tie-dye (inspiration found on Pinterest

From theartgirljackie-tutorials.blogspot.com), the only change is I had them just use a portion of fabric (cotton tshirt) and draw small designs with permanent marker, then I dropped on some rubbing alcohol (eww smelly!), and they watched the magic!  To complete, we painted wooden frames while the fabric dried, then drew a line design on top of the fabric with black permanent marker. I taped the designs to cardboard and put them in the frames.

Another Pinterest inspired design: http://www.etsy.com/listing/62714879/fish-aquarium-kid-kit; though again with changes.  If I do this again, I will make the hole larger! We cut our plates and painted them, and moved on to our fish while they dried.  We talked about the unique characteristics of fish and drew our fish designs in marker--using lots of lines to create texture, and lots of color!!  We ripped paper for seaweed,  used real seashells,  fake sand (graham cracker dust!), and cut out bubbles to complete.  Oh and we added some plastic wrap over the hole!

Foil designs:  we drew our sun designs on paper first, then we traced over them over top of the foil. We talked about how to to rub areas of the foil with our pencil to make them go in or come out.  We added some color with permanent markers and a decorative border.

We created books. They had to pick a theme, create a cover, write their story and illustrate.

We also created and glazed some adorable clay snowmen and clay mugs for hot cocoa! We printed using styrofoam, painted on glass, and a whole bunch of other cool things.  It was a fun week.





Besides camp,  I've discovered Pinterest! If you are an art teacher (or a mom, or a dreamer, or an organizer...or any thing where you would love a place to find and store ideas) you have to check it out.  I've been on it for a few months now, and I have to say...it is addicting! It is a virtual pinboard...and I love it because I can organize ideas for just about anything.  It is great for saving inspiration for art lessons (I say inspiration, because I tend to change things when I try it myself!) and even ideas for a future classroom--rules, signs, management tools.  I have ideas for my future house, places to go, recipes, and even activities I could use for teaching ESL.  Great site. I love it!






Other than that, I'm coming to the end of my first semester as an Instructional Assistant. So far it has been great. I get to help my student with her educational needs, observe teachers at work (which gives me ideas and inspiration for my own teaching), and learn all sorts of things (including re-learning all the things I learned in 10th grade!). 
I have also just started my final class toward my ESL certificate, which is great.  I think I will enjoy this class the most.   And in addition, I've started kickboxing, and gotten back into Zumba (to help fill the void of missing dance, which I had to quit this year).  So it will be an exciting winter!

Oh and I just bought a whole bunch of art and education books...so those will be keeping me busy! I will have to let you know which ones are worth it and which ones are not!
For now...keep creating and thanks for stopping by!

It's been awhile but...

Well it has been awhile. This school year has brought some changes. I took a job as an instructional assistant, which has been a nice change of pace. I miss my home school kids like crazy...and I miss teaching art...but hopefully I'll sneak in some art ed throughout the year. As for now, I will be keeping busy thinking of ideas, following blogs, and reading art related books, as well as getting my ESL certification!  I am loving my current job, and I am learning so much just from being in the high school everyday.