Season's Greetings from my Mini's

Art Dictionary

I was checking out AHE ARTIST today and they linked a great resource for art teachers and students. It is called ArtLex. I could see me using it a lot. Check out both sites and become a follower. It is always nice to see who is checking into you blog.

Have you heard of FotoFlexer?

I love this site. I just found it and it is really easy and fun and best of all FREE! It is a photo editing site that allows you to upload and manipulate digital images. It even lets you animate text and so forth. You may love it too... just check it out. FotoFlexer.com

HELP ME!!!

AHHHH! I changed my blog background again and I like it but I lost all my widgets? Is there a way to revert. Please blogging friends... HELP ME!!

New Look for a new year...

New year is coming so I'm working on a new look. This may or may not be the final look for a while. I like to switch it up a bit. I like the retro, ABC look for this blog documenting a classroom... just not sure it screams art education. We'll see....

Art Room Videos

I know I talk about those few minutes left of class all the time but I can do the same lesson with five 1st grade classes and all of them can be at a different stage at the end of the class. Someone always finishes early. Here is a great resource for this situation. Art Room Videos is both great for kids and for professional development. You should check it out... give Jan thanks for her hard work and use it all! I love blogging, sharing and collaborating, so glad others do too:)

Season's Greetings!

Happy Holidays!

This is my wonderful staff, I'm so grateful to have such supportive people around me! I have worked hard to create and maintain good working relationships with this group and because of that, I feel at home here. Thanks for the great 2010!

PS. If you can find Waldo... you have found me, Mrs. Hahn:)

Great ideas from outside of the Art Education world...

Here is a quick thing that you might want to do with you kids the last couple of minutes of class if you have an interactive board, Gingerbread Man with Everything! I found this on a speech teachers blog... and you thought I only looked at art blogs... Well up until today, that has been my policy. That is until I found the EDUBLOG awards. I started following the links and was excited to find so much good information, even relevant information outside of the art education world. I think I will start a new blog roll for other teaching subject blogs.

Yarn mess solved...

We have started a stitching unit. I love fibers and I love teaching it because the kids LOVE fibers too. Where has been some frustrating challenges in the past with stitching... Let me share with you some of my changes to make it easier.

First, I pre cut the string. I found a bin to wrap the string around several times and then I give on cut, and there you have it. In not time at all I have hundreds of string cut to the 'right size'.

The second thing that is helping my frustration levels this time around is the sting box. I place my pre cut string in this notched out box. Kids can come and choose the color they want. They see the organization and I assign one student at clean up time to be the string box master (they organize the box for me, and get a title with 'master' in it:)).

When wapping, I make small clusters of string. 50 to 70 strings to a cluster. When yarn runs out of the string box, I grab a cluster and have it ready to go.

These little changes have made my life carefree... well at least for that hour. I will have more stitching tips to share soon. The kids are loving this project so far.

TIE's

I went to TIE's convention this last week and this session is always a favorite. If you have some time you need to check out Garrison's Site... It's 51 sites you need to know about on the web. You will fall in love with the site if you are a tech geek like me and you would fall in love with the Garrison if you met him. The energy he has for education is amazing!

Art Teachers Blog Directory

Do you want to join an art teacher blog directory? Add your link and then copy and paste the whole thing to your blog. Pretty soon you will be linked up with art teachers from all over the world.

1. Marcia Beckett	2. Greg Percy	3. Mini Matisse	4. Barb's Students	5. The Teaching Palette	6. Artspiration
7. eleni	8. Mrs. Picasso's Art Room	9. Trish ackerman	10. Use Your Coloured Pencils	11. Art Makes Kids Smart	12. Draw, Paint, and Cut
13. LeAnne	14. Katie Morris	15. Art on the Move	16. Art Project Girl	17. The ART of Education	18. Rachel Motta
19. Tami Smith	20. Waitsfield Elementary Art	21. Fayston Elementary Art

Go To Vivid Layers to register your blog.

I'm published...

Whoo Hoo! I'm so excited to announce that I am now published! I sent in some Clip Cards this summer to SchoolArts Magazine and I was surprised to see my lesson was in the magazine! Very cool! It was fun to see our work in print... you can do it too. Check it out!

PS. I am looking for some hard copies to give to the family. If you are willing to part with your School Arts. Magazine issue... Please send it my way.

Rogers Elementary School

C/o Nic Hahn

12521 Main St.

Rogers, MN 55374

Winter Clay Project

I had to quick blog about this one because I'm so excited about it! I was messing around the other day and put this together. This is my project sample but I'm did it with my K's and they rocked it! Here's the 'how to'...

Cute a slab and draw a shallow line into the surface. I have these little plaster tiles that fire nicely so that is what I used for the branch. We were talking about mosaics with this project.

As the kids were placing in their tiles, I smeared a small amount of red clay onto the slab. When they were done with the tiles, they pressed a tight pine cone into the red clay areas. They finished up by connection the pinecones to the branch with tiles and and drawing the pine needles into the slab. I can't wait to fire them!

ATC Discussion...

I received the ATC from Australia a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to have every student see every work of art. We did a moving critique. I put a small selection at each of the students tables. I gave 4 jobs...

The kids loved it. They touched them all and read them all. They commented on the very nice handwriting of the other students. They loved the art and the different lingo and spelling. It was such a fun, FUN time. I plan to display the art before I give our 2nd grade students their gift from Australia.

Once again... Thanks Dear Anne Farrell!

ATC warm up

I am repeating my ATC warm up with my new 1st grade this year. I piloted it last year (See older post) with one group and it was a success. This year I am having all the 1st grades do the warm up. I was excited to have a set of parents visit my during conferences tell me that their little guy thinks about his card all week. They shared with me that little 'J' comes home after his art day and tells Mom and Dad what letter we will do next week. They work together to decided on a image and practice it before class new week. I was blown away! I didn't know these little cards meant so much to some of these students. It made me really happy and I shard this story with all my 1st grades.

Philosophy of Art Teaching

I'm updating my teaching Philosophy and, as always, SchoolArts magazine came through for me. There is an awesome guideline for writing an Art specific page at Write a Philosophy of Art Teaching.

Talking Brush

Field trip down the hall!

My K's and I walked down to the mosaic that Rogers students made last year to discuss what a mosaic is. It was fun to hear that many of them already knew about the piece and could tell me what part their siblings worked on. To open every K's art class I have them pass around the talking brush.

This is the talking brush. We pass it around from student to student and they remind me of their name and answer a question of the day. The only time you can share is when you have the brush in your hand, other wise your a listener. This time they had to spy something in the mosaic. It has been a fun way to give every K a voice and have even just a couple of seconds of my total attention.

TeleDraw-- Fun Game

Hav you ever gotten back from an assembly where the kids are so pumped up there is no way they are coming down for at least 3 hours, and you only have the class for 15 minutes. There is no time to get started on any project and why bother... they are too hyper. Well here is a good way to get them to calm down, work as a team, silent their minds (bodies and voices too). I call it TeleDraw.

This game is a lot like telephone except your passing on a drawing. Place the kids in different groups and ask them to sit in a line all facing the same direction (forward). On a white board I draw a picture and only show the last person in each line. They go back to their group and draw it with their finger on the person in front of them. They transfer the message to the front of the line.

The first person in the line has a whiteboard and marker. They draw what they think the picture was on the board and all the whiteboards are revealed at the same time. I then show the whole class the picture I drew on my board.

It's a fun game, the kids love it! They figure out how to work as a team better every time they have to send another picture to the front of the line.

Note: If I am doing this game with 4th grade or older I place them in boy vs. girl teams.