Mini Matisse

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Everyday Art Room- Goal or Soul

Finding balance in life can be a struggle. In the most recent Everyday Art Room, I'm sharing how my family and I communicate with each other... how we keep the balance in our life. It all comes down to this phrase... Goal or Soul. Please tune in to learn more about this idea. It has helped me and my relationships with my family and friends.

Everyday Art Room Podcast

Thursday, August 8, 2019

Everyday Day Art Room- A Small Concept in Big Way

Today on Everyday Art Room I'm sharing how we have so many things to cover as Visual Arts Teachers, sometimes it's hard to know what to focus on. For many years now, I have worked on one small aspect, one concept, and made it so big that ALL students will know that term or that idea or concept for the rest of their lives.

Here is a little more about the Monster Mediums! (Click Here)

Want to see more about the Bit-O-Bios?? Here ya go!

Or how about Process?? Is Process what you want your kids to truly understand?? Here's how I focused on that small concept in a big way. Check out my Process Pigs by clicking here.

Tag me on social media to share what concept you are focused on this year. I would love to see what you are doing to make that small idea into a Big Deal in your classroom!

Thursday, August 1, 2019

5th Annual Artist Trading Card Swap Announcment

Here we are at year five of the MiniMatisse Global Artist Trading Card Swap. As promised, today I would like to announce the opportunity to join us in the swap with your class/student(s).

Who can participate?

Students Preschool to 12th Grade. Home school, private and public schools, after school programs, and Arts Clubs are welcome. If you don't fit into one of these categories, please email me for special requests. Nicholechahn@yahoo.com

You can have 10 Artist Trading Cards on up to 200 Artist Trading Cards included in a package. If you have more students than that, I would suggest working with only one grade to trade OR purchasing two or more packages for the number of cards you will be sending.

How many cards can I send?

I would also suggest having students do extra cards maybe trading two, that way they can get two cards back or only 1 trade to the student but the teacher can save some examples. You can have students do extra to make your 10 cards per group quota... PLEASE DO NOT SEND IN FEWER NUMBERS. Also, in case someone misses this rule of 10 per pack and I miss it as I send it back, it would be good to have extra cards coming your way in the case of human error.

What is the cut-off?

I do this trade by myself so I do have to limit who participates. My cap is at 100 schools, but sometimes a few more have participated in the past. See last years recap on the whole process to get a good idea of what that looks like.

Here is what the timeline looks like this year.

Aug. 22nd, 2019: I will open my Teachers Pay Teacher store to allow the purchase of an ATC Swap 'lesson plan' at 8AM CST. This year the purchase will be $15.00 per 200 cards, a discount for the second purchase of the same lesson for up to another 200 cards. This money goes back into shipping to get the cards back to all the participants both nationally and internationally. I'm hoping by telling you the date and how I will be selling the lesson, you will be able to request the funds from your school.

January 31st, 2020: Cards need to be received by me. I would highly recommend that you send the cards to me before this date. There are many factors to be considered that might cause cards to be late (Snowdays, Illnesses, Taking longer than you thought...) You can send them to me anytime!!! (and perhaps be one of the first to get your trade back)... My plan is to start swapping after I have about 10 groups who have sent me cards, that way it might be a little more manageable for me.

March 10th, 2020: I will have all ATC's out of my classroom and heading your way.

WARNINGS

Here are the warnings for the trade... I will send the Artwork out but almost every year someone's mail is intercepted. I'm not sure how. I will try to send an email to you this year if you include it on the outside of your package. I can not take responsibility for any lost packages. I'm sorry! Please prep your students that sometimes the mail doesn't make it but 99.9% of the time there is a success.

The cards are coming from all ages and all level of Artist. You can not request a certain quality of age group.

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Everyday Art Room- Setting-up the Art Studio for Success

I'm putting this post up a day early because I will be announcing the 5th Annual MiniMatisse Artist Trading Card Swap Aug. 1st... the day this episode drops... so, I'll just post this one a bit early.

Tomorrow, Aug. 1st, Everyday Art Room will focus on setting up your Art Studio at school. Every new school year I redesign parts of the Art Studio to improve upon the year before or to help achieve a goal for the year. I will be talking about the flow of the classroom, furniture placement, and how to achieve a focus for your classroom with how you layout the room. Mostly, I'll be giving prompts for you to think about as you start designing your classroom for the upcoming school year.

Some of the links you will want from the episode are as follows...

SitSpots-- These are shapes that you can place on your carpet to help manage students as they join you for carpet time. Proven in my classroom to have held up for a long time and be very effective.

The Color Family: I use this as a resource in my classroom all the time. It's part of my intentional design.

Managing the Art Room course from the Art of Education University. I'm taught this course many times and I love the focus it gives. I also appreciate the book that is a resource for this class called Classroom Management for Art, Music and PE Teachers by Micheal Linsin

I know this Everyday Art Room will help you think about your classroom assuring a successful year. Please check out this, and all the Everyday Art Room Episodes at The Art of Education University.

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Sew a Softie 2019- Stuffed Fish

I look forward to our Annual Fiber Lesson Hop that Trixi Symonds puts on in July and in December as well. She creates a blog hop where the focus is on Sewing a Softie. This year I was happy to join again doing a fish. A couple of years ago I did a fish as well (previous post) but this year I brought it up a couple notches. I have also done an owl, and my daughter was a kid ambassador once creating a Winky Rat Finger Puppet.

As many of you are finding out, because of the Everyday Art Room Podcast or the Art Ed Now conference, Billy Kheel visited my classroom in the spring of 2019. Learn more about Billy and the project we did here... Crow River Project. After Billy left our school there was a HIGH interest in fibers and sewing. We also had leftover felt at our disposal. So... Each 5th grader made a Stuffed Fish that they could take home.

Students created a unique pattern and learned how to whip stitch around the fish. We simplified the process by using tacky glue for some of the details. I also had students in younger grades stuff PAPER Fish (see previous posts). This is a tiny step to helping students understand how to create a space to add stuffing, but using paper rather than fabric.

This year, the blog hop gave me a chance to highlight a lesson I created with my students at the end of the school year. A stuffed fish that I created with my 5th grade. Take a look at the video below and learn what this lesson looks like. It includes three student ready videos, tips and tricks on materials and management and lots of student samples. I have this lesson on my Teachers Pay Teachers Page.

If you are looking to sew something different than that 'Stuffed Fish' project, I hope that this post gives you lots of links to past fiber projects as well as the following links below to several other blogs who are participating this year. As always, Thanks so much to Trixi Symonds for hosting this incredible event, you have made our world a little smaller and 'stitched' us all together.