Pop-Up Garden

I was inspired by Tracy Boberg Nichols who has a IG account called... @tracynicholsartclass. She did a pop-up garden with her students for Mother's Day 2021. I had to do it with my students as well. I have asked Tracy if she would mind if I shared the video I made off from her inspiration with others and she is happy to share!! So here is the video I created with my students. 

Here are the lessons I learned from teaching this pop-up garden 10 times to different sections. 

1) At first I asked students to create flowers on a half of sheet of paper. The problem was some flowers got too big and some too small. The solution was to create a template. This was helpful for students. I had students follow along with me using the following video. We did flowers 1-4 together to give students confidence. Then they could do 3 flowers on their own and two 'things' that fly in the garden (birds, bugs, butterflies... ). The flowers were created on Day 1 of this project. 

Many classes had some time after making the flowers. If that happened we used scrap paper to try to make the pop up portion of the cards. They could practice as many times as they wanted. If it was hard, they could practice over the week until the next class period. 

2) On day two, I handed the blue paper to the students as they entered the room. We folded the paper together and placed their name a table number onto the art. This was perfect for students to be successful by folding the paper same direction. They came to the carpet for the next instruction.

3) I showed students how to create 3 stems... I found this to be the 'magic' number of stems to not be too crowded and to allow students to be successful. This was also a good number that if students 'accidentally' added one more... it was OK. 

After the cuts as shown in the video I would remind students to "Hold the fold" then "Pull and Press". This seemed to help them quite a bit. 

4) After finishing this job I showed them (back on the carpet) how to glue the two together (the blue and green papers) and then showed them the portion of the video that shows cutting and glueing the flowers on... VERY short clip. For some students, this to take them the whole time... some finished up early. 

5) I made an optional instruction for students who were ready to challenge themselves or ready to move on. I showed them how to create a 'spring' with two strips of paper (as shown int he video). This was perfect for some to have as an option but if others were behind, perhaps with cutting or something else, they just kept working with the original steps.

This was a perfect end of the year activity but I will probably do it in April next year as Tracy did. I also think this would be a wonderful summer project for students to do as well. 

Fun Frogs

A great lesson for beginning Artist.

I was inspired by a post I saw on Instagram by Alison Gerke (@ghouseart) showing some very sweet frogs by her Kindergarten. That sparked this lesson for me...

Day 1: Students practiced drawing frogs. First on whiteboards and then on their watercolor paper. It's important to have a high quality paper for this lesson... Watercolor paper or Mixed Medium paper works best. I have a FREE step-by-step resource page on my TPT page.

Day 2: Students first colored their background with crayons.  This included the sky, water, and lily pad. We talked about craftsmanship quite a bit. Students were instructed to do a peer assessment getting 3 people to say 'no white-spots' before considering themselves finished.

Student then used two 'juicy' markers to add two colors of spots all over the frog. The more dots the better!! We briefly talked about color theory and the color wheel using colors that are 'neighbors' to each other. 

Then students used water to blend the spots together with a brush. This is always magic for the students. 

And then the final results... 

Earth Day Mosaic

My distance learning kindergarten students rocked Earth Day Mosaic projects!!

Last year when we went into lock down students where in the middle of doing an Earth Day project. I was unable to get the projects back to the kids from last year so instead of throwing out the really cool looking paper, I used the die-cut to make the circles, I had some plates from a project I did years ago, some paper mosaic shapes as left overs from a previous project as well... it was a great combination to send home as a perfect little pack for these kindergarten students. 

Here is the videos that I had the kiddos watch. I was really impressed with what they turned in. 

Contemporary Clovers

I will be absent for the next couple of days so I thought this was a great time to offer a fun lesson focused on the contemporary Artist EttaVee. The top video I will be sharing with my older students, 3-5 and the younger kids will be working on the Seesaw digital version in the second video. 

 

Ew, David : Plastic Canvas Sweater Magnet

My sister pulled out a little box of magnets the last time I visited. She showed me a great aunt on her husbands side gave her little magnets sewed on plastic canvas for each holiday. She explained that when she received them she didn't appreciate it the same way she does now... that she is older... and wiser. I thought I would send her a pick-me-up and started making some magnets to add to her collection featuring some of our favorite shows. For starts... $chitts Creek!  Check out the video for full instructions. Drawings below are my attempt at a pattern. Maybe you can make one for someone special this year for Christmas. 

Cut a black plastic canvas to 27 spaces by 34 spaces.

Trim down the plastic to create the shape of the sweater. Starting from each side helps to stay even. For example, cut the shoulder triangle on the right, then on the left. Then move into the center cut for the top of the sweater. 

This is an image of what the plastic will look like.

Start with the white yarn creating the words. If the first line on the left is number one... count to the seventh to start the 'D' for David. Likewise, if the bottom is number 1, count up to the number 9 to find the base of all the letters of David. These letters were created in a cross stitch motion.

Filling in the black in this chevron pattern helps the texture appear more like a sweater. 

Finish the black with a whip stitch around the edge of the of the sweater shape will create a finished look. 

Use white, place lines to separate the sleeves and add the classic 'David' lighting bolts to the top of the sweater.