Student Teacher in the Art Room

Rogers Elementary would like to introduce you to our new Student Art Teacher. Ms. Nandory will be finishing the year with us. She comes from my old stomping ground of the University of Wisconsin- Stout. This work displayed here is one of her drawings. She even has a blog you can check out, click here. I'm excited to welcome Ms. Nandory to our school!

Daily Monster...

I love this new 'filler' project. This is the time of testing, field trips, and even snow days. My schedule is WAY off. Grades are due so I'm trying to catch up some classes and slow down others to get them somewhat back together. I saw this lesson on a blog called A Faithful Attempt. It was a great lesson and something I don't give my kids enough time doing… CREATING with imagination. You will see a link off from the blog I listed to Stefan G. Bucher's, Daily Monster. I love the clips of him talking about his work and the kids did too.

So we started by watching the clip of the Daily Monster. Then I had them grab a paint shirt if they thought they needed on because we used indian ink. I placed a blog of ink onto their large paper that 4 students shared. I found that this was a good solution to the ink that spreads in so many different ways due to the different techniques of the little artist.

Each student took their straw and blew the ink to a organic shape.

Sure, they complained about head aches from blowing so hard, but overall I heard a ton of laughter and energetic chatter.

The in dried fast and the kids drew a creature with pencil and then with sharpie markers. They laughed and shared stories about their monster… They had a blast.

I also saw a recent post from Art Projects For Kids. This might be another resource that could assist in this creative project.

Beautiful Spring Snow

First week of spring… and Minnesota has a snow day. We have not had the many snow days that most of the nations had this winter. We have our first one today. Some parts of our state is suffering from flooding. Weather in Minnesota is never mild.

5th Grade Self and Group Reflection

This is a post for my 5th Grade. They will be visiting this site to get them to the google doc I have created for a self reflection.

5th Grade, Please click here.

Beautiful Silhouettes

Thanks to Cottage Hill I have the sweetest new addition to the kids room. She has a wonderful tutorial about how to make this little gem. It's easy and my mini look like little angels.

Thanks for sharing your ideas!

As I have mentioned plenty of times, we have a great elementary art teacher group in our district. We have worked hard to share ideas and meet on a regular basis. In our last meeting the conversation of pinch pots came up because it is a 1st grade requirement through out our district. It was discussed that some students always make the rim too thin. One of my co workers casually said, 'Well the kids have already made the pot twice before they even touch the clay.' I thought about Bill's comment a bit and then looked at our share site where we place lessons. Bill had a pinch pot lesson on the site. It is simple and to the point and made all the difference this year. He brings them visually through the pinch pot method with the image below. Then, he give them 'air clay' (pretend) and they make an invisible pot. Finally, they make the pot from clay. Hummm, Bill was right! Way right! I paired this up with the '5 ways to get to know your clay' and it was a pretty rock'n lesson. So to you Bill… THANK!

image created and by Bill Hammer

Primary colors...

We celebrated the Dr Seuss's birthday a couple weeks ago as so many of you blogged about. We needed to start our primary color unit so I thought using Dr Seuss as an inspiration was perfect. I read, 'One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish' to the kids and we drew 3 fish on primary paper. They put a white eye on their fish with a small bit of paint on their finger and let them dry. In the mean while they worked on their 'Art Note' (feel free to use it, just click here) The next time we cut out our fish and glued them to a light blue paper. They were cute. The art note is attached onto the back of the works to explain how what the project is all about.

As a side note… I was sure to play my favorite Primary Color song throughout the two day project. They kids love it and it get's stuck in their heads:) Thanks Greg Percy! Click here to hear the song and by the CD because these songs work!

Crayfish on the brain!

Third grade brings cray fish into their classroom for a science project they do every year. The kids have nothing but cray fish on their brains for weeks. I thought I would roll with the theme and asked our parent group to order a cray fish die cut. I introduced stitching to the kids by giving them all a burlap sheet and teaching three of four different stitches with a blunt needle. I then moved them to a 'real' needle and felt. They loved this! It took a long time so next year I will do something smaller but with fibers but I had fun empowering the kids to craft. Crafting is something I don't feel I teach enough of.

Voki, an Avatar for Education...

This is a new site I found this morning. I've seen talking avatars before but not one like this. It seems to be geared towards education and it was easy to embed. Check Voki out for yourself.

Nice to see...

Hey look! They made it! I just saw this post from last month. I've been having some problems with my computer and have not been able to do my blog visits. It was fun to see our cards on someone else site. Thanks for sharing and trading with us Vivid Layers!

As a side note, if you haven't been to Vivid Layer… it's a good one! Check it out!

Zentangles…

2nd grade has just finished up ZENTANGLES. What a great way to meditate. I had quiet classes... it was wonderful. I tried out a couple of ways to make the zentangle projects. One way was with buildings. I tried two backgrounds, one with the cool rainbow sky and one on a solid sky. I like them both.

So many of my blogging friends have projects that are similar to this. I don't think this is a unique idea, in fact I saw that Deep Space Sparkle had a projects almost the same as this one that she posted lately. It's a good project, that's why you see it. The difference with this project is the emphasis on zentangles.

Please see the 'art note' I place on the back of the project. Feel free to use it...

Here's how I did it...

and

Here a couple of things I have used to teach Exquisite Corpse. Maybe this will help you. I have done this lesson with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades. All were a success! Here is the prezi. Below is the youtube of how I taught my class.

Surrealists on Prezi

Surrealists on Prezi

Draw and Fold Over

Check out this GREAT site. This was brought to my attention by Mikl from Art Club Eduation

I also found this site... yep, there's an APP for that:)

Warning... These sites do have not non-school appropriate images on the 'welcoming' page. These sites should only be visited with an adults permission. I keep them on because the art part of the sites are so much fun and can be used in an appropriate way.

5 ways to get to know your clay...

I found the above image on Pre K Science Technology Links

I'm working on incorporating more science into my classroom in preparation of our school becoming a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Magnet School next year. I asked my kids to use their 5 senses to familiarize themselves to clay.

Smell the clay… the kids all said ewwww, it stinks… There, we all said it, lets get past it and not say it again for the rest of the hour:)

What does is sound like? Hah… they looked at me like I was crazy but all put their ear down to the clay to check it out… Just another reason I love 1st grade:)

Look, What does it look like? color? texture?

We did sight, hearing, smell… humm, what are we missing… oh yah, taste. Go ahead class, taste it:) Now their art teacher is really crazy. I QUICKLY shout out NO… I'm kidding we are not going to taste the clay… but if you did, what do you THINK it would taste like?

And finally… touch. Ah yes… the they are happy now:)

5th Grade Face Cards

I have seen the face card done on many blogs in the past. I LOVE them. I asked my students to to create themselves as a face card. They were asked to use the same 'stylized' face of the card but they could give little changes that represent them such as sports, or hobby interests.

We did drew this project on a template (click here to for a printable template). I found this to be helpful to get the letters backwards for the printing plate and the lines to match up to create a complete card. We printed this project with foam. This way the images are similar on the top as on the bottom. Finally, they colored in some of the lines to give it a little pizzaz.

Action City

This was a really fun project for the 4th grade. I had them create three levels of city to introduced the foreground, middle ground and background. Then to make this project a little more interesting for the kids I asked them to create a super hero. This was no ordinary super hero. I printed off their class list to 200% and gave them each their head to cut out. I introduced foreshortening and had them create the super hero flying out of the city. They loved this.

Here are some supporting materials that might help if you want to do this lesson. Please click here to see the 'Art Note' that I asked students to place on the back of this project.

View the youtube below to see how I taught foreshortening. You'll hear me talk about Mr. Waller. He is a new teacher in the school that the kids think I have a rival with. I don't, but it is fun to fuel the fire:)

You can also find this video here

100 Day Paper Sculptures

When my first grade students came into my class with nothing but '100 Day' on their minds (quite literally) I knew what ever I was teaching them today had to go out the door. Sometimes (all the time) you just have to roll with it. I quickly adjusted my paper sculpture to celebrate the 100th day of school.

Here is the giant 100 that the kids made in groups. Some of the classes made small paper sculptures. I tried to do what was best for the section. The kids loved their 100's.