How would you use gifninja in the classroom?

This is really cool!  I was visiting Ms. Durkin's, Student's Work blog the other day and she had an awesome post!  Her kids were working on self portraits and pop art.  They really turned out cool.  I asked about the way she posted the image.  It's like a VERY short little animation.  I asked a question as to how she did it in her comments and she replied right away.  Her's what she had to say...

Ms. Durkin's class self portraits

Thank you so much for the comments on my blog! You have made my day!

The animated gifs are really simple using gifninja.com and just uploading photographs taken in quick succession.

I am loving exploring your blog and the inspirational work on here!

msdurkinart.blogspot.co.uk 






Well there you have it.  Another reason why I blog.  I learn something new everyday from amazing educators such as Ms. Durkin.  I was impressed that she replied right away but that's what teachers do... they teach... even if it is someone half-way around the world.


Anyway, My oldest mini and I had to give it a try...

Here's his high five.  Can't you see this being used in the classroom.  I'm going to use it in the way that Ms. Durkin did for sure.  Can you comment with any other ideas of how one could use this technology?  

Thanks Ms. Durkin for your help!  I appreciate it!

Crayon Prints

Crayon Print, MiniMatisse.blogspot.com

Tis the season for garage sales in Minnesota.  Here's something to add to your list if you run across one at a sale.  I found a hot skillet and couldn't wait for the possibilites.  This is the first project we have done so far.  We made an 'art tent' for shade and I went over the safely of using a hot plate like this.  I wouldn't recommend this for a young audience.  My mini's here are 4 and 6 and both have had a lot of art experience.  Be careful when doing this project.

We took the wrappings off from the crayons.

We did some more open ended and looked at Kandinsky's work a bit.  Here you see Matisse coloring her skillet.  Below is the wax on the skillet.

The next thing you will need is a oven glove and some paper.  I placed the paper on and rubbed it with the glove.  I carefully removed the art and set it aside to cool down.  I would wipe up the suface of the hot plate with a generous amount of paper towel.  WE HAD A BLAST!

Above are a couple more of the finished products.  So much fun!

Art Soup- community tent 2012

Reusing CD cases for the Mini Mosaics

I am done with Art Soup 2012.  Last weekend we wrapped up our annual festival and I'm happy to say that is was a success.  There are things that will be improved on for next year, but I feel all and all, it was a fun day!  The Elk River Arts Alliance sponsored a mini mosaic project that I saw several years ago at a festival in Minneapolis.  (click here to see previous post or here).  I asked several sources for CD case donation and didn't receive any.  Luckily I had a backup.  

My Mini standing by the ArtStart vehicle.

ArtStart, Reusing and Reimaging our world!  This is a GREAT little 'junk' store in St. Paul that has all donated products ready for crafty people to recreate with.  (click here for link)  

The tent filled with ctivities for all ages!

Community Education of Elk River provided a lot of activities for our younger groups.

ECFE had a bunch of precut shapes and glue sticks.  This was a fun activity for lots of kids... especially my youngest mini.  She also spent a lot of time painting (image below).  Each kid got a popcycle stick and use a paint paste to make their art.  The paste was paint and flower.  It was such a cool texture.

 Then we had Kaleidoscope Charter School come in and do paper marbling in the tent as well.  WOW, what a great bunch of teachers and students working with these kids making some amazing paper!  I was really excited to have them join us this year!

North Ballet Academy joined us for a second year in a row.  They had a table set up and provided dancers for entertainment.

Munchkin Music joined us for their first year.  What a GREAT time for the mini's.  They loved singing the songs and playing instruments throughout the day!

Reading Frenzy Book Store of Zimmerman had a booth as well in the community tent! Reading Frenzy provides several community events through out the year.

Land of Lakes Choirboys were on site too!  They also provided some entertainment on the main stage.

The City of Elk River also provided a booth.  Our city is known for being active and nature continuous.   Watch the below video for a brief about that...

This was just the community tent.  Elk river Arts Alliance provided venders, food, and entertainment through out the day.  (click her for more of the activities)

Art Camp for Art Teachers

We have a wonderful Art Teacher in our district named Rana Nestrud.  Rana sets up amazing staff development for the teachers of our district and surrounding areas.  Two days after the end of school these are some of the activities we could/did sign up for!  

Metal working with Gary Erickson.  We made metal beads.

Ed and Tara came out from Continental Clay to talk to us about Kiln maintenance.

Raku firing with Jim Loso

 Native American pottery and earrings with Deb Blair

(click here for earrings hand out)

And I presented on QR codes and Stop Motion Animation.  Click here to see previous post.

Big thanks to Rana for a job well done!  I learned a lot and I know how lucky and rare it is to have Art based staff development. 

Human Tic-Tac-Toe

What do you do with the last few minutes of the day on the last day of school?  Human Tic-Tac-Toe.  We played Boys vs. Girls... It was fun!  Give it a try!

Now you should be able to view...

I posted about this lesson yesterday but didn't have my video marked as public.  Please check it out now...

Drawing a Half Face

I had so much fun wrapping up the year with my 7th grade with this fun drawing project.  They drew a 'half-face' self portait.  I think I did something like this in high school and I have taught high school kids this lesson too.  What I like about this lesson is it give kids confidence.  I like taking baby steps to drawing.  This project is all about value and blending with a pencil and blending stump.  Many of the  kids found great success with this lesson.  Please see many other project samples by visiting my flickr site.

Also at the bottom is a video of this lesson.  Feel free to use the video in class.  If you site it on your blog, please site this post.  Thanks!

Feel free to watch and even show you class the video for this project.  If you use it, send me an image or two from you class.  I would love to see any changes you make to this fun project.  Here is the link to the youtube video.

I think I fixed it!

Yikes...  Did some of you see this from my blog most recently?  It totally freaked me out!  I had never hear of malware before and I didn't know what to do.  As you can see I changed my background as part of my trouble shooting.  It turns out this malware (virus) was located in my blog roll.  Once found and removed, no warnings appear.  Yikes!  Have you heard of this before?  What helped you out on in removing malware?

The Tooth Fairy has made her First Visit to our house...

Thanks to Pinterest I was prepared for a very big day in my kiddo's life!  My oldest Mini lost his tooth and I was ready for it:)

I saw this picture on Pinterest of a Tooth Pillow (click here).  I loved it, except I already had a pillow and how to you scrap a pillow eventually.  I decided to draw the mouth out and use the same saying and place it in a frame.  We already have June 17th on the line for his bottom center incisor:)  I made a scan of it if you would like this sheet for yourself (click here!)

Picture of the Frame and Bear!

I also have 3 very talented sisters.  One of which made my son a 'tooth bear'.  I think she saw it on Martha Stewart.  She also maintains a blog that has many crafty ideas, mostly about cakes... she's pretty amazing!  (click here for Gracie Cakes)

Again... Pinterest's cute idea of the little letter from the tooth fairy also came in useful (click here for source)!  I wrote a little note from Miss Tooth on a regular sheet of paper.  I made a copy and reduced it to 20%, made a little envelope and placed it with his coin from I had left over from Scotland a million years ago:).  We decided to give foreign money for our mini's so they are not comparing the amounts to friends at school.

Overall, I'm not sure who is more excited... my Mini's or me:)

Artist Rock Thoughts

Ch. Stückelberger has left a new comment on your post "Step 7- Hiding the rocks.": 

I like that Warhol rock. I'd like to see more of them. (I've got a rock project going with a class as well.) 


You ask and I will answer!

With my art class I had the kids do a little twist on the Monster rocks for their Rock Thoughts.  Here we have a series of rocks I called 'Artist Rocks'.  I asked the kids to decorate a rock as an artist, or in an artist style.  As you can see we have great artist such as...

Keith Haring...

Pablo Picasso... 

Andy Warhol...

Georgia O'Keefe...

I asked the students to go through the same process as the rest of the school.  The advantage was they know the process of rock thoughts.  I found doing this a second time with them was really beneficial.  I also gave more specifics on the story.  I asked them to include 5 facts about their artist or style.  Most students understood my request.  Some didn't but still had a wonderful story.  If you want to see the whole series of these rocks, click here for my flickr site.

When these rocks were done I sent them all over the world with my staff.  Most teachers do a big trip in the summer and I sent a rock with many of them.  Keep your eye out for a rock in your neck of the woods.

Check out the stories as well (click here for Rock Thoughts).  I was REALLY impressed with these.   Here is just one example of a story of the rock above by Andrew, grade 8.  It was copied from the RockThoughts website...

It was a bright sunny day, but Pablo Pic-ROCK-so was inside, painting, as it is his favorite thing to do. Pablo had created many things, which he hung up on his wall, and he loved to paint in an angular fashion. Many people teased Pablo, his paintings were not like every other rock’s, they were different. Pablo didn’t mind the teasing though, as long as he could still paint. He rolled over by the window to see out side, right in between two of him paintings, the first was called Guernica and the second was named Les Demoiselles D’ Avigirnon.

Pablo really liked those paintings he thought he did really well on them but some of the other rocks didn’t like them because those paintings, like Pablo were different. He turned to look at two of his other paintings that he had worked really had on. One, named Gertrude Stein, was hung over his Rock-couch. The other, the one he called The Two Saltimbangques, was hung on his Rock-Fridge, where he kept his Rock-Food. All of the sudden, Pablo heard a knock on the door. He was pretty surprised because for one, none of the other rocks ever wanted to play with Pablo and two, rocks don’t have arms to knock with. He slowly rolled over to answer the door to meet a slim, round, smooth, Rock-Girl.

“I couldn’t help but notice that when I was looking through you window I saw some magnificent paintings, did you paint them yourself?” asked the odd Rock-girl. “Well actually I did, but no one else seems to appreciate them like you…” replied Pablo with a blush. “Well I think they are great and I also think we should hang out some time, would you like to do something on Friday?” said Rock-girl. “That would be great!” exclaimed Pablo, who was excited to have finally met a new friend.

Art and Technology

This is me, Nic Hahn... So ready to present to you today:)
Welcome!!

Art and Technology

I am presenting at Art Camp for Art Educators today.  I will be asking teachers to log onto my blog to get the directions for the presentation today.  Feel free to browse through the presentations that I will be speaking on today.

Art Camp Participants,

To start out the session, please complete the form below.



If you would like to follow along with my presentation on QR codes, please do so, (click here)
If you would like to follow along with my presentation on Stop Motion Animation (click here)

Thank you so much for coming today.  Please feel free to contact me via blog (MiniMatisse.blogspot.com) or email (nichole.hahn@elkriver.k12.mn.us).

Make your own Blog Button

This kids is totally cute and clever!  Everyone has to visit this blog.  I have pumped up Ty from Know and Tell a couple of times but he has such great information and I love that he is such a you, enthusiastic person with such big ideas!  Check out his GREAT tutorial about how to create your own button for your blog.  Thanks again Ty... I thought the teachers where the ones to create homework... this is totally on my homework list for the summer!

Step 7- Hiding the rocks.

RockThoughts suggest that you hide the rocks someplace in public for other to find and add to the story.  After speaking with the Rock Thought Staff, I decided to start these rocks out a bit differently.

I emailed the staff at the three elementary schools that feed into our middle school.  I had staff from each school participate and they all worked on the project differently.  I provided a worksheet for the elementary student to help them participate.  This also helped teachers know when they needed the lab for looking up the rocks and typing the stories.  Click here to see the worksheet.


Otsego Elementary:

I asked student to meet me at the school at 4:30.  We had plans to hide the rocks in the front garden of the school.  I thought this would be safe because there was not lawn mowers to catch a rock here.  Mrs. Matchinsky was kind enough to give this project a try.  After finding the rocks, she asked her students to go home and write the stories with their parents.  I loved this idea.  Anything to facilitate parent interaction!



Hassan Elementary:

You can't really tell by this picture, but it was going to rain soon and a hard rain at that... These kiddo's helped me hide the rocks in the media center of the school.  This was really nice for the teachers to find the rock amongst the books of the library.  Mrs. Wallin and Ms. Silva of Hassan Elementary both participated.  Their classes found the rocks and re-hid the rocks for the other group. When finished, the rocks were taken and placed all over the community by the last class who worked on them.

And my dear Rogers Elementary:

Many of you might remember that RES was my home for the past seven years so the teachers there are friends.  All the 4th and 5th grade participated, several of the kindergarten classes helped, and Mrs. Wilhem (the new art teacher) all worked on rocks.  What a great treat to do a project with these ladies again.  The rocks were found and hid several times thought out the last couple of weeks of school.  They reported that the kids started steeling the rocks at night when they would come to the school for sports.  I never advocate steeling but it made me smile a bit because the rocks were just that popular.  Again, the last classes to write the stories got to take the rocks home and hide them someplace in the community.

Finally, I did a special group of rocks with my art class.  These rocks will be heading out with my coworkers from RMS.  I am asking teachers who are traveling this summer to take a rock and hopefully get a picture of the rock where they hide it, and send the pictures back our way.  I know we have teachers going to New York, Washington, China, and more...

Who knows, maybe one of you will find a RMS rock:)