'I Love My State', Inspired by Minnesota Artist, Adam Turman

I am so excited to do this Art To Remember project with. my 4th and 5th grade students this year. I am teaching students in-person as well as online. It has been a tricky balance (maybe balance is the wrong word, because... I don't feel balanced right now). I was excited to create a lesson inspired by a local Minnesota Artist named Adam Turman. He is really well known to our local area. His work is so bold and impressive that it could be inspiration for classes in any location while working on this lesson.

Here is how I introduced this lesson to my students (both online and in-person).

That led into showing this 'lesson video' in portions over the next couple of weeks. 

As I always have, I am presenting the lessons to my students on a smart TV in the front of the room. I'm glad to have this in my practice already... this is also how I present the lessons to my at home learners. This first lesson was created using Adobe SPARK. You can see that I broke down the steps into time.  See our State/District has allowed families to move into and out of Distance Learning at two points in the year. I need to keep all my students at the same point to easily bring them into and out of both platforms of learning. So, I would teach in person a week and then edit the times and how far the classes got... then I would share the lesson with my Distance Learning students. 

Adobe Spark is awesome... but it has one flaw that I couldn't get over. I like to show videos in chunks. I know Google Slides allows me to do this. I can edit and show only a portion of a video... so that is why I switched back to Google Slides (Slides is such a great platform). So, here was the lesson for day two. You can see that I'm able to gather students examples. This has been helpful (I hope) for the kids at home.

Moving into week three, we are really starting to see the product develop. Students are bringing their own supplies and tool boxes to create an environment where less materials are shared to reduce germ sharing as well. You can see that they are using different mediums to create their work. I love this! It gives choice. 

The final week of working was when the kids created their unique backgrounds. On a normal year I would have had them paint their backgrounds. This year, I'm just not ready for that yet. I need to figure out the logistics of painting and sharing supplies and NOT stressing myself out.  I hope to be able to 'get there' this year. 

Here are a couple of awesome works from my classes.  I hope the families love them as they make their way home this school year.

Art to Remember: Line Lion

Gearing up for Art To Remember Fundraiser this year. Our K's and 1st grade will be creating a 'Line Lion'. I have created a resource to assist with this lesson shared with you FREE on my Teachers pay Teachers Store.  

I also have a supporting video on my YouTube Channel. I will be using this lesson both in class and at home. Can't wait to see what the Hassan Artist create. 

Kindergarten Animals with Marshmallow Background

My Kindergarten Art To Remember Project for this year was a lot of fun and I think they turned out adorable! Here is how we did it!

I saw this post from @Raising.Kinley and thought, yes!! I want to do that with my Kindergarten! So... I did. The video below is how it worked for my class. The kids did a great job. They did not eat them (that I know of)... I brought the kids back in small groups so I could watch them closely. It went well. The only change I would make next time is I would leave the marshmallows out for a while to let them harden. They got a little slimy with the paint.

I was inspired by Pin Koro video of How to Draw 30 Animals. I chose only three to simplify it for my Kindergarten students. I also wanted to show how large to make the animal and how to break it down a bit.  Here is my video...

I had students draw all three animals. They used sharpies right away. I have found that Kindergarten isn't afraid of making mistakes like older grades are, so just get right to it by cutting out the pencil and tracing over the lines and go straight to black outline. Then I had them choose their favorite drawing and that was the one they handed to me. The other two they colored and were able to bring home with them right away.

This year I have 50 kindergarten students, so my lesson plans look different. There wasn't enough room in my schedule to have all 5 sections of Kindergarten.  It breaks my heart but it does allow me to make different choices with their lesson plans. For example... I could do this lesson and be able to make time to cut around the animals and glue them to the background without being overwhelmed.  

Most of the time, I do have the students cut and outline, but since these are beginning of the year kindergarten students and they did make the background and they did draw the animal... I cut and mounted them for our Art To Remember project. When I'm working on Art To Remember the idea of a 'pretty' picture does have to be part of the plan. Parents want to purchase a lovely image for their keepsake and I can appreciate that. So... for one project only, I do the cutting and mounting for them.

Here is the good news... because I had these videos and materials, the three kindergarten teachers whose students do not come to my classroom did this lesson with their students too. They brought in volunteers and each classroom made the project as well so all students will have the opportunity to have an Art To Remember project. Here are some of their examples!! 

Art to Remember- Colorful Shapes

This was such a success for my kindergarten students last year that I really wanted to share it with you now. Due to the bright colors and simple steps, this project was a winner for my Art to Remember fundraiser for my youngest Artist.  It's always hard for me to find a lesson that can be successful for all students at the start of the year when my K's are coming in with such diverse backgrounds. I found these simples steps to be age appropriate for the students of my classroom.

I didn't even let the kids use pencils for this assignment.  My goal of having the students start with sharpie markers was to avoid the 'mistake break' when a kid thinks that they can't do it and continue to erase and erase. K's, for the most part, have no worries... they just do what they are asked because they are just excited to be at this new place called school.

As the video shows, I had students start with a tracer in the center of the paper. They then drew 5 lines from the shape to the outside of the page. When demonstrating this I also showed a non-example of what it would look like to have all the lines on one side. This encouraged kids to use their whole page.

Once the page was divided, students created shapes and lines to make designs in each of the spaces outside of the shape.  Having lot's of resources for the shapes and lines was important. (see slideshow at the bottom)

The students added oil pastel in each of the designs. I had a bucket of oil pastels that kids would go to to get one oil pastel. Then when they were ready to change out the color they would come back and 'trade the color in'. I love doing this so kids are moving around the room... movement helps my wiggly kids for sure.

Another classroom management tip: I place boards down on the table tops when students are working with sharpies so that if they go off the paper, it doesn't end up on the table. I call these drawing boards.

One color I did not let students use when adding oil pastel was black.  I used black later on in the project when I had students trace the shape and lines to help them stand out.

The marker prints were a blast.  I did this in small groups as students were working on another little project independently. This was my set up, plastic sheets over white pieces of paper. The plastic was taped down and the paper was there to show students how big of a space they needed to color on with the markers. You could also get a volunteer to come in and help with the station if working independently is not a skill your students have yet.

This is one of the crews in action.  The fun part about this is that it really didn't matter how the students colored on the plastic. One thing I emphasized was lots of colors, other than that, it really didn't matter. 

Students then squirted some water onto the plastic.  I also had a spray bottle in hand that allowed me to give a little extra squirt if needed. 

Finally, the kids pressed their art upside down onto the wet marker. They gave the paper a good "back massage" and the colors transferred to their paper. It was magic!!

Below was a simple slide show that I had students use as I instructed. Feel free to use it as well. 

Colorful Castle

The final new lesson that I will be doing with my students for the Art to Remember fundraiser is a colorful castle. I'm excited to start the year off showing students how to use these two techniques for crayons. I think it will open doors for more creative use for the rest of the year.

Start the conversation out with:

A person who designs buildings is called an Architect. In this lesson, we will all become Architects because we will be designing a castle.  You will have the choice to use realistic or abstract colors on your drawing. We will also be using a couple of techniques while coloring this work of art with crayons. Blending is when you take two colors on top of each other to create a new color. We will also be using plates to create texture on our paper as well.

1. Students will create a drawing of a castle using a pencil then outline with permanent markers.

  

  

2. Students will color in portions of the castle using texture plates.

I really like these Fiskars Texture Plates.

3. Students will color in portions of the castle with blending techniques.

Fill the whole pages with either blending or texture techniques! I love how bright and bold the final project can look!