Women's History Month

I love to share the story "The Drum Dream Girl" with my classes in March for Women's History Month. This lesson is packed with interdisciplinary connections. Divide the drum into section. Apply patterns. Write a haiku to describe your drum.

Original post here.
Download the complete lesson plan with time lapse video demonstration here.

Celebrating Black History Month in Your Art Class

Many of us have been seeking to diversify our curriculums. Last summer I shared a list of black artists that my students enjoy learning about. Although I prefer to introduce students to artists as it makes sense in my curriculum, this seemed like a great time to share a few favorite art lessons inspired by artists of color. 

Here are some of my favorite books (with read alouds)

Art from her heart - Kathy Whitehead

Getting to know the World's Greatest Artists: Jacob Lawrence - Mike Venezia

Getting to know the World's Greatest Artists: Faith Ringgold - Mike Venezia

A Splash of Red: The Life of Horace Pippin - Jen Bryant

Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad in the sky - Faith Ringgold

Of Thee I Sing: A letter to my daughters - Barack Obama

Say Something - Peter Reynolds (read by the author)

Be Who You Are - Todd Parr (read by the author)

I am brown - Ashok Banker

Here are some of my favorite websites for inspiration:

Amplifier

Anti-Racist Art Teachers

Learning For Justice (Formerly Teaching Tolerance)

Teach For Justice (Free Webinar Series)

Elementary

Alma Thomas

Secondary

Mark Bradford

Kara Walker

Applied Art / Crafts 

Tiff Massey

What are some of your favorite lessons, books or resources?

Winter Book Round Up

One of the things I miss most about leaving the elementary level (besides their cute faces) would be children's books. I really love a well illustrated story. So this week, I'm sharing my favorite winter themed books.

Polar Bear Night. (Or Polar Bear Morning) by Stephen Savage

You can't go wrong with either book. Last year I paired it with a fun printmaking lesson. You can read see the original post here.

Who Will See their Shadow This Year by Jerry Pallotta

This is great for groundhog's day connection, teaching shadows in art AND it covers a ton of weather illustrations. I like to pair this with my snowman shadow lesson because in Pennsylvania, it' snows through March. That lesson has been reinvented a few times, most recently with a Starry Night twist.  The first time I used the book, we did some skinny sculptures. Original post here.

Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin

 is an amazing book to connect your slightly older artists with the science and math of snowflake design. 3rd-5th have enjoyed this lesson with projects like my notan snowflake and the snowy winter scene with marker prints.

No Two Alike by Keith Baker

This is a fun book for students to observe differences. Let them make two birds with different details. Or two snowflakes cut from the same sized paper. Endless possibilities for your smallest aritsts.

Supertruck by Stephen Savage

I know, this is turning into a Stephen Savage fan page! But seriously. This book is great for boys, teaching basic shapes, perspective, shadows, and cityscape. So many ideas. Last year we did paper collages inspired by the book.

The Mitten by Jan Brett

This is a fun lesson to teach students about textures and patterns. If you're able to project the book in the room there are some fun hidden images on the pages. We've done scratch art and clay mittens inspired by this book.

Ten on the Sled by Kim Norman

This book pairs well with this lesson that I left for a sub. It worked really well K-5 by tweaking the instructions slightly for the different age groups. You can find that lesson here.

Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner

This is fun and inspiring for a variety of projects. I've done printmaking and landscapes with a variety of grades. One of our favorite things to warm up, is a game of "snowman charades." More info on that here.

The Monster Mash Up

Some lessons are timeless. Six years ago I posted an exquisite corpse lesson plan that I have done with students in grades 3-12 and I am still hoping I can sneak it in this year now that I'm back at the high school. Right now my cartooning classes are developing original characters and it might be fun to have them submit and edit these digitally.

Since posting that lesson, I have added these fun muddle and match books from usborne to my growing resources for the project, which include a halloween card from 10 years ago.

The topic of "seasonal" art is sometimes hotly debated, especially at the high school level. I think an art teacher in an exploratory course like Art 1, could definitely make connections to surrealism and this could develop beyond a fluff piece for decoration. While I wouldn't have students collaborate their paper drawings this year, a technology connection could make this more interactive and add a layer of engagement and excitement.

Do you use seasonal inspiration for middle and high school art classes?

Fall Book Round Up

One of my favorite things about teaching elementary art, is their enthusiasm for seasonal art. As my years in elementary piled up, so did the books on my shelves. Some of my favorite books to inspire fall art lessons also have read alouds readily available.

A Plump & Perky Turkey - Theresa Bateman

Readaloud

Spookley the Square Pumpkin - Joe Troiano

Readaloud

Elmer's Parade - David McKee

Readaloud

The Spider and the Fly - Tony DiTerlizzi

Readaloud

Mouse's First Fall - Lauren Thomspon

Readaloud

Folk Art Fusion (Hispanic Heritage Month & All things Frida)

Printing Polar Bears

The first group of 4th grade students finished their polar bear prints today.
So excited to share the amazing results.

These were inspired by our visiting author/illustrator Stephen Savage. We looked at illustrations from Polar Bear Night and Polar Bear Morning. Original post here.

This was their first time printing with ink and brayer. They did a really nice job. Teacher tip: By tinting the white ink with a bit of silver and/or blue it was easier for them to notice where the styrofoam plate was coated with ink and where it was empty. 
 

Polar Bear Prints

Last month artist Stephen Savage came to our school. He read "The Babysitter From Another Planet" which our K-5 students absolutely loved. Original post about his visit here. When my older students saw that the younger kids did collages inspired by another one of his books, "SuperTruck" they seemed pretty bummed that they weren't getting to do that lesson.

I couldn't leave them hanging like that. Since I didn't own all of his books I did a quick online search and found an awesome video of Stephen carving a linoleum plate for another of his books "Polar Bear Morning." I knew this was going to be perfect for my upper grades.

As I've mentioned before, one of my favorite things about his work is the use of geometric shapes. It makes it so easy for students to create complex images in a fun, modern style. This illustrator is quickly leaping to the top of my go-to list for fun lessons. If you aren't familiar with his work, I highly recommend going to amazon and clicking on his name and viewing the author updates for a fun animated video surprise. 



After viewing his video I decided to make this a printmaking lesson. Students could change the paper color and do some as "night" and some as "morning" images. If you want to teach the lesson and skip all the prep, I just uploaded a new resource. Check it out.

Super Truck

Kindergarten is starting to wrap up their SuperTruck collages and I couldn't wait to share. These were inspired by a visit from author/illustrator Steven Savage.

Original post here. If you have the chance, I highly recommend having him in to speak to your kids. He did a wonderful job explaining how artists use shapes. 

Have you used on of his books? I'd love to see what your students created.

Author Visit

Our school recently hosted author/illustrator Stephen Savage. He is the author of Polar Bear Night, Supertruck and more. As an art teacher, I was thrilled with his discussion about composition, drawing with shapes and how to tell a story without words.

Our students were inspired by his books and I decided to create a lesson for Kindergarten inspired by his Supertruck book. You can download this low budget, easy prep two-week lesson here.



Would love to hear about the author/illustrators you have had at your school.

Todd Parr Portraits

First grade recently completed a pop art portrait painting inspired by the whimsical illustrations of Todd Parr. I just love the positive messages in his books.  We started off with a reading of "Be Who You Are"

Students viewed the illustrations along with the pop art paintings of Andy Warhol and noted the similarities. On the first day we drew cartoon portraits with black marker on bright colored paper. 

For the second session students chose a color palette. Using 3 colors they painted the face, hair, shirt and background of each space using tempera cakes.

Books For Art Teachers

At least once a week, someone on the various art teacher social media groups posts a question about favorite books in the art room. A few years ago I made this list, which includes every book I own that could possibly be used to teach elementary art. Today I made that list a free download that is sorted into helpful categories such as biography vs elements and principles. Sometimes I take photos of new books and suggest possible lesson ideas. Since I already have many of the lessons in my shop I made a bundle of all the literature based lesson plans.

More recently I've been making the switch to iBooks (especially those with read alouds) to save my voice. It's also been so helpful as an art teacher who's had to service multiple schools. The books are always with me! Now that I'm in a very tiny room, it's just a great way to cut down on physical storage of books.

Do you have any book recommendations that aren't on my list? I'd love to hear about them!

Robots Unplugged

The amazing story unplugged by Steve Antony is not only a wonderful message to kids (get off your devices and play outside) it is also a great teaching tool. Those of us who grew up watching the Wizard of Oz will surely appreciate the black and white vs color illustrations. As an art teacher I love the way the illustrator used geometric vs organic shape to continue the theme.



To kick off the lesson, I taught Kindergarten and 1st grade the difference between geometric and organic shapes. Then while sharing the book, they had to hunt for those shapes. At the end what did we notice? Geometric shapes are more visible indoors, organic are more dominant outdoors.


For the project they drew a robot with a white crayon on black paper by stacking geometric shapes. They colored it in with metallic crayons. We used chalk pastels to complete the organic background shapes and textures.


So proud of how these turned out and how much vocabulary we packed into this quick 2 week lesson.

If you'd like to check out my lesson plan, it includes shape and landscape introductory worksheets as well as a Roll-A-Robot activity game (great for early finishers).