Year of the Rat

First group of 1st grade rat sculptures are finished. The students had so much fun using the Chinese designs from Expressive Monkey's drawing activity.

Using red liquid watercolor made it easy for students to get the symbols and painting done in one forty-minute class period. Original post and details here.




This video was helpful for providing background info to my students.

Scherenschnitte

A few years ago we took a trip to Colonial Williamsburg and I had the opportunity to take a scherenschnitte workshop. While I had usually taught paper cutting through Mexican Papel Picado, it was hard to ignore the natural tie ins to Pennsylvania Dutch culture for this PA art teacher. You can read about the workshop in the original post here.

Fourth and fifth grade have had great success with this project and it's now available with the powerpoint I share with my own students.

We started with a powerpoint of some amazing contemporary artists like kiri ken for inspiration.
How do you teach paper cutting with your students?

First Video Lesson

So excited to share my first official lesson plan with video on TpT. In the past I have had to rely on hosting the video for my lessons on vimeo or other sites, so I'm very pleased to have everything neat and tidy in one place.

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Cultural Mash Up

 


Our district held a cultural night in every elementary school this year. Each homeroom teacher is assigned a country and the students create artifacts related to their country. There is a fashion show of clothing from around the world as well as food. Since I was not assigned a country, I displayed these dreamcatcher-mandalas. This is the second year we have done the project and the results were just as amazing and still a favorite among the 5th graders. They love the paint pouring ceremony at the end. The artist statement they submitted were thoughtful and inspiring.

The video demonstration, powerpoint, worksheets and five session lesson plan are available for immediate download.

Dala Horse

It's been a long wait for this project. I made a sample this summer inspired by the work of Heather Gallery and my third graders just finished these a few weeks ago. They had the option to create a traditional dala horse or a themed horse. Here are some samples of their creations.

More details on the original post.

Hispanic Heritage Month

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept 15-Oct 15) my first graders completed their Frida Kahlo inspired self portraits. We started with a reading of "Me, Frida" and a discussion about portraits. This was their first project of the year so we kept it simple with crayon. They were encouraged to use pattern in the background and a texture plate somewhere in the artwork.

This group did not have art in kindergarten, so I'm really impressed with their first efforts.

Dala Horse Lesson

So very excited to share a new lesson. I feel like I haven't been doing enough folk art with my students and that is something I hope to change this year. So I went in search of something that didn't seem to be overdone and found the delightful Dalecarlian horses of Sweden. I will be having my younger students paint them, but since they missed out on the fun I may have the older students create 3D sculptures. Here's my teacher sample painting and a link to the lesson plan if you'd like to try it but have no time to write your own plan.

In the lesson plan over at TpT, I included two fun pattern worksheets for the students where they have to match up and identify different types of patterns. So excited to see their bright creations filling the hallway this fall!

Dreams

Riding the wave of the classroom discussions of Martin Luther King's Dream Speech, this month I introduced two dream inspired projects. My first graders began a painting unit. For three weeks students created sheets of paper using marbling, wet on wet, gradations, squeegees, stippling, blotto, diffuser paper and more.

During the last class, I read the book "Dreams" by Ezra Jack Keats. The students were excited to search for "their" techniques in the book. I like this reversed format of ending with the book instead of starting. We focused on an illustration of the apartment building where everyone is dreaming. We used their paint explorations to fill each window where someone is dreaming.

The second lesson is a collaborative one I started with our music teacher. During their lesson last week, I read the book The Drum Dream Girl by Margarita Engle. We talked about discrimination and determination. The illustrations in this book are so vivid and layered. The students loved searching for patterns as I read. I find that if I give them a job while reading, whether it be a word to listen for, or a specific thing to spot, it increases their engagement. In this case, they were on the hunt for patterns, and were to give me a quiet "thumbs up" whenever they spotted one. The music teacher reinforced the use of repetition and patterns in music. We will be following this up next week with scratch art illustrations of a drum of their choice.

Borrowed Totems

My colleague shared a fantastic lesson that my 2nd graders just finished this week. I read mouse paint and the students put a dab of each primary color on one side of the paper and then another primary on the opposite side. We folded the paper to create the secondaries. The next week, we turned the blobs into totem poles.

koinobori

This week my students will be starting koinobori. This is a brand new lesson for me and was inspired by the book "Pattern Fish" that I recently ordered. It got me excited for doing a fish lesson other than gyotaku. Since it is spring time in the Northeast I decided on the Japanese Carp Kites.

As I was writing the lesson plan I was excited to see all the amazing connections with the new visual arts standards. Specifically, the presenting category. My previous thinking was mired down with thinking "elementary kids aren't going to mat and frame work" but on closer review there were some more realistic applications. For instance:

• 1st grade: Ask and answer questions such as where, when, why, and how artwork should be prepared for presentation or preservation. 
• 2nd grade: Distinguish between different materials
 or artistic techniques for preparing artwork for presentation.

And also these two:

• Compare and contrast how art exhibited
 in and outside of school in museums, galleries and other venues, including virtual spaces, contributes to the community.
• Identify times, places and reasons when students make art outside of school.

So. Definitely looking forward to this. Was originally thinking it would be a "filler" lesson for those classes that are way ahead, but now I'm hoping I can squeeze it in with all sections because there's so much good stuff happening here.

Oh, and how about some Haiku to wrap it up? You know, because the pattern 5-7-5 also mimics the half drop repeat pattern of fish scales. Yeah. I'm kind of loving this lesson right now.

Onion Domes

Such a great experience collaborating with a classroom teacher on these onion domes today. I started with a powerpoint to provide context and then moved into a demonstration during their normal class. Since this is a testing week, we arranged for the class to come down again later today as a break from all that left-brained activity. When they returned she shared a word web that she did with them after my lesson. I was amazed at how much they remembered.

When they returned in the afternoon, they were able to jump right into creating the domes.

The finished product. Not bad for 3rd grade.

Just say no to bad art requests

This month I had to just say no, politely, to a teacher request to do a "Rechenka's Egg Project" the day before spring break. As the class entered my room. I let the classroom teacher know that I generally am planning around several weeks in advance, we were in the middle of a perspective lesson and I just couldn't squeeze it in the same day. We've all been there, right?

Wax resist simply for the sake of it's oooh ahhh quality isn't something I had planned to use for the rest of the calendar year for that grade level. So I started thinking of what else we could do to connect to the story. Which led me to creating this adorable onion dome project using model magic. Because they DO need to get some architecture and culture in!




















Using about 1 oz of model magic per student, I have enough to accommodate this class and they will get an "Extra" art class during PSSA week as a break from all the testing.

And, I get rid of the container of wine corks in my closet that I keep holding onto. Lesson plan here.