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.

The year without a kiln

Moving back into our remodeled school left me (temporarily) without a kiln. This has been forcing me to revisit and tweak old lessons, to remix and rethink the existing lessons.

 One of the benefits of teaching at two schools is that I can try something out and if it doesn't work, it doesn't make it to school number two. 

The first time I taught the bobblehead lesson it was really close to the end of the year so I used polymer clay. The next two times I went with regular clay. While I like that and the students LOVE that, when I sit back and compare the end results of each, the polymer clay projects are more original.



The students were more creative because I let them be. And I will own that one. With clay it was "dog or a cat. If you want to do something else, you need to know how to make it happen." Because we have 40 minutes (and let's be honest... that's really 30 minutes of work time).



But the polymer clay lesson can go a little longer. If they want to spend a class and a half on the head but 20 minutes on the body  - it's no big deal. You wanna make a football player, a dragon or a funky alien bot? You go for it, fifth-grader. I'm not trying to keep everything the right amount of damp. And that, ma friends, is really liberating.



So. Presenting polymer clay bobbleheads. Take Two!

This lesson was inspired by the clay version on Cassie Stephens blog. If you are interested in that, check our her blog. If you want to download my lesson plan, video and historical powerpoint that is offered here.