Mother's Day Round Up

Some projects make awesome gifts. Ok, if you're an art teacher you probably think EVERY project makes an awesome gift and I totally agree, but some are a little better received from the general public. 

In honor of Mother's Day, I'm sharing some of my favorites with links to the original post for more details on how to create these with your students (or kids).

3D flowers

Tiffany Inspired Stained Glass Lamps

Arcimboldo Shrinkable Charms

Heart shaped woven basket

What are your favorite Mother's Day projects?

Sculpture Round Up

In thinking about teaching sculpture from home, we obviously turn to non-traditional media. In other words...not clay. Here are some of my favorite sculpture lessons that can be done without a kiln.

Paper Sculptures - Calder inspired

Seashell Sculptures - Chihuly inspired

Bobbleheads - using polymer clay you can bake in your oven

Magazine Bowls 

Tinfoil Lady Liberty Repousse


Here's the set of 19 ideas if you're an art teacher and need to provide actual lesson plans.

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.

Chinese New Year

Last month I picked up this adorable resource from Expressive Monkey:

Every day before leaving I placed this activity on top of my desk as a potential sub lesson. It is full of directed drawing options for creating a Chinese New Year Rat or Mouse and I felt confident that anyone would be able to step in and deliver this lesson.

Chinese New Year falls on January 25th this year and I am SO HAPPY that I wasn't absent in December, because now I get to do this lesson with my classes. As I began thinking through the steps I would take to use this activity with my students, I recalled a favorite lesson from a few year's ago.

The model magic mouse paint lesson was already a remix of a very old lesson. Was it time to remix once again? With 2020 being the year of the rat, it appears that it was! The focus of the old lesson was color mixing, using primary colors of model magic. Since I hadn't planned to do this lesson, I wasn't fully stocked to offer red model magic to every student.

Last year, one of my schools was without a kiln and I quickly leaned on model magic as my go-to sculptural medium. Painting white model magic with liquid watercolors yields beautiful color saturation, and I have plenty of red watercolor. Knowing I was covered in the materials department I set to work on a sample.

Just painting the rat red during the 2nd session wouldn't take very much time. I decided that in this remix, students would need to add designs or symbols. Once again I turned to the pages from Expressive Monkey's drawing activity. They are so helpful and student-friendly that I trust my students will be able to decorate their rat with black permanent marker.

I have this lesson targeted for my 1st grade classes. Both the design and painting steps are easily accomplished in one forty-minute class.





















If you want to give it a go and skip the lesson prep, this is now available in the shop. I highly recommend using Expressive Monkey's drawing activity (available on her site or TpT). There are pages and pages of design ideas for every teacher or homeschooler's comfort level. Please tag me on instagram if you decide to try this one out. I love seeing the unique results other students produce.

Everything's Coming Up Roses

Once again we have a kiln. Since my current third grade did not get to do this lesson last year, I moved it up a grade. I'm so impressed with how these turned out again.

I made a video to demonstrate the technique and am offering it along with my lesson plan over here. Original post.

Beyond the basic bead with polymer clay

I've been revisiting some of my high school lessons to see if anything makes sense to bring down to the elementary level. Given their huge success rate with polymer clay on the bobbleheads, I may try some basic jewelry making again this year. A few years ago, some of my fourth grade classes created beads that were accents to their arcimboldo shrinky dink heads.

I'd love to have them try some advanced methods like caning.

The samples here were made by my high school students in a contemporary crafts class.

It's such a great way to introduce unity, variety, repetition and emphasis

I love to watch them go beyond the basic bead and explore a variety of shapes.

Here's a link to the high school lesson plan.

And here is where you can get my video tutorial and lesson plan that would be great for 4th-6th grade.

Seashell sculpture lesson

We are getting down to the wire. Today was the last full day of school and due to the abundance of field trips, assemblies and celebrations I still have students completing projects that I will need to deliver during our half day sessions. I just couldn't bear having them take these Chihuly-inspired seashell sculptures home half finished. Some classes did the tissue paper decoupage and others did watercolor painting. It was a nice way to discuss the idea of translucent and transparent media.

I set this project up similar to when we do mosaics. Every table gets a mixture of colors. 

As they run out, they may come up to the "tile buffet" and take a pinch back to their table.

And just like that the "Year Without A Kiln" is over. Definitely going to keep some of the fun lesson substitutions next year, but also very excited to get back to "real" clay.

Original post and lesson details here.

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.

Chihuly Seaform Video

I took a few years off of the Chihuly Seaform Lesson. This was something I created for a crayola grant one of my first years teaching elementary. I was looking for an end of year sculpture lesson for the school that doesn't have a working kiln and this lesson checks so many boxes.



Since I'll be teaching it to four classes next week it was worth spending a little time this weekend making a video demonstration. Original post here and here. Link to the lesson plan with video here.

Low Relief Pattern Bugs

Kindergarten is having a fabulous time making and painting their low relief caterpillars. 

The project was inspired by the book "Pattern Bugs" by Trudy Harris. One of my schools does not have a kiln this year, so we are trying lots of alternative sculpture materials and techniques. Original post here.

Want to try it in your classroom? Grab the plan here.

Greek Vase Remix

My first grade students used model magic to make Greek inspired vases.

We discuss some of the everyday uses for the vases.

They could choose the shape and handles that made sense to them.

For this project I include a reading of the book "The Trouble With Wishes." This took my students two forty minute sessions. We created the vase during the first session. The drew with sharpie on the dried vase and painted over it with red watercolor during the second session.

This is a 3D remix of a lesson that we previously did with markers on red construction paper. As a Leader In Me school, we focused on everyday heroes and leaders. It was definitely easier for them to draw on the paper, but working on a 3D form gave them a new perspective on pottery. 

The "everyday hero" on this vase is a doctor. 

If you'd like to try the sculpture lesson, check out the two week plan and resources. Download it here.

Tiffany Lamp Balance Challenge

The tiffany lamp project with 2nd grade is going very well. We started off with warm and cool color families and symmetrical design. Then they learned about the artist Louis Comfort Tiffany on week two and placed their black lines on top of the coffee filters. For the final session we went back to symmetry as they created bases for the lamps. I gave students an additional challenge to make them stand. We talked about how adding a pull chain to the lamp will make the design asymmetrical and it may not balance. They were determined to find ways to make them stand and I am so proud of their efforts.

Original post with more photos here.
Download the lesson plan here.