The Olympics in Art

If you're like me, you've probably been spending the past few days watching the Olympics. My art teacher brain was so excited to see koinobori during a "Road to Tokyo" segment. I was wondering how many of my former students saw and recognized them and I hope they shared their knowledge with their families.

What a great year to make connections for your students. Some of the ways that I have used the olympics in my elementary art room include:

Token response critiques. Students give out gold, silver and bronze medals during a gallery walk. During my 1st year of teaching elementary art, I painted the backside of a small (dessert sized) plate with gold silver and bronze paint. On the first day of school I placed several artworks on the board and let students award the winners and explain their choices as an icebreaker. 

One of my favorite discussion topics is how to judge things that do not have a clear winner. For example, running and swimming are easy to judge. How do we judge gymnastics and skateboarding. Students usually mention the level of difficulty. This is a great connection to grading in art class.

They also designed a medal for themself that doubled as a nametag which GREATLY helped me the first few weeks of school. I kept the medals in my classroom and they got to wear them through September. Being at 3 elementary schools with 800+ students, this was a life saver. It was also a quick way to get into making on the first day. They traced a circle, cut it out and got to draw and add a pattern border. They drew something they thought they could "medal" in such as "baking brownies" or "playing video games". Also a great tool for social emotional learning.

Keith Haring bodies in motion. I have students study the pictographs used throughout the olympics past and present as inspiration for this project.

Pediment poses. This lesson is a great way to tie in the history of the olympics and of course, greek architecture.

If you want to go a little more 3D with your ancient Greece lesson, these model magic vases are so much fun and perfect for those without a kiln (or those teaching on a cart this year).

Alexander Calder Pipecleaner Circus People (Adapted for gymnasts of other athletic poses)

Will you use the Olympics to connect with Japanese or Greek culture this year? What's your favorite way to incorporate the Olympics in art class?

Clear the lists part 2

Last summer social media was on fire with kind souls everywhere helping teachers clear their back to school shopping lists. This year, like many of you, I really am not sure what or when I should be ordering.

As the current situation has our schools and communities more closely connected how do we leverage our relationships and how do we work together to provide for our students?

I keep circling back to the idea that no one is eating in restaurants right now. In our town, almost every restaurant offers a 4-pack of crayons to kids while they wait for food. If ONE of those restaurants stepped up and donated the crayons that are sitting unused, that frees up my budget to send home more paper, or markers, or maybe even model magic.

And that's how the ripple starts. What else in your community isn't being used right now. How could that item have a positive impact on education?


So, given the current situation, what is on your wish list this year? Links to my previous versions of an art teacher  Wish List and donation request. I have a downloadable file of 30 variations here and a brand new 100% editable version here.

I'm thinking this year I would need:

• Extra masks (for when kids inevitably have an accident with their own)
• Ziplock bags for each child to hold personal supplies
• Disinfecting wipes
• Crayons to send home for kids who don't have them
• Document camera for teaching from home
• Hot Spots for families without internet access

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.

Caterpillar Remix

Last year I did Eric Carle's very hungry caterpillar with kindergarten early in the year. They mixed the primary colors of model magic to build a caterpillar body. Original post here. After a very successful lesson last week with first grade painting coil pots with watercolor  I decided to remix the caterpillar lesson. So this year we are reading "Pattern Bugs" by Trudy Harris and creating patterns on the model magic bodies, then adding paint.

Can't wait to share these adorable creations. Lesson available 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.

Coil Pots Reimagined

We are currently waiting on our new kiln to arrive. Many students will be using model magic this year to fulfill our sculpture requirements. So happy to have model magic as a fun alternative for these 1st grade vessels.

The coil pots were created in one 40-minute session and painted in another 40 minute session. This is the first time I had students use watercolor paint on model magic. We normally mix the color in with marker. I am loving how vibrant they are.



I normally do clay coil pots with 4th grade, but using model magic allowed me to bring this down to first grade. No slipping or scoring to worry about.

Design Process

The AEO conference Art Ed Now brought lots of ideas and inspiration. There are always more things going on in an art teacher's brain than time allows. One of the ideas I've been allowing to tumble over and over in my mind is the stained glass lesson plan from Nasco. I want to put my own stamp on the idea and would love to go 3D with it. For the past few weeks I've played with the monoprint pad included in the swag box and making little models to troubleshoot and refine the idea into a suitable lesson.



I've narrowed it down to a vase, lamp or window. Here are some sneak peeks at the evolution of this idea that's still a little fuzzy and in need of some clear focus.

Monoprinting practice. Two colors on Nasco Monoprint Pad.

Stained glass "window" concept for grade K & 1

Stained glass "vase" using model magic concept for grade 2

Styrofoam cup into lampshade (colored tissue paper, mod podge and sharpie)

Styrofoam cup into lampshade (colored tissue paper with glue stick)

Would love to know how others go from inspiration source to lesson.

Clay Rose Sculptures

For the past six years I've been doing a model magic flower project with 2nd grade inspired by Georgia O'Keefe. This year I decided to switch it up to clay. I love how they turned out.

The original posts about this lesson done with model magic can be found here and here.

Free Choice Centers

The following are essential items for running a successful "Free Choice" day in my art room. While the systems and procedures for how students can earn a free choice day have varied over the past six years, these are my tried and true favorite things to include, many of which lend themselves to steam activities.

Most of the games above are used with 3rd-5th only due to complexity or amount of time to set up.
Castle logic, brain builder junior and the puzzle could be used for any of my classes.

These items are good K-5. The bag in the bottom right is playfoam and lemme tell ya. They love it. If you haven't tried it before, it's like a cross between model magic and rice krispie treats. You can pull it apart and put it back together. I've had this bag over a year and used it 3x per year with 30 classes per week. Still works.

Original post on games here and here. Older posts about earning Free Choice day here and here.

Turtles

After kindergarten and first grade completed the exploratory art centers for "Yertle the Turtle" they began a studio lesson. Kindergarten created a "Mack Stack" by illustrating a scene from the story, but placing Mack on top of the tower. They used sharpie to create a variety of shell patterns and then watercolor to paint the turtles.

First grade sculpted turtles from model magic, which took two sessions. In session one they learned how to change the color of model magic and create marbled effects. We looked at illustrations of turtle shells to closely observe the real colors.

Using a 1oz package per student, they created a pinch pot shell from one half of their material. The other half was used to make the head, tail, feet and belly. During their last session we looked at the radial designs on the shell and decided that repeating shapes, starting with the center was the best way to go. They drew on the dried model magic with sharpies.

I've updated the resource for this lesson plan to include the turtle sculptures. Available here.

kindergARTIN

This week kindergarten made VERY COLORFUL caterpillars using model magic. Giving them three primaries, they had to mix the secondary colors using model magic. Since we had read "The Dot" by Peter H Reynolds last week, I did lots of overlap talking about a dot becoming a circle and a circle becoming a sphere. I gave each student a small chunk of red, yellow and blue. They divided each color in half. They divide each half in half to make one large and two small spheres. The big spheres became the primary colors. The smaller spheres were combined to make secondaries. We used a rhyme to help:



















Roll it, roll it, roll it,
Make it nice and round
Put the sphere onto the paper
and squash the circle down.



I have five sections of kindergarten this year split between two schools and I learned a lot each time I presented. This video read aloud, gave me six minutes to portion out the red, yellow and blue model magic for each table (note: play it first to skip the commercials). At one school I used modeling clay since we didn't have model magic.

Since this is the first year both of these schools have ever offered art to kindergarten, it's kind of a big deal. I created a small bulletin board just for kindergarten work in a hallway near them and wouldn't you know....you can't spell kindergarten without art.

Want the full plan and three worksheets? Check it out.