One-Point Perpsective Cities

One-point perpsective. A challenge in its own to even say. To teach, is a whole other ball of knots. I have taught one-point perspective for 4 years now. Every year, I change and adapt to the technology I have to do it better. This year was probably the best yet. 

So to start, I actually do a study on just the vanishing point and understanding that those diagonal lines go to the point. So we just do shapes the first day. And I show them how to cut them off before they get to the point. Which leads us to day two, city time. I go step by step on how to draw a city using one-point perspective as a group. 

Third day is where the fun really begins and I feel a huge jump in quality happened. CHROMEBOOKS! Thats right, I flipped the second half like a pancake. I put all my demo videos on screen-cast and provided a link to the students. This way, they can pick up where they need help on their own and go at their own pace or re watch steps over and over. Now this didn't solve all the problems but it helped. I love screen-cast because it also allows you around that whole youtube thing. 

But students got to use it for their sketching and then chromebooks again if they wanted to add references to items. 

Lastly, because these are cities they worked hard on, I had them do some writing on them. This time, rather then me trying to teach them and get them to write in art. I asked their teacher to do writing with them. Just gave the basic info on what I was looking for in it. SOOO MUCH BETTER! And finished off with critique! 

At the end I even had these kids self-assess themselves with rubrics and give me notes for next year. One said to just go for the chromebook videos first. Might use that advice to see how it turns out. 

Yes, it has been done before but the reason I am deciding to post this project is due to my technology usage.

Recycled Kindness Monsters

"We are doing research into recycling, is there anything you would want to do with them for that in art class?"

Yep, that is how the recycled kindness monsters started. I wanted to start by having it be 3D to prepare my 2nd graders for next years as 3rd graders. 

So to start, had students bring in a box. Not a super big box but not super tiny. Then using small snack bags filled with kitty litter. (my go to for weighing anything down) Students had to figure out how many they might of needed to keep their box from falling over. Then we gessoed! I had them gesso so painting over those bright colors of some boxes would be easier. 

For painting, I let them go at it with whatever colors they wanted. This gave them an opportunity to experience getting their own paint and taking responsibility for my paint bottles themselves. Plus getting to mix paints however they wanted. 

Now at this point I introduced the book I used "My Friend the Monster" a little book about a family that moves into a house and the son finds a monster. The monster is kind and just wants to be friends. I used this to base the "what are we doing with these??" question.

Last the fun part. I have been saving supplies for them to build their monsters with for awhile. We used yarn, fabric, and paper scraps along with cardboard tubes and spools. My one design requirement for these monsters was the mouth. It had to be saying something kind that they would want to hear every day. A motivational saying to get them going. Some really got it and had great ideas. A few, not so much. 

Note: to get the tubes and spools to stick I did have to get out the hot glue gun. I manned it and gave students a limit of visits. 

I would like to do this project again but might put more parameters on the size of the box and requirement of the mouth. See if I can get the classroom teacher to come up with some good phrases. Otherwise I feel successful in this integration and sort of diving into maker space. 

Where the Wild Things Are

I do not know any art teacher who does not like "Where the Wild Things Are" Seriously. So I thought of a project to have my 1st experience it and have them focus on shapes, texture and a tiny bit of landscape developement/depth, with watercolor paints. 

To start we read the book and discussed the themes behind it. Next we observed the art style around it and what we noticed about the body designs of the wild things. Noticing the shapes and size and that there was texture. I had them example what would be good lines to use for textures and what they should include in their wild things. IE no robots? or pirates? Wild things are more like two animals put together. 

So we sketched and practiced with sketchbooks and white boards to help out. 

I really pushed for big! And to follow those shapes with texture. I had them draw them with pencil first then use crayons to do outline and just draw their texture. They asked why they couldn't color it in and I explained they will get to experiment with watercolor paints and they will discover something interesting about watercolor paints and crayon. And showed them pictures of the book pages again to understand they are on ground and the sky goes to that ground line. 

They had a ball with painting and I had them develop good habits of setting up their space and understanding how to do painting without smooshing the brush down. This was their first time with me using the big 16 count set. 

I would like to do this project again but really need to push more of the DO NOT color in idea. And have the animal mixed. I had a couple give their wild thing names so I might play with that more next time and have them maybe express an emotion and story about their wild thing after Max left them. 

Ringgold Community Collage

A big focus for my 2nd graders is community. They study it all year round and I used this to inspire me to do a community project. And who better to base that project on then Faith Ringgold?

So started by reading them Tar Beach. One of her books about where she lived and what was around her community. (can you feel the connections?) Next we looked at starting our background because we learned that Ringgold starts with doing her background first. 

So I took this as a way to talk about science and how the moon reflects light in the night sky. We had a great discussion about why this happens and what colors we see in the night sky. To recreate this appearance. We explored tint and tone in a sky painting of the full moon. The students had a lot of fun seeing the transition of colors with just a little black. 

Another part we did was we planned what to include in our community. They got out their sketchbooks and drew and discussed. But part of this day was also creating our own scratch art paper to use for the boarder later on. We used oil pastel on heavy paper then covered with black acrylic  paint. (I normally use tempera with my students and a few actually noticed this paint was different.)

They had a hoot with it when I told them "just cover that paper with oil pastel. Does not matter color or design, just COVER!"

So the fun part that I am changing for next year. The community part collage part. I don't know if I over reached or the students didn't quiet get it but my goal was to have them create 8 buildings with overlapping with scrap paper. Now, the mistake falls in the overlapping of the buildings and number. I would say about 50% of them got the overlapping while others had buildings flying in the sky. So learned to either go over more or less buildings and just do a front simple few. 

BUT the collage board part was fun. We used wall paper, fabric and then those pieces of scratch art paper to create the border. I think for next year I will just make smaller pieces of the wall paper and fabric because a few fell off. Also good glue is really important here. 

Overall I feel this was still a successful project that I learned from to improve on next year. Their classroom teacher loved it so that is good for me. 

Recycled Bottle Banks

Integration is such a part of my art teaching that the classroom teachers share what is going on in their room on a regular bases. So one day my 3rd grade teacher asked if I had any idea on how to do a project based on their inquiry into renewable energy and recycling. Some time and planning later and a few eye twitches later. I came up with these Recycled Bottle Banks. Which I feel, honestly is pretty genius. 

So it starts with having the students pick a bottle. Now because bottles are cylanders that like to roll on their side, I have students attached old marker caps to the bottom as feet to hold the bottle in place. Just simple masking tape will do.

After that we paper mache', first in newspaper or old phone book paper. Then a layer in white to really finish it off. 

When they were all dry I cut the hole for the money myself with a box cutter. 

Next we paint! Now painting it was interesting because I had the students use their renewable energy source as their inspiration to paint. I had them design and describe to me what they planned to do before painting and I demonstrated to them the importance of a base color before details. The rest is all them.

I loved this project and so did my students. I had them make sure to paint the whole thing and they learned about the round. If I were to do this again, which I totally would. I would have more guided questions for my students. I feel like I told them why they needed the feet and why a base color is good. I want them to answer rather then be told why. 

NAEA National Convention! 2016

So NAEA convention was about a month ago already. And boy howdy was it amazing. 

First off demo spots from most of the MAJOR vendors. Sadly due to time and space, I didn't get to try much.

I did go with one of my fellow art teacher friends. Met this handsome gentleman. Learned about a lot of products. 

The convention was held in Chicago this year(hence why I was able to go) and was right a long the lake!

I attend some fantastic sections on a wide range of topics. Such as Literacy inclusion and STEAM. 

Like ugly dolls (we won a ducky)

And Ipads and animation!

But best part, was ofcourse. THE SWAG! 

I learned a lot from this trip and look forward to taking it to my classroom. I mainly focused on STEAM and integration sections because that is a personal passion of mine. 

New posters!

Being the art room, there are always posters around. I counted up one time how many I have made and it was well over 10. Two of these ones I created to help with some goals in my room. 

This one is an interesting one. I created it due to my school being an inquiry focused like enviroment for the students. A lot of the classrooms have these wonder spots and opportunities to research what they wonder about. So I created this. As you can see it has my k-5th and I created little pockets using extra lamination film. This picture is just from the first week. My 2nd and 1st really took to it. Which makes sense due to them being more familiar with the inquiry process. 

These two are pretty straight forward on what they do and why they were made. 

This one has to do with my PPG (professional planning goal) I decided to focus on rubrics and having my students understand more of the grading process in art. So I debated and research for awhile on a visual way to show the grading scale. Finally, I decided on this. It has been up for about a month now. I have not introduced it. Just had it up one day and students are referencing it. And they are beginning to understand what a 4 really means.