With winter break right around the corner, I'm thinking ahead (for once!) about the projects my students will be working on come January. We are experiencing a break down in behavior in my classes of older students (nothing major, just more chattiness and lack of focus than what I'm used to) so we'll be returning to our start-of-the-school year chat about rules and routines. But I do want my students to still feel the love! So I'm putting together some love-themed projects for all of my classes. This here Rizzi-inspired Love Birds for my third graders is my first installment.
Lots of focus on vocabulary in this lesson. This project will really help us explore creating a gradation, mixing tints and shades, discovering value and that's just on the first day! From there, we'll be working on creating a composition of our choice. I'm excited to see what my students create when we start these next month.
I have noticed my kids respond really well to Rizzi and his colorful works of art. A couple of my third grade classes are working on large-scale Rizzi-inspired buildings to create a city. I'll be certain to share them in an upcoming post.
Rizzi's landscapes often features a gradation of light to blue as he often will have day and night in his work. I thought this would be a great tie in and give the kids a chance to learn how to create a gradation.
Aren't his bird pieces so fun and happy?
My biggest concern with kids creating at this age is that they do not draw large enough. Such is the reason I provided a guided-drawing activity for them in the video. This will help them understand the scale at which they are to create the most impact.
Do you have some favorite Valentine's Day/Celebration of Love projects? I'd love to hear about them. And if you give this lesson a go, please let me know!
I'm doing something new this winter: an art show with Artome. If you aren't familiar, it's an organization that will frame student art work and completely transform you school into an art museum for parents to enjoy and purchase the framed works of art. I'm having each of my kindergarten through fourth graders create self-portraits as I kinda think that is something all parents would want to keep forever. If you follow me here, you've seen a little of our progress. I'll be creating a video'ed lesson for each of these self portrait units. And if you wanna stay up to date on those, you can subscribe here!
For third grade, I decided to introduce them to the artist Sandra Silberzweig and her fantastically colorful works of art. I love them so! The kids have loved the process of creating their abstract selfies so far.
Here's the video'ed lesson. Feel free to use it in your art teacherin'/makerin' setting.
So far, we've done the glue portion. Someone recently suggested that mixing India ink with white glue works better. I also had black puffy paint on hand for the kids who created very fine details. The difference between the puff and glue is that the puffy paint dries with a high gloss finish and is, of course, more puffy. It also is harder to use as it doesn't come out of the bottles as easily. We had to take "hand breaks" to give our wee hand muscles a rest.
By the way, the chalk I am using in the video is a brand called KOSS. I have found it on Amazon...and it truly is the best and brightest chalk I have found to use. It isn't cheap...but we've used it for years. It is the same chalk we used to create our ceiling tiles!
When I share this video with my students, it will be divided up into two parts: one day drawing and gluing, the next chalking. I'm excited to throw color theory into this lesson.
I plan to have several of these printed (and laminated!) for the kids to use at their seats as they explore analogous colors.
I'll be certain to keep y'all updated on their colorful progress...and stay tuned for more selfie lessons and videos to come!
Hey, kids! Today I'm sharing with you the follow up to a lesson I shared a coupla weeks ago: Tissue Paper Relief. Because of the delicate nature of these tissue paper reliefs, I knew the kids would need to back them on something. So, after a review of radial balance and design, as well as the elements of art, we created these colorful backgrounds, added our tissue creations to them and, viola! Third grade successfully created their dot designs for Dot Day!
Aren't they so spectacularly colorful? I swear they practically glow in the dark! In case you missed it, here is the video I created to introduce the kids to radial balance and design as well as the process of making the tissue reliefs:
BIG SHOUT OUT to AOE and Blick for sharing this lesson at the most recent online conference.
Surprisingly, this project was a quick one. We spent one day creating our tissue reliefs which needed a day (or more) to completely dry before popping out.
Once dry, I popped the designs out as they are pretty delicate and I didn't want the kids to accidentally tear them. The following art class, they were given 10" cardboard rounds. They traced their tissue relief in pencil and then created a radial design in black marker.
I reminded them to keep their designs big because they would be coloring with these bad boys:
So I'm a sucker for all things fluorescent. And so are the kids. I love these Gallery brand oil pastels which you can find in most of your art supply catalogs and Amazon.
Creating and coloring the design took them just under an hour. Enough time to attach our tissue reliefs to the center and have them ready for a display in the hall!
What I love about this project is that it reinforced our study of radial balance...
Gave us the chance to work with a variety of art supplies...
And create something really cool! Definitely a project I see myself teaching again in the future.
I'm not usually a repeat offender when it comes to art projects but for this one, I might have to make an exception.
I know several of you purchased the rubbing plates after hearing about it from AOE. I'd love to see where you take this project!
Sometimes I do believe I am my own worst enemy. Despite the fact that the Monochromatic Self-Portrait mural is not up (and by "not up", I mean I've yet to even mount it!), I decided to plan another collaborative piece for the kids. Crazy? Def. Nobody ever said teaching art was for the sane. Y'all might recall that my theme this year is kindness which I believe begins with a love for oneself. After all, you cannot be a loving person without loving Numero Uno, right? And that's what I really love about You Be You by Linda Kranz.
It's a beautifully colorful book (where the fish are actually painted on rocks!). Not only do I love the message and the illustrations but I love that I can (re)introduce my students to the elements of art with this fun lesson. Originally I was only going to do this project with my third grade. However, it was such a hit with them (and such a fast project), I decided to have second (and possibly firsties!) create a fish as well. The more fish the better our collaborative mural, says the crazy art teacher. Here is the instructional video I shared with my students:
Feel free to use it in your art room! My students had idea sheets on their tables that really let them explore a variety of possibilities.
I encouraged them to come up with their own ideas. They are used to having "idea sheets" on their tables for inspiration. And, since there were a lot of directions given, I also provided a review of the steps on the tables as well...
In the video, I used oil pastels because that was all I had on hand at home. However, my school oil pastels are down to stubs so I gave the kids construction paper crayons to use. My third graders whizzed thru their drawing and coloring so fast that I decided to bust out the puffy paint because...PUFFY PAINT RULES.
These took us our entire hour with a little time left over to check out everyone's fish. Next up: painting the large mural that the fish will be placed in! I'll definitely share a follow up post as we work on that in the next week.
By the way, if you are curious about the circles the kids painted on...they were painted by first grade! First grade is wrapping up a dreamcatcher project where they had to use a paper plate (details on THAT project in tomorrow's Art Teacherin' 101 titled WHAT NOT TO TEACH IN THE ART ROOM. Spoiler Alert: it's dream catchers). The first grade painted paper plates and then the center was cut out to make room for their 'catcher. Instead of recycling them, I decided to have the kids use them for this project!
Let's talk about how cute and original these fish are, can we? This boy LOVED that his fish looked just like him, complete with glasses and missing teeth.
And this new student really surprised me with his level of detail. I thought for sure he'd color over all of his lines. I was happy to see that he took the time to color each section. This project served as a great assessment tool.
This project was so fun that I'm thinking of having the kids do a follow-up project that involves them painting their own rock a la Linda Kranz.
By the way, I know I recently shared my I Can board on instagram and had some inquiries...here's a close up. I don't get too specific on my board because I ain't got time for that. I do find it's helpful both for me and the students to have this visual. By the way, the pencil and the notebook came courtesy of the Target Dollar Spot. I just used black acrylic to paint the grade level and puffy paint (again, because PUFFY PAINT RULES!) on the felt notebook paper.
And there you have it, You Be YOU! Stay tuned for our completed mural...and be sure to pop by tomorrow for Art Teacherin' 101.
Now that our Monochromatic Selfies are complete, the third grade was ready to spend their third day in the art room creating tissue paper reliefs! I've been looking for a different spin on Dot Day and when I saw Blick present this at the AOE Now summer conference, I knew I had to give it a go!
This project took us the hour to complete and made for so much prettiness (not to mention educatin'). I created the video to share with my students...but you are welcome to share it with yours!
Now, the relief might be finished but the project isn't complete yet! Our next step will be to adhere them to 10" cardboard rounds found on Amazon (I just have them sitting on 8" rounds for the photo) and continue our study of radial balance. I'll be sure to share that with you when they are complete. I was just too excited by these lovelies not to share right away! I mean...so fun, right?
For this project, you'll need some of the following:
* Texture plates I used the ones that was recommended by Blick at the AOE conference. I liked the circle design as it went perfectly with our Dot Day lesson. However, they have a ton of cool texture plate designs to chose from. I purchased thirty plus because that's how many third graders I have in a class...and the artwork will need to remain in the texture plate until completely dry.
* Tissue paper squares These small squares are PERFECT if the kids are wanting to create a design. I left that completely up to the students. Many chose to create a radial design on their plate while some did a random one. I was cool with both.
I was DREADING the idea of cutting tissue paper. I was so excited when I found these at the Dollar Tree! I purchased one for each table of four students and it was more than enough. It is a bleeding tissue, however...so some designs may get a little fuzzy around the edges. I was willing to take that as opposed to cutting thousands of squares.
* Large Tissue Paper This is where all of your scraps come in handy. The kids were instructed to use the smaller pieces for their design portion. When that was complete, they were to put AT LEAST three layers of large tissue on the back to strengthen the tissue design. * Watery Glue...with GLITTER! I just put white glue and water in a cup and sprinkled glitter into that. The kids also used soft brushes to apply the glue. Anything bristly tour the tissue more than normal.
The kids put a piece of tape on the back of the plate with their name and teacher code. Here's what they look like as they are drying...not so interesting as the cool design is underneath!
Not even gonna lie: the big draw back to this project was popping the creations out of the plate. Because the tissue is pretty fragile, I knew the kids might accidentally tear their work and become frustrated. It took me about 10 minutes to bust all of these bad boys out of the texture plates. I did crack a few of the plates while doing so...but they're fine to use again.
Once popped out, the kids will trim around their circle design, cutting off the excess.
I know they'll be thrilled to see them when they get them back!
Next up: add to a cardboard round and continue the radial design!
This was such a fun and unique project that the kids really enjoyed. I don't often repeat projects but I can see this one happening again in the ole art room sometime soon!
