End of the Year Bulletin Board

My end of the year bulletin board was inspired by this pin. Can you tell what kind of attitudes we were facing last May? I saved the elements of this bulletin board because I have a feeling the reminder may be needed again someday.

4th Grade Choice Printmaking

I'm trying to finish up posting some projects leftover from last spring before I'm overrun with new projects! For the first year ever, each of my intermediate grades had a chance to print. When you only see students 18 times in the whole year, it can be tricky to fit in everything that you want to. The printmaking project was totally open for 4th grade, meaning that there was no suggested theme. I did talk to the students about their plans before they began to transfer the drawing onto the foam. 

 Some students made nonobjective designs while others focused on interests. I enjoy both.

Tomorrow night I'll be offering printmaking as a hands-on activity during my community's art walk. I'm excited to share printmaking with kids and families in the community since so many people have never had the chance to try it out.

Very Hungry Caterpillar Birthday Shirt

My youngest son turned one in June and because I think themes are fun, he had a Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday party. I wanted to make a special shirt for the occasion so I figured out a plan and set to work. A neon green tank top purchased for just a few dollars at Walmart made a cool base and I appliquéd a caterpillar and number 1. 

I didn't want to use a solid colored fabric for the body of the caterpillar since Eric Carle's collages are much more interesting than that. I thought that painting directly on the fabric might not give me the look I was after. Instead, I made applied acrylic paint to my 8x10 inch gelli plate making sure to leave visible brushstrokes. I accidentally purchased fusible interfacing instead of the fusible webbing I wanted for my appliqué project, but the interfacing added some stability to the fabric and made it super easy to print on.

 I think the Very Hungry Caterpillar shirt turned out really cute, despite the fuzzy edges from me buying the wrong product. I would like to get some textile paint or medium and explore gelli printing on fabric more in the future.

2014 State Fish Art Contest

1st place oil pastel drawing of a Channel Catfish in the Mighty Minnows age group

Last school year I continued the tradition of offering the students a choice between the Jr. Duck Stamp program and the State Fish Art Contest. Both programs focus on teaching conservation through art and have a focus on habitat and observational drawing. This year I was floored when my students swept the awards for the Mighty Minnows (K-3rd grade) and 4th-6th grade age groups. If you teach in Kansas, please tell your students about this contest. They need some competition. :)

2nd and 3rd place in the Mighty Minnows age group.

 

Starting in the 4th-6th grade age group, students are judged on an essay about their fish species in addition to their artwork. My 5th grade 1st place winner made her essay more interesting by making interesting comparisons, such as the size of a bluegill to her hands.

1st place in the 4th-6th grade age group.

 2nd and 3rd place winners in the 4th-6th grade age group.

World Elephant Day

Apparently today is World Elephant Day. Here's a post about elephants to celebrate!

A few years ago I let my 3rd graders paint like elephants and it was a lot of fun. Soon after I found out that my local zoo, the Topeka Zoo, occasionally paints with their elephants, Tembo and Sunda. Last month I was finally able to get my kids to the zoo at the right time to see the painting process.

The keepers helped one of the elephants hold the brush in her trunk while she moved it around on the canvas. There was an excited crowd watching and the elephants seemed to enjoy painting. Or at least they enjoyed the treats..... :)

The trip to the zoo reminded me that I wanted to let my 3 1/2 year old try painting like an elephant. The day before school started we finally did it! I taped a paintbrush to a paint stirrer, expecting him to hold the brush in his hand like my students did. That's not what my son had in mind! He stuck the stick in his mouth because he thought that was more elephant-like. He figured out how to manipulate the stick/brush to get the colors he wanted and to make shapes.

 At the end of the painting session, he decided to dip his nose in the paint, which I think is what he pictured all along when I asked if he wanted to paint like an elephant. I forgot to take a picture of the finished painting, but the nose smudges are definitely my favorite part.

It's fun to follow your kid's lead!

Eco Art

Last April the Art Walk in my hometown fell the same week as Earth Day. One of our Art Walk people decided to put out a call for Eco Art- Art made by recycling or repurposing. I love having an "assignment" and got a few ideas in my head right away.

The first two ideas were ducks! I have an interest in ducks as you may have noticed if you've been hanging around this old blog very long. I decided to make a torn magazine paper collage of a mallard based off a photo I took over spring break. It went pretty smoothly. I sketched the basic outline and proceeded to find colors to tear, arrange, and glue to the paper. I enjoyed trying out that style of collage. The mallard collage was donated for a fundraiser to help with future art walks. 

For my next duck, I focused on a drake wood duck coming out of the water. I started off using the same approach as the mallard- I sketched, I tore, I glued. I tried painting the background of my cardboard panel. It wasn't good. It was too flat. I had to make the hard decision and come up with a new plan. I like the look of corrugated cardboard and figured since the theme was "eco" art, there was no reason to try to hide the material. I used an exacto knife to cut around the duck and then started to peel the top layer of paper off. After I had removed the top layer, I painted over the corrugation to get my finished piece. The hardest part of this project was actually finding magazine papers to match the colors close enough. Wood ducks have a LOT of different colors and those colors aren't always easy to find.

The last project I created for the eco art challenge was a simple gouache painting on a small cereal box covered with gouache. I used Elmer's Art Paste for the papier mache process. I used to go with liquid starch but after reading about how the art paste goes a long way and will last quite a while I decided to give it a try. I still have a whole bunch in a sealed gallon ice cream carton waiting for my next project. After I had covered a few boxes with newspaper, I let them dry and then gave them a coat of white paint. On this box I decided to paint a picture inspired by a barn that I see on my drive to school. Of course I always end up making my colors brighter than they are in real life. I hadn't used gouache since college but I think I'll pull out those little tubes more often. I love how quickly it dries! This little painting sold after the art walk.

I hope you enjoyed this little peak at some of my artwork. Recycling has become a priority to me since becoming a parent and doing it through art is a fun solution!

Peace Poles

Have you heard about the Youth Art Peace Pole Project? I was introduced when I saw a post mentioning they needed a Kansas teacher to make a Peace Pole with their students in time for the 2014 International Day of Peace. I read an article in SchoolArts Magazine that explained the concept. Peace Poles are one of the most recognizable symbols of peace and can be found all over the world. The designs vary, but they always share the message "May Peace Prevail on Earth" in a different language on each side. My students learned about Peace Poles, proposed designs, and helped paint the collaborative project that I designed based on their proposals. This September our Peace Pole will represent Kansas and be displayed at the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site before returning to school where it will permanently reside. 

I chose 3rd graders to work on this project because they are the oldest grade I see weekly. This would have been better suited to an older grade level but the schedule just wouldn't allow it! To begin our lesson, we spent a bit of time talking about "Peace". What is it? What isn't it? It didn't take long for students to think of a big non-example in schools- bullying. I hoped that they would think of bullying. We talked about examples of bullying- physical, name-calling, excluding people, etc. I really wanted to make sure that we touched on bullying because I think it will help them better understand discrimination when they learn about the Brown v. Board case that ended legal segregation in public schools. Thankfully the lovely people at the Brown v. Board site and the students' new principal (they switch schools between 3rd and 4th grade) are excited about planning a field trip to the NHS this September when the Peace Pole will be on display. I only hope it can be scheduled on a day that I'm at the intermediate school so I can attend, too!

After our Peace Is/Peace Isn't discussion and intro to Peace Poles, the students set to work on their own designs. I gave the students narrow paper to help them think of the vertical peace pole design. They also had transparencies to look at with "May Peace Prevail on Earth" translated into something like 60 different languages. When the drawings were finished, I dug through them looking for designs that stood out with interesting visualizations of peace and for common themes. I sorted the strongest designs into 4 piles that eventually became the 4 sides of our Peace Pole.

Students were invited to add thoughts to the giant paper Peace Sign brainstorming chart sometime during the first class period. It had great visual impact in the hallway and also helped to remind the students and inform others of our preparatory activities.

I drew the designs out on our Peace Pole with a sharpie and the students painted with acrylic and a bit of tempera. I called one table up at a time to let students paint. 

This is where I had to give lots of gentle reminders about not rushing!

The above pictures are two of my favorite parts of our Peace Pole. The ocean section was totally designed by one of the 3rd graders. She made the octopus' legs spell out "Peace" and the sea horse's bubbles form a heart. The next photo shows one of the languages we chose. English and Spanish were the most obvious languages as they are the most common in our area. I had asked one of our ELL teachers about languages common in our school district and I was surprised to find out that American Sign Language was toward the top. Of course I realize that someone who uses ASL can likely read English, but we still thought it would be fun to represent sign language on our Peace Pole. Our interpreting para signed "Peace on Earth" for me to photograph and I went from there.

It's hard to get a good photo of the Peace Pole since it's 7 feet tall and skinny. I merged 8 photos together to show what it would look like flattened out. Hopefully you can enlarge and see some detail. I think that a Peace Pole would be a wonderful addition to any park or garden. I'm going to see if we can get one made at my intermediate school this year!

Collection of Collages

I'm still sorting through TONS of photos from last semester even though teachers started back to school today, yes ALREADY! Here's a sample of collages that made me smile for one reason or another. These range from 1st-6th grade, with some made by students with special needs that really impressed me.

Using magazines but at least they changed them into something new!

 This student used awesome scraps from The Planets project a few years ago to make a solar system collage. The stars were circles emptied out of the hole punch.

I think this watch is supposed to be from Ben 10 or something like that. After I photographed the watch, it went around the student's wrist.

This is an example of a young student thinking "it's outside, there has to be a sun"... even if the scene is under water. :) 

I love the use of magazine text as clouds. Most students don't even consider using the writing but it adds a cool texture.

This student painted papers for collage after I talked about Eric Carle but decided to keep her swatches as is instead of cutting them into new shapes. They were rearranged to frame a butterfly drawing.

So while I'm thinking and talking about collage, here's my plan for my collage centers this year. I will not start off having magazines available. If I have students who finish a project without enough time to start something new at the end of class, I may let them flip through magazines and cut only swatches of color or texture, and maybe just eyes, noses, etc. that could make cool faces. I'll probably put the animal magazines away so that later AFTER the students have shown they can construct new images with magazines, I could trust them to use animals without cutting out tons of kittens, for example, and just gluing them randomly on a piece of paper. Hopefully it will help. I know it made a big difference this year when I put the magazines away!