Imagination

Instead of starting the year focusing on line and shape, we took a different approach and focused on creativity and developing ideas at my primary school. I asked the students to think about where artists get ideas and they had lots of answers, including imagination. The students drew something from their imagination and most explored wax-resist painting to communicate their ideas. Due to scheduling, some stayed drawings.

 I wanted a 16 color set of Prang watercolors and accidentally ordered washable- yuck! The colors are really weird, especially brown and black which come out very muddled and are hard to even identify correctly. Washable watercolors do not even come close to the regular watercolors.

What do YOU want to learn?

 I haven't posted in a long time due to normal back to school craziness and family stuff from which I will spare you the details. Anyway... this is how my intermediate kids started their school year. After letting them choose their seats and going over expectations, I explained that this year they would have more chances to design their own projects as we transition to "Choice" in the Art room. I asked each student to think of at least one thing they would like to learn or try or do or make this year in Art class and write it on a post-it. I had one color for each grade so I can look for trends of interests and use that to design my mini lessons and resources that I'm working on developing for my centers. The only rule was that the students were not allowed to write "nothing"!

 I wasn't surprised by some of the responses, like 3D art and clay. Unfortunately we can only get enough clay to do one project per student per year, but I've been collecting other materials for sculpture. Some of the specific ideas were interesting to read. I may utilize the color coded post-its for other surveys and responses this year.

What Would You Do...

...with this idea?
Idea: Printing heart shaped leaves and then __________.

Whenever I do a project with students using real leaves, (Yes, students, REAL leaves) the kids get so excited about redbud leaves since they are heart shaped. I wanted to do a quick, easy project with Kindergarten that involved printing the heart shaped leaves.

Because leaves are cool, printing is fun, and kids love hearts.

The pictures here are just little 5 minute experiments. I set up a different station at each table one day in October and sat at one of the tables to help students print their leaves. I gave them a quick demo then let them print their leaves and add lines and shapes with crayons. Oh, I waited too long and the redbud leaves were shot but then I noticed I could substitute morning glory leaves which are also heart shaped. The yellow paper is just because I happened to have extra yellow construction paper cut down. I think just using different colors would make this cooler. Maybe a Jim Dine meets Andy Goldsworthy idea? Or Andy Warhol for that matter...

Source: artnet.com via Katie on Pinterest

I thought I would try posing the question/problem to our little Art Teacher blogging community to see if anybody has a brilliant idea! I don't necessarily want this to be a "Fall" project, just something inspired by the shape... If you have a cool idea, please share! I want to collect lots and lots of ideas to add to the others I've come up with. I can try them out when the leaves are back and post the results.

Bulletin Board Ideas

My crayon bulletin board is featured over at Bulletin Board Ideas!  They also cleared up the authorship of the poem (Written by Shane DeRolf and later published in the children’s story The Crayon Box That Talked.)  I saw some other cool ideas for bulletin boards on their website.  I also saw one I recognized from Mrs.Picasso's Art Room- Check it out!