Celebrating Art

Last year I read a post on someone's blog (if it was you, thank you!) about Celebrating Art.  Celebrating Art lets you submit photos of student artwork (or students can submit their own from home) to be considered for publication in a really nice hardback book.  I submitted work for each school on their website (you have to create an account to keep track of all your information) and ended up with several students getting work accepted.  I actually had quite a few but lots did not turn in the permission form, and since we didn't get them until a few days before school got out, I didn't get the chance to remind them.  There are two deadlines a year, one in November, and one in April.  If you get enough students published, you get a free copy of the book for your classroom.  I went through and found all of my students but I haven't even had a chance to check out all the other awesome artwork yet!  I did make sure to mark pages with my students' work so my principals could find the right pages when I left the book for them to check out.

I thought I would just try the contest once to see how it went and overall, I'm very pleased with my experience!  If you have any questions, the company is very quick to respond.  I had a question about permission and they answered the same day.  *I wanted to make sure that you don't have to get permission to submit and they confirmed.  Parents only need to give permission for work to be published in the book.

Below are some photos of pages that featured my students' work with the links to posts about the project.

1st grade Bird Nests

2nd grade Tactile Paintings

Forgot to post about Kindergarten self-portraits...

...and forgot to photograph 2 more projects published in the book: one of my 3rd grade Architecture 2 Ways and 1st grade Circle Printing

4th grade Shape Paintings

6th grade Self Portraits (Their Future's So Bright...)

6th grade Aboriginal-Inspired Paintings

 Splashes of Color

5th grade Food Sculptures

5th grade True Color Self Portraits

5th Grade Clotheslines

4th Grade Piven-Inspired Self Portraits

Jr.Duck Stamp Drawings

 More 4th grade shape paintings and Aboriginal-Inspired animals

Jr. Duck Stamp Program

5th grade student, Honorable Mention

Ever since I took part in the Jr. Duck Stamp program in high school, I've been a big fan.  I know a lot of teachers don't do the program with their students because it takes so much time but  I had always planned to do it with my students and something the other elementary Art teachers in my district were already doing. (Check out last year's post to see a photo of wetlands in my area and photos of my high school duck stamp drawings.)

If you are not familiar with duck stamps, here's a brief summary, at least as brief as I'm capable of being (if you want a more in-depth look at duck stamps, check out the US Fish and Wildlife Service page.  Federal Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamps, or "Duck Stamps," are sold by the government to raise money for wetlands conservation.  98 cents out of every dollar generated from duck stamps goes to purchase or lease wetlands.  A lot of people think it's all about hunting because those 16+ who want to hunt waterfowl are required to purchase a duck stamp but they are also bought by stamp collectors and people  who want to use them as a pass to get into National Wildlife Refuges.  Wildlife artists compete each year to try to get their paintings chosen to be printed on the duck stamp.  Jr. Duck stamps have been around since 1989 and the goal of the program is teaching "conservation through the arts." The students create a realistic drawing of an approved duck or goose to show that they have learned about the species and their habitat.  Students can enter their artwork into a contest at the state level.  In Kansas, they choose 3 1st place, 2nd place, and 3rd place winners and I think 12 honorable mentions in each of the 4 age groups.  All the first place winners are put together and the Best of Show is chosen to represent the state at the national level contest.  The national winner is actually printed on a Jr. Duck Stamp and the student gets scholarship opportunities.  I assume that all the states have similar processes.

The Jr. Duck Stamp program is a great way to incorporate science and observational drawing and ties into the curriculum for most grades as you can talk about the animals, their habitat, and environment.  I always start off by assessing prior knowledge of wetlands and habitats.  I then show the students some of the duck stamps my dad has saved for me and explain what they are all about.  I have lots of photos I have taken of ducks and geese printed out for the students to reference and some calendar photos that one of the teachers gave me.  This year I had created a PPT of me making an example drawing with photos of each step since I was gone on maternity leave when my 4-6th grade students had to start the project.  I showed the PPT to my younger students as well since it is a lot quicker than me demonstrating in person.  I did draw a few things up on the board like legs and feet and beaks/bills to point out that they are not stick legs and not plain triangles for the beak.  I told the students when we practice observational drawing we can pretend to be scientists and draw all the important details.  Each student chose a photo to reference when drawing but I encouraged them to change the background or something to make it their own.  I allowed three classes for each grade level to work on this project.  The first class was mostly introduction, passing out paper, labeling information on the back, and filling out an entry form.  I encouraged each student to take home an entry form for the art contest just in case they decided to enter. Some of the classes had a little time to start drawing in the first day.  I had the students draw out all the important details in pencil before starting with color.  This is a good time to talk about composition.  The students have to use 9x12 inch paper (must be horizontal) but the design needs to be appropriate for printing on a smaller stamp.  I tell the students to draw big so we can see the details and to fill the space.  Even if their reference photo has a whole flock of geese, I ask them to focus on drawing one or two.  So far I have just given the students colored pencils to work with but I may let them use paint next year.  I always preferred to use colored pencils when I entered because I felt like I had more control over the media and could be more detailed.  On the last day, I talked about ripples, reflections, and shading.  If any students finished early, I had them write a conservation message which is an additional contest.  Most of the students enjoy this project but a few complain about it being "hard".  I always tell them that just because something is hard doesn't mean they can't do it and that we learn more from challenges than doing things that are easy all the time.  Next year I may give the students a choice of Jr. Duck Stamps or the State Fish Art Contest since the goals for the project are similar.

If I remember correctly, I sent in about 300 entries between my two schools this year.  I ended up having 7 students receive Honorable Mentions and all I can say is that the drawings that placed higher must have been AMAZING because I am so proud of my students!

5th grade student

5th grade student

6th grade student

6th grade student, Honorable Mention

4th grade student, Honorable Mention

4th grade student

1st grade student, Honorable Mention

1st grade student/future Art teacher, Honorable Mention

2nd grade student

3rd grade student, Honorable Mention

Eric Carle

I get email updates from Eric Carle. In the latest email, there was a link to his blog! The blog is really cool, it has artwork and writing, his latest post is about his childhood Christmas memories.

http://ericcarleblog.blogspot.com/

The blog reminded me of the Eric Carle unit I did during student teaching last spring. Each grade K-6 did a wax resist painted paper collage project inspired by Eric Carle.

Kindergarten students learned about complementary colors and made fruit pictures. (The Very Hungry Caterpillar)

1st grade students learned about the moon while making moon and stars pictures (Papa Please Get the Moon for Me)

2nd grade students learned about warm/cool colors and made caterpillars. (The Very Hungry Caterpillar)

3rd grade students cut hearts from their painted papers (3rd grade did wax resist and tempera with texture combs) which were displayed in the hall for Valentine's day.

4th grade students drew a letter out of a hat and chose a word to illustrate for that letter.

5th grade students made imaginary animals. To get the students thinking about combining parts from different animals, they were instructed to just draw the head of an animal. Next, the drawings were rotated in their group and each student added to it (exquisite corpse style.)

K-5th grade students were in charge of painting their own papers and 6th grade students were assigned a color to create for the classmates to use

6th grade students were to tell some sort of story with three parts/three illustrations. It could be a song lyric, joke, story, nursery rhyme, or process.

5th Grade Reflection Projects

On Thursday afternoons the 5th grade classes rotate to different Specials teachers during the grade level collaboration.  So it takes me 5 weeks to see all of the 5th grade classes for the "bonus" class.  We are just supposed to plan a 40-minute lesson that incorporates math/reading/writing and our content areas.  I really enjoy the extra Art time with the students.  The first collaboration project I did with the students this year was a really quick tessellation project that used translation.  We have just finished up an art project that used reflection.  Now I need to come up with something for next Thursday that uses rotation so that I'll have covered the 3 transformations they learn about in Math.

Here are some of the reflection projects!

 

Check out this post on Notan (or just search for it to see lots of cool pictures!)  I have seen this project tons of times but I never knew it was based on "notan", a Japanese design principal about positive and negative space.

5th grade Memory Artwork

When my whole family went swimming.

For this lesson, 5th grade students were asked to think about their personal history, brainstorm important events in their life (good or bad), and choose a significant event to represent in a mixed media artwork. I decided on this lesson because the students needed a chance to try out collage. I chose the memory/personal history theme because it would allow for a ton of possibilities but give students a task beyond cutting out picture of things they like and gluing them to paper.

 I gave the students a 1/2 sheet of paper and asked them to brainstorm 3 memories or events that were important to them. In one class, I kid you not, 1/2 of the students chose "I got a dog". Now, I recognize that this could be a very significant event in a kid's life. But I was frustrated when the rest all chose that theme after one student said it out loud. When it came to choosing one of the 3 memories to use in their artwork, I told the students it could be whatever was most important to them, or just whatever they were most excited about using in artwork.

 I was hoping to have more actual "collage" in these artworks, but due to time, most ended up being drawings with a few collage elements. I had a hard time with 5th grade schedules this spring. The students only have art for 40 minutes, every other week anyway, and when you throw in field trips, orchestra rehearsals, etc. it's not always possible to reschedule. Some students took the initiative to finish their work at home and I was pleased with their efforts!

When I got to let a butterfly go in Kindergarten.

My first day at my new school.

5th Grade Clotheslines

Last year my 5th grade students voted for this project as their favorite of the year!  I decided it was definitely a keeper.  This was a 2-class period project.

Short description: 5th grade students made mixed media pictures of clothes on a clothesline. First, the students learned how to paint a monochromatic (one color) sky and glued on a yarn clothesline about 1/3 of the way down from the top. In the next class, the students learned that clothing designers have careers in art. Then the students cut miniature pieces of clothing from real fabric and glued them to the background. Buttons and yarn were available for embellishment.

On the first day, we talked about careers in Art and how clothing designers think about line, shape, color, and the other elements of art when designing clothes.  We also talked about how your clothes can show your personality, style, interests, and even your career.  I pointed out that our principal usually wears a nice shirt and tie and I usually wear a paint-covered apron.  Police officers, doctors, athletes, servicemen and women and lots of other people where clothes that work for their jobs.  After the discussion, I explained the project: make a clothesline with clothes on it that show your personality and maybe what you want to be when you grow up.  

I showed the students how to paint a simple sky using tempera paints and how to glue yarn down for the clothesline.  We used a really dense cardboard/fiberboard kind of material for the background last year.  This year we used some thin cardboard pieces, about 8x10 inches, that somebody donated.  I gave each table blue and white tempera and showed the students how to mix a little bit of white in the sky and dab white paint to make clouds without over blending.  I used to have a mental block on clouds because I tried to make them look "perfect".  Now that I am more relaxed not only do I enjoy painting clouds more, they look better.  I suggested gluing the yarn for the clotheslines about 1/3 of the way down from the top.  (Yeah for fractions!)  If you were super organized, you could have every student glue the yarn the same distance from the top so it would form one giant clothesline in the hallway.  I had precut yarn in several colors that was a few inches longer than the boards were wide.  (We taped the extra on the back in the second class so that it wouldn't fray and didn't have to be cut the exact right size.)

The boys were obsessed with adding socks and boxers!

 In the second class, the students cut miniature clothes from fabric and glued them to their backgrounds.  The students could choose whether to glue the clothes flat or raised off the surface.

At the end of class, they cut thin strips of brown paper to look like clothespins.  The students tend to cut out really tiny clothes so I had to give several reminders about scale and how it affects the composition.

Some teachers and my wonderful mom donated fabric scraps and I had saved old shirts and jeans to use the fabric.  If you really want to impress your students, make a small cut in the fabric and rip it with your hands.  They said I was like the Hulk!  The boys especially liked when I cut and ripped my husbands old jeans.  I also had some ribbon and buttons that the students could add for embellishment.

5th Grade True Color Self Portraits

Have you ever taken a True Color personality quiz?  They are pretty interesting.  You can end up being categorized as a blue, yellow, orange, or green.  Here are my summaries of the colors, much shorter (if you believe I am capable of a short description!) than the long descriptions that were listed at the end of the quiz I gave.

Blues seek harmony in relationships and are sensitive, intuitive, and creative.
Yellows are all about responsibility- they have a strong sense of right and wrong and want everybody to do their part.
Oranges are all about energy (the students who can't sit still and the class clowns), they like action and attention.
Greens are independent, like logic and facts, are curious, and innovative.

I had the students take a True Color quiz on the first day to find out which color they would be using in their monochromatic self portraits.  I wasn't thinking about it at first but this does incorporate math when the students have to add up lots of numbers to get their results.  I had several students that thought they tied but when I double checked the math, I think I only had about 3 of 110-ish students that really did tie.  I told those students they could either pick the color that they thought seemed most like them or use both.

Just like in the 6th grade self portraits, we talked about facial proportion and shading, just with tints and shades of one color instead of all.  I did let students use a tiny bit of bordering colors on the color wheel to mix in, as long as the main color appeared to be their result.

This project went over very well.  Although I did have a 5th grade boy in tears and one on the verge out of frustration at one point (that was a rough day, apparently) the students all seemed to be really proud of their projects and I was happy with the results.