Having too much fun during conferences...

So....last night was the 2nd night of parent teacher conferences. At my school, parents schedule time to speak to classroom teachers, but I usually don't have too many that stop by the art room. I usually will work on getting caught up on grading work and do other little things that I get behind on during the course of the year. Yesterday I decided to do something a little more fun. You're seeing the results of my not working on grades! Carving like this is done almost entirely with loop tools that are traditionally used for clay. It was a great way to spend my extra hours at school!

5th Grade Keith Haring Social Cause Posters

This is another project that I enjoy beginning the year with. In 5th grade, I design projects to push the boundaries of what students have done in art before. My lessons for 5th grade are increasingly complex, either technically or intellectually. This particular project is inspired by the work of Keith Haring.


Instead of starting out with a Keynote presentation, I start this one old school. I break out a class set of Scholastic Art magazines from 1998. We start the project by reading a couple of short articles about Haring's life and artwork. After talking about Haring's style, I focus the class on major themes in Haring's work. We talk about major social causes that Haring addresses with his work. Each student chooses an important social cause to make artwork about using Haring's style. It takes a whole different thought process than most students are used to using. I have them focus on boiling down all of their ideas into just a few key images that will get their point across without the use of any text. It is a challenge, but most students end up with very powerful work. 


Download this lesson plan!!!

4th Grade Totem Poles

4th graders just finished a lesson about totem poles. Students learned about the significance of totem poles and that they were (and still are) made by native tribes who lived in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. 


The big word for this project was stylize. We learned that some artists stylize their work by changing shapes, colors, etc. in order to give their work their own personal touch. Each student created one stylized animal in the style of a real totem pole. (There are some great resources on totem pole parts online here. Unfortunately, I didn't find this until we were almost done with the project!) In the past, I had kids paint the finished product, but I decided to try collage this year after seeing an example from another blog last year. I really like how clean the collage is. More importantly, the students were more successful using collage.


My lesson plan can be found here. 
My keynote for this lesson is here. 
A PDF version of my keynote can be downloaded here.
Feel free to use or modify for your own room!

3rd Grade Aboriginal Animals

For some reason, I really enjoy beginning the year with this project for 3rd grade. It is a nice combination of drawing, pastel, collage, and painting so it gets the students back into the swing of things. For this project, we study the art of the Aboriginal people of Australia. Each student chooses an Australian animal and begins by doing an "x-ray" drawing of the animal on construction paper. These drawings are colored using oil pastels. Next, backgrounds are designed using a different color of construction paper. This really makes the animals pop. Usually, the simpler the design, the better the background comes out. Finally, students used q-tips and a limited range of colors to paint the background. 


The lesson plan can be found here.
My keynote is here.
Please feel free to use these in your classroom!

I like to start the year with at least a few projects that don't have a whole lot of guidelines. For second grade, I have begun with an expanded images project I found a while back. Essentially, each student finds a unique, funny, or interesting picture in a magazine. That picture is cut out around the image with no background showing. The challenge for the students is to come up with a background. I like to make it really fun by suggesting absolutely crazy things that could be going on. The kids get a really big kick out of it. It is finished with watercolors so it allows me to review painting procedures with my second graders. Look for the example where fruits and veggies are fighting over junk food!

The lesson plan is from Blick and can be found here!

Aaaaaah....the first project of first grade. For the past few years, I have done these texture caterpillars. I really like this project because it is a fun, simple, one day project that helps me get a feel for my six new first grade groups. I like to start off first grade gradually and help the kids learn how I like to run things in the art room. Yes, it is OK to raise your hand if you REALLY need to use the restroom. No, you don't need to sharpen your pencil seven times a class. This is one of those projects that every student is successful with!

Pinterest!

I really enjoy checking out a lot of the other art teacher blogs that are out there. There are a ton of really talented and dedicated teachers who post some amazing projects. I'll see a project I really like and I'll drag the link into a folder I keep on my computer labeled "Project Ideas." Unfortunately, I get so busy sometimes that I don't go back to check that folder often enough. Another art teacher in my district told me about Pinterest earlier this fall. My wife, a graphic designer, had been using Pinterest for several months, so I was familiar with how it worked. What I didn't realize is how many cool art projects are on there!

If you aren't familiar with how Pinterest works, here is a quick rundown of the site. Anyone can "pin" images on the internet. If I find a really cool project on somebody's blog, I can pin it on a board in Pinterest. The image is saved in a visual file essentially. It is super easy to scroll through and find particular images which are also linked back to the original web page they were found on. People can also "re-pin" images already on Pinterest. There are quite a few art teachers already pinning, so I am able to search for art lessons and re-pin them to my elementary art board. I highly recommend checking out the site. 

The room is ready!

The time has come. School starts bright and early tomorrow morning. I think pretty much everything is in place for another school year. I always enjoy seeing pictures of other teacher's rooms when I look at their blogs, so I'm going to put up a few pictures from my room. If nothing else, I can look back fondly in a few weeks and reminisce about how clean and shiny everything is. 


I made a few changes to my room this year. I dedicated my main bulletin board wall to information about what each grade level is studying. In the past, I have always put up prints and changed out a few as the year went along. I purchased a bunch of vocabulary cards at the end of the year last year that I think will work really well on new bulletin board. 


Another change this year has to do with this blog. I'm going to try my best to attach lesson plan files to each new post. Hopefully this is helpful to people who read the blog. If there are any other requests for things you'd like to see on here, comment and let me know! Happy 2011-2012 everyone!

Newest Bottle Cap Art Installed!

When we do bottle cap art at Thomas, we go big. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may recall that my 4th Grade students created a new bottle cap mural last year specifically for the library. Here is a link to the original post. The mural was installed over the summer and it looks great! I thought I would post a few pictures of the finished piece.

5th Grade Tiki Mugs

I think this will be the last official post of the school year!  Today is the last day of the year!  I feel like I've done a pretty good job of posting examples of almost every single project that my students have worked on this year.  This last project was fun, if not a little rushed.  My 5th grade students created mugs in a Tiki style. Some kids decided to add handles, but many just decided to carve their tiki faces into the clay.  This was a fun project and my 5th graders absolutely love the fact that they can actually use their mugs to drink out of.  


I hope everyone has a great summer.  I'm planning a few upgrades to the blog over the summer that I think will be pretty successful.  I'm going to try to actually post my lesson plans for each project along with images.  Hopefully that is helpful to those of you out there who get ideas from this blog.  

What a cool handle!