Finished Dinosaur Demo

Alright. It's absolutely frigid outside. The actual temperature here in Columbus, Ohio on Friday was -10. I couldn't feel my face during outdoor duty this morning. My view from my room is a massive pile of snow that has been plowed from the playground. It's Monday. We all need a little levity. For that, I present to you my finished example piece for my Art Club students. If a bright pink paper mache dinosaur head mounted to the wall doesn't make you laugh, I'm not sure what will. Enjoy. 

Art Club Update

I thought I'd tell you all a little more about Art Club. What's the first rule of Art Club? Tell EVERYONE about Art Club. 

I have a total of 20 4th and 5th grade students in Art Club. We meet every Thursday after school until 5:00 for 12 weeks. There was a small fee involved to pay for materials and the club t-shirt (that we screen printed ourselves). Students had to apply to get in and I based entry on the application as well as overall classroom behavior. I limited the group size to 20 because I wanted to work on bigger and more difficult projects. It's also nice not to have 30 kids in my classroom.

We're currently working on paper mache animal heads that will be mounted on wooden backing boards that will be able to hang on the wall. It's kind of a riff off of taxidermy. Anyway, here are a few in process examples. Enjoy.

There's nothing like a big pile of animal heads to give your art room that unique touch.

Giraffe

Saber Tooth Tiger

Of course I had to do an example
piece. This pink Brontosaurus will
wind up in my daughter's room.

2nd Grade Wild Things Printmaking

I wish I had more time in college. There were so many courses I wanted to take when I was in school, but there just wasn't enough time. I never took any printmaking classes. I really enjoy printmaking now and I made it a point last year to make sure I have a good printmaking lesson for each grade level. I wound up presenting about my printmaking curriculum at the AOE summer conference last year.

This is a project I've done for the past several years. My friend Drew Jones, another elementary art teacher in my district, wrote this lesson a while back. Since Drew is a cool dude, he shared it with me. 

This project uses the simple styrofoam printmaking material. After reading Where The Wild Things Are, each student does a ton of sketches in order to design their own original wild thing. The best one is pressed into the foam. Printing takes place over the course of two classes and the project is finished by mounting the prints on black paper and adding some words with construction paper crayons. It's a winner every year!

 

Click here to download the full lesson plan. 

1st Grade GERMS!!!

If you don't immediately see the irony in this post, then you don't know first graders. To top it off, I sit here writing this; my body full of Mucinex D (the big kid kind), nasal spray, and a bit of coffee for good measure. How ironic is this post? I don't even want to think about it.

On to the cool art. This project was super fun to work on and the results were almost 100% successful for all students. I've got a thing for incorporating science into my art lessons and I was intrigued by the look of different strains of bacteria and viruses. We discussed how some bacteria is good while other types of viruses and bacteria can be harmful to our bodies. Each student did several sketches and choose to create either a good or bad germ.

This is one of those projects that the students can just go nuts with. It's very open and allows a lot of choice. It also allows me to to talk to my first graders about proper germ defense. Trust me, they need it!

Download the full lesson plan here!