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Stop Motion: The only project in which a 7 foot cardboard shark eats a 5th grader.

8-Bit Portraits

More stop motion hilarity.

Collagraph quotes. Awesome. 

 I'll be that first picture got your attention. What is it? Oh, just a 7' cardboard shark (complete with a hinged jaw) eating one of my 5th grade boys. This is reason I love totally opening up my stop motion project. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm in the middle of a bunch of really fun projects that aren't finished yet. I'm too excited about them, so I'm posting a few preview pictures. 

5th grade has been working on stop motion forever. (The flying cat is also from the stop motion project.) Most classes are nearly finished filming, so all there is left is to edit in iMovie and add voices. I'm excited to see how the animation turns out this year. 

4th grade is nearly finished with a new lesson I wrote. Growing up in the 80's I was totally into some of the early video games. I based a portrait/character project on the video game graphics of that era. Each student is making an 8-bit version of themselves. Very fun.

3rd grade has recently started a collagraph printmaking project that I adapted from something I saw on Pinterest. They are choosing a quote that is personally meaningful and working with foam and chipboard to create the print. This is the first time I've done the lesson and I'm thrilled with the work so far. More pictures to come!

Ancient Maps by 3rd Grade

I'm trying really hard to incorporate many new projects into my curriculum this school year. I usually add in a few new lessons, but this year I've come up with quite a few brand new project ideas. This is one of those lessons. 

I'm working on my Master's plus 30 hours, so I've been taking graduate courses. My professional development plan is pretty wide open. Other art teachers reading this know exactly why. We don't just teach art. We teach everything; it just happens to look nice. Over the summer I took a course about maps. I had originally planned to create a pirate map lesson, but I was completely inspired by the artistry of old maps in general. The lesson focus turned into old maps in general, but added in many geography terms such as landforms that my third graders will learn more about next year in their academic classroom. As a bonus, I got to use the word "cartographer" over and over. Words are cool.

Essentially, I asked my students to create a map of an imaginary place. It could be based on a fairy tale or it could have been entirely made up. My students went nuts. I saw maps of fictional lands, video game worlds, cartoon worlds, fairy tale locations and many, many more. The drawing was first done in pencil, then inked with a thin Sharpie. Watercolor washes in limited colors were then added. When the painting was finished, I allowed the students to further age their maps by crumpling them and even burning the edges. Of course I wasn't using open fire in my classroom. The "fire" was simply wet on wet watercolors on torn edges of the maps. 

Click here to see my lesson plan!
Here is the handout that I put together for this lesson. 

Wild Things Printmaking by 2nd Grade

Welcome back to a chilly Ohio art room. Classes got off to a slow start after winter break due to the dreaded "Polar Vortex." We had wind chills here near 40 degrees below zero, so school was cancelled the first two days back from break. 

This project is just too much fun. My friend and colleague, Drew Jones came up with this lesson several years back and shared it with me. I've been using it since. I feel like this is a pretty strong printmaking project and it's inspired me over the last couple of years to come up with equally strong printmaking lessons for all of my other grade levels. Printmaking is something I enjoy, so it's been fun brainstorming and pinning ideas that I'll use later in the year. 

This particular project is inspired by the Maurice Sendak classic, "Where the Wild Things Are." It really allows my students to get really creative in designing their own wild thing. From a technical standpoint, this project is a pretty big jump from first grade where the printmaking was essentially just stamping. My students love the project as well as the process. 

Check out the lesson plan here!

1st Grade Space Adventures

This project has been finished for a while, but I'm just now getting around to posting it. It's a project that I've been doing for several years and there are other examples of it on my blog. I do this one a month or two into the year because it is a great way to have students practice multiple skills. This involves design, painting, coloring, cutting, and gluing. A big part of my first several projects in first grade is simply getting the students used to tools, materials, and procedures that they'll be using in the art room. 

My favorite part of this project is the spaceships that the students make. They come up with some really unique ideas. I usually post the lesson plan, but this is so simple that I'll just list the steps here. 

1. Check out cool pictures of spaceships and watch an awesome space shuttle launch. 
2. Each student uses construction paper to create a space ship.
3. On 12x18 paper, students draw at least three planets and color them using crayons or colored pencils. 
4. The "space" part is painted with black tempera. 
5. Stars are painted on using the handle end of a paintbrush.
6. The spaceship is glued on to finish. 

5th Grade Keith Haring Style Posters

I like to collaborate with other teachers in the building in order to create lessons that encompass knowledge from multiple sources. This happens to be one of those projects, but in a somewhat strange way. The phys-ed teacher walked into my room at the beginning of the year and just gave me a look. When I asked what was up, she explained that one of her new requirements this year was for her 5th grade students to make posters about being physically active. What? I understood her look at this point. Apparently this makes total sense to Ohio lawmakers who know oh so much about building appropriate curriculum. 

Anyway, I told her that I'd be happy to help out. In the past, I've used a lesson about Keith Haring as a way for students to create a poster about social issues. I ask them to build their image in a way that does not require any words for the viewer to understand the message in the artwork. I simply adapted that lesson for physical activity. 

I think the results came out pretty nice. My students really connected with Haring's bright, simple figures. Check out my regular social issue Keith Haring lesson here!

4th Grade CD Snowflake Mosaics

4th grade has again totally rocked out these recycled CD snowflakes. This is one of those "sure thing" projects that 90% of kids totally knock out of the park. It looks spectacular on display and uses up a nice stack of ancient software CDs that I have sitting in my classroom. 

This project has even been featured by another blogger as a "Top Winter Art Project." A commenter said on that blog that she wouldn't ever have 4th graders do this project because it is FAR TOO DANGEROUS. Well, danger is my middle name. In a little place I call reality, this isn't at all a dangerous project. I have over 100 4th graders and not one of them even were cut by the CDs. It is all about teaching students how to respect the materials and use them correctly. It's just plastic after all. 

My students really enjoy this project. If you think yours will, too, feel free to use my lesson plan!

4th Grade Paul Klee Analogous Abstracts

This is a new lesson that I wrote this year. My kids absolutely love to use the mixing trays, so I thought coming up with a lesson in which they would need to rely on them would be quite a bit of fun. 

This lesson came right after the totem pole project. That project required quite a bit of mental problem solving in addition to small detail artwork. I wanted to give my students a bit of a change and this painting project worked quite well for that. 

We studied the abstract geometric work of painter Paul Klee as well as a little color theory. Each student then designed a composition inspired by Klee. The work was then painted with analogous colors. Students chose four colors that are in a row on the color wheel. Each student also had to include at least one tint and one shade in his or her work. I was pretty pleased with the variety of work my students produced and the overall quality of the painting. What really helped was the new size 2 bright brushes I purchased this year for detail work.  

3rd Grade Charley Harper Cardinals

This winter post comes at a very appropriate time. We had our first snow day of the year this past Friday because of the storm that came through. Apparently it's supposed to be a pretty snowy winter in Ohio. 

I stay away from holiday based projects. Holiday crafts or little gifts aren't my style as an art teacher. I've done a variation of this project for a couple of years and it has been very successful. This year, I had my students base their cardinals off of the work of Ohio artist Charley Harper. I've always been a fan of Harper's graphic style. 

In order to achieve a more graphic look, my students used construction paper to construct their cardinals. They used relatively geometric shapes to give the birds a graphic style. 

The background was a simple dry-brush technique with black tempera on white paper to make some birch trees. All parts were then assembled on turquoise construction paper. The results have been a big hit!

2nd Grade Egyptian Cats and Dogs

It is that time of year again. 2nd grade Egyptian project time. This is a pretty universally successful project and my students really enjoy it. It combines drawing, painting (with GOLD paint), and oil pastels. 

Kids are fascinated with ancient Egypt and really enjoy getting to know the culture better. I have a great video that I show at the beginning of the project. It has all kinds of cool facts about ancient Egypt. The best part for me is watching the faces of my students when they talk about taking the brain out of people in order to make a mummy! 

I always ask my students to limit the color on their animals to colors that the animals could actually be in real life. One girl came up to me and asked if she could color her cat red. I asked whether cats are red in real life. She looked at me with a very serious look and said, "You can dye a cat red." Well played, kid. Well played. 

Check out my lesson plan here!