What are your favorite projects?

Everyone has favorite projects. Sometimes they are tried and true lessons that students love and look forward to working on each year. Others are fresh and new; maybe you have only taught them once or twice. I'm devoting this post to my favorite projects. I'm hoping that some of you will tell me about yours as well. 

My idea is for people who read this blog to post a link to their favorite lessons in the comment section for this post. The link could go to another blog, Pinterest post, or other outside site. I will then put the info, pictures, and maybe even lesson plans into this original blog post and fill it up with all kinds of awesome. Let's see how this goes. 

I'll start with a few of my own favorite projects. This first one is something that I did for the first time last year with my 5th graders. PLUSH MONSTERS!!

This project is one that I have been doing since student teaching. Clay Castles are incredibly popular at my school. I have students from first grade up asking when they get to make them. Of course kids always love to work with clay, so having an exciting lesson built around it is just a bonus. If I would ever stop doing this project, the villagers would probably revolt!

Finally, this is a project that I have adapted a little from a colleague in my district. It combines my love of science with sweet art skills to end up with a super cool project. It also ties in closely with third grade science curriculum. Your principal will love this lesson as well. It is all about using simple machines to create a Rube Goldberg style machine inside the head to complete a task that ordinarily happens in the head. Simple Machine Brains are great fun.

 Now it is time to comment with links to your favorite lessons. I can't wait to see all of the interesting and innovative projects that all of you are working on. 

Rina over at K-6 Art wins the prize for the first favorite lesson comment! Virtual high five! Her favorite project post is Oil Pastel and Baby Oil 'Paintings.' She is using a super cool technique using baby oil to allow the pastels to blend more like paint. Check out her blog for more information!

Amber from Schooling at Home Happenings uses blogs to find quality art projects for her students. She likes this project that is based on the work of Henri Rousseau. Amber really likes that the project reinforces information about climate zones, weather, and animals. The cool thing about this blog is that she has a wide range of ages working on the same project. It is really interesting to see how the project is adapted to different age groups. 

2nd Grade Printmaking - Wild Things!

This project is a great one, but I can't take credit for it. Mr. Drew Jones, a colleague of mine, came up with this one a few years ago. Back in the days before we had kids to pick up right after school, a few of the younger art teachers in my district would get together once a month after school to share lesson plans and talk about what we were working on. I highly recommend doing this if you have the chance. It was like real-life Pinterest.

As you might imagine, this project is based on the fantastic book by Maurice Sendak. Where the Wild Things Are is one of those books that still totally holds up with students today. Each student comes up with several original sketches of their own versions of a "Wild Thing" before eventually transferring one of them to printing foam.

Kids love the process of printmaking. I really like the printing part of this project because it allows my students to be up and active around my room. I set up six stations with different ink colors. I have my students get two good prints the first day, then two additional on the second day of the project. That allows for plenty of time to have helpers clean up all of the printmaking supplies. The last step of the project is to cut out the prints, glue them to a piece of black construction paper, and write out the words "Wild Things" with construction paper crayons. If you haven't used construction paper crayons, they are pretty awesome. The are super bright on even dark paper and, get this, are ERASABLE! 

Check out the lesson plan here!

3rd Grade Self Portraits in Time

This is another project that I had my sub run part of while I was out on paternity leave. It is pretty straightforward and my students really seemed to enjoy it. 

We started out by talking about what a self portrait is and comparing several famous examples. After doing a demo on the chalk board (yeah, they do still exist), I had my 3rd graders start working on drawing themselves. I have these cool double-sided mirrors that my students used in order to draw directly from life. After a day of practice, they drew their final portrait. They were allowed to draw themselves in any time period, including the present. The portraits were then painted with tempera paint. I think I ended up with pretty good results overall. 

Here is a link to the handout I drew up for my students to work from. Feel free to use it in your classroom if you'd like!

4th Grade Comic Strips

Detail from the comic above. This guy
has such a cool, dry sense of humor. 

Let me start by saying that this project took forever. Since I took a couple weeks of paternity leave a while back, I thought that comics would be a good project for my students to work on while the sub was here. I had visions of being able to finish it in a week or two after I got back. Those visions were apparently more like hallucinations!

My students were so into this project that some wanted to spend months on it! I ended up calling it last week. The projects that are still unfinished will go into student folders to be worked on whenever they have free time. I had so many kids that really got into the writing and drawing for this project that they weren't even able to have time to add color even though we spent six 45 minute classes on the project. So many of the comics are extremely clever and quite funny.  

I'm not going to post a full lesson plan here because this is pretty basic. I had kids brainstorm story and character ideas before doing some sketches of their character. They then drew out their comic, using the first panel for the title. They then went over their drawing with a small sharpie before adding color with colored pencils. Pretty simple and a lot of fun!

5th Grade Stop Motion Progress

Animating gummy bears who come out of a
lake and build a village out of dominos. 

This groups is animating lego people on a moon base.
The background is made from a cardboard box and construction paper.

New year, new way of doing a stop motion animation project. This is the fourth year I've undertaken this project with my 5th graders. It is the project that all other kids in the school look at in awe and can't wait to do. In the past, I've just had one digital camera, so I was somewhat limited as to my options for filming. I split the class up into different job groups and they all worked together to make one animation. The work always came out great, but I felt like there wasn't enough freedom. 

This year, I spent a chunk of my budget to get three more cameras and tripods. Each of my 5th grade classes broke up into four groups. Each group gets to write, design, and animate their own stop motion project. Since modeling clay for 100 kids could get out of control cost-wise, all of the animations are being done with other materials this year. I have groups animating with legos, candy, paper, etc. The pictures above were taken during the first day of filming this week. 

I'll post the finished animation in a few weeks. We still have a couple more weeks of filming along with editing in iMovie. That is another change for this year. In the past, I've always edited the whole project myself. I'm nervous/hopeful/excited about the potential results. I can't wait to show them off. 

1st Grade Rockets in Space

This rocket has a built-in space broom and
sweeper to help keep space clean. Obviously.

 I typically do this project earlier in the year, but it ended up getting pushed back a bit this year due to having a student teacher this fall. I like to work with first grade in a very sequential manner in order to try to build concept knowledge, skill level, and familiarity with art tools and techniques. 

I usually use this as one of my first painting lessons in order to give kids practice with filling in areas and painting around others. I suppose it would be WAY easier to just use a black piece of construction paper for the background. It would also be WAY less fun for my students. First graders love to paint. Of course you know that already.

This is a project that ends up being pretty successful all around. I love integrating science curriculum into my projects so it's a bonus for everyone. 

I don't want to take full credit for this lesson. I think I may have originally found a similar lesson on Deep Space Sparkle or another blog, but I don't remember which. I wrote up my own plans for it and you can check them out here.

2nd Grade Egyptian Cats and Dogs

Kids love ancient Egypt. Don't even try to argue about that one. You know it's true. Of course they do. Pyramids, mummies, history, that cool 80's song by The Bangles. What's not to love? 

Of course this project is based on all things Egyptian. We start out by watching a little Reading Rainbow video about ancient Egyptian practices and culture. It's fun to have a discussion after to talk about all of the cool things we just learned. Next, it is just a matter of making some art. This project is split up into several steps. I have my students use rulers to make the border, then the draw their cat or dog. They also write their names using a simplified form of hieroglyphics. Next, they sponge paint over the entire paper to emulate the texture of stone in a pyramid. 

In the past, I've had the students paint their animals, but I had pretty mixed results. This year I tried oil pastels in an effort to cut the length of the project and also get better results overall. I found that they tend to rush with pastels, so I'm not sure if the change in media was entirely successful. Overall the kids really enjoy the project and that makes me pretty happy as well. 

The lesson plan is here!

A little reorganization!

Today was a teacher work day. No meetings, no obligations, no students. It is purely a day to work in the classroom and get things done. I love these days. They allow me to take time to do some things that I wouldn't ordinarily have time to do during the regular school day. Today, I graded work, hung a couple new projects in the hallway, and got to a little project I found on Pinterest. 

The pile of scraps before.
Witness the sheer size and uselessness!

I ORGANIZED MY CONSTRUCTION PAPER SCRAPS. Take a bit of time to let that sink in. It was a pretty massive undertaking. I use the scraps all of the time with all kinds of projects. My scraps were starting to overflow in one bin and they were in complete disarray. Too many kids throw useless scraps into the bin which makes it harder for the next class to find good paper. 

I simply went through all of the scraps, got rid of the tiny pieces, and set the useful ones aside into piles of warm colors and cool colors. I then cut all of the pieces into rectangles with the paper cutter. No more dangly parts, rough edges, or random cut-outs. These pieces are all begging to be used. The new rule with my students will be to trim all scraps into rectangles and make sure they are placed in the proper bin. Hopefully this was time well spent!

I made signs (two for each bin) showing which colors are allowed in each bin.
The signs are laminated and taped down with packing tape. (Just try to peel that off...)

I went from a single overflowing bin to two fairly empty ones.
Between splitting up the scraps and getting rid of the useless ones,
my stock is pretty depleted. I'm sure my supply will grow soon.

The bins magically fit PERFECTLY under the table.

3rd Grade Winter Cardinal Landscapes

Two posts in two days! Woohoo! It's something of a record this year. I'm back at school now and am very excited to get back to working with students. 

As art teachers, we all know that teaching is not all we do. What? You need a new set for the music program? Can I make a certificate for an award that will be given out this afternoon? Can I make sure it looks "wintery" in the halls? Yeah. Sure. I'm really not complaining about these things at all. I work with a wonderful staff that is very supportive of the arts. I always try to work in winter projects right before break to help support my music teacher who puts on a winter program as well as the PTO that organizes a weekend event right before winter break. This particular project was designed to, of course, be educational as well as set the wintery mood. 

This is the second year I've done this particular project. I took the idea of a landscape and had my students create a kind of condensed version that includes layers of branches with a cardinal (Ohio's state bird!) positioned in the foreground. My students really get into this project and it is very successful overall. 

I will admit that I'm thinking of overhauling this project for next school year. I've always admired the work of Charley Harper and I'm thinking of using his artwork as inspiration for future "wintery" projects. 

Check out the lesson plan here!

New Little Artist!!!!!

I think some of my regular readers may be a little disappointed with my number of posts this year. This blog is VERY important to me, but I will admit that I haven't been keeping up with it the way I should be. I promise that I have been doing all kinds of cool stuff and I will be updating more soon. 

I think I have a pretty good reason for not posting as much lately. On December 13th, my wife and I welcomed our first child, Olivia, into the world! She is amazing and adorable and awesome and all of the things that new dads always say about their kids. After being off for a month for paternity leave and winter break, I'll be going back to school tomorrow. I'll be posting more projects, including several brand new lessons, very soon. For now, try not to say, "Awwwwwwwwwww," when you look at this picture!