Well I seem to be surviving.

Well the classes are moving along well and I am excited that Artsonia is getting going in my school. I have been teaching the students to upload their art and they are posting personal comments about their art. It is wonderful having students give their own responses to their art making. If you are a teacher and you aren't on Artsonia you need to... www.arsonia.com.

We keep running through projects and moving forward and I LOVE my assessment tool I have created. It is my rubric, lesson plan and behavior monitoring in ONE form... Simple elegant spreadsheet. I am on an iPad and can't upload it right now...

I will be posting my last few lesson plans over the break.

Veterans Day gifts

So we are makong our veterans day gifts. We talked about how artists memorialize heroes and how we are using art to honor those who served and sacrificed. We are making thank you cards in 4th grade which are silhouettes on watercolor.

Well it's been a while...

Wow... have I been busy... more than expected...
This is hard becoming a first year teacher again...
We have had a great start to the beginning of the year. A busy and demanding start, but a good one.

I have recently finished a bunch of projects...

Kinder started the year with practicing Lines and making Line drawing and paintings using Oil pastels and water colors. We also made some line relief sculptures using warm and cool colored papers. I loved doing this project, it was a great way to introduce the art room rules and expectations and to get students introduced to following instructions in the room.

Types of Lines Painting

Line Sculptures

1st Grade made Mondrian Inspired Butterflies. I really felt this was another great assignment, but I have things I really want to fix... I loved the primary colors and bright colors of the sky... but I don't think this was a good line activity. I think I might move this next year to a later spot and try to come up with another better line activity for my first graders. Although they loved getting to work with paint for their first project!

1st Grade also just finished a project on symmetry looking at the book "Where the Wild Things Are" and creating their own wild thing using cut paper. This was a task and a half. It drove me NUTS trying to do this... I know that next year I am using paint to start the process... this was too much for the first week. and I wish I had been able to focus more on details not just the process...

2nd Grade made large Bodies in the style of Keith Haring. I Really don't have any photos of these that I was happy with. The students LOVED doing the giant artworks.... I hated working with them and I am not terribly excited about how they turned out. I really wish I had focused more on lines and patterns than I did. I also wish I had made the artwork smaller... big bodies are too big. On the plus side the kids did have a great time learning about Keith Haring's artworks and had fun with the Roll a Haring Project. The worksheet was created using the image by One Eyed Pak.

 

Second grade also just completed their Matisse Inspired Compositions using warm and cool colors and Geometric and Organic Shapes. I wish I had focused more on the shapes, but I am still happy with the results. I think I might do a quick informal assessment and see if the students remember....

Third grade was a lot of fun, we made Van Gogh Inspired landscapes and talked a lot about vertical and horizontal compositions and the emotions that lines have. We finished the activity by writing a letter about our feelings and the artwork like Van Gogh did. Overall it went well, we used glue and pastels which were fun and exciting for students, the letter was a little harder and I am still thinking about how to modify it.

Fourth grade made their Op Art Images like I posted about before. I am still so happy with them, we got to create perspective lines, values to create a sense of space as well... overall it was awesome...

Last but not least... fifth grade got to start their self portraits. We looked at the line drawings of Pablo Picasso and talked about Contour lines and how they define the edges and surface ridges of objects. We then practiced observational drawing skills by doing Igor Stravinsky drawings by only exposing a small part at a time. Drawing lines rather than symbols. The students did a great job! When they followed the assignment... We also then made their self portraits and I felt like I had varying levels of success... I am really thinking I need to focus on developing stronger practice in this... and maybe portraits aren't the way to go...

Well that has been basically the last ten weeks of my life as a teacher... I am still above water... but man I can't wait for winter so I can get caught up!

Optical illusions

4th grade started their optical illusions this week. And I am so excited they are going great so far. We looked at a PowerPoint with different illusions back to the Renaissance and talked about the op art movement.
Day one we started doing different compositions. Going step by step.
Next week we are going to do them on a big paper.
We are going to practice creating spheres next and then make three of different sizes and attaching them to our design.
I will post links to the PowerPoint and handouts tonight hopefully.

Art from many hands

This week we finished our art by many hands project. After the kids had colored them, and cut them out, I glued them together to look like flowers. With all 570 students I was able to make four flowers that were small and one large flower. We added the quote," alone we can do so little, together we can do so much." By Helen Keller.

The First Week

So during my first week I have learned MANY things about elementary school.
1. You need one action they will do over and over... mine is hands on table.
2. They apparently forget how to sit on a chair during the walk from their other classroom to mine.
3. They can't sit still for more than 15 minutes...
4. Some kids always cry...

Tuesday: I had only 4th grade and one kindegarten class. The fourth graders were pretty good about listening and following rules, but got antsy by the end of the day. The kindergarten class was, well... like children. We had crying, sobbing, potty needs, questions, more questions, and OH MY GOSH more questions. Mostly about their mom and why they weren't at school... But we survived. I learned that I won't get through everything I wanted to... WE JUST CAN'T... So we did half this week and I will do half next week.

Wednesday: We did the same kind of stuff as tuesday, but I only had third grade, who were much more antsy, but also much more willing to do activities. Had some issues with time and most of my classes were much more talkative and had trouble sitting. I think with First Grade I am going to break this into three days now...

Thursday: I had to modify my plan. .. ALOT.... we read The Day the Crayons Quit, and talked a lot less so we had time for art.

Friday: I had my first walk through today, the principal saw our line up procedure and me reading to a new group. I did the same idea of reading to the students and then making art.

Line Song and Dance

I had this crazy idea that I should totally make a dance and song that would go into my line unit for my kindergarteners and First graders, but I couldn't come up with anything.

Low and behold, the power of shopping strikes again. I was on my way home from a productive day of clothes shopping and the words came to me... SOOOOO. Here it is.

This is basically sung to the farmer in the dell, but as a Chorus.

Blue is the teacher and Black are student lines.

When they sing the lines are everywhere they should point at a line they see.

 Horizontal Line movement is to hold your arms out at your sides.

For Vertical Clap your hands together over your head.

For Diagonal Line do a two armed disco point. (One arm up and one down at an angle)

For Zig-Zag, walk like an Egyptian (look it up for your young'ins).

For wavy lines wiggle your arms like worms.

For wide lines flex your arms out at your sides.

For thin bring your hand in the middle like you are praying.

Finish by pointing at lines you see. you could instruct them to specifically point at vertical or horizontal, etc..

PowerPoint Download

KbZipaDeeDooDah Font Download - you will need this to see the fun font in the file.

I would just like to say thank you to KB Designs for your AWESOME fonts... I know we have them all over our school. Also thank you to Pixabay, your free photo stock images are awesome to use for powerpoint background images.