Winter Birds

6th graders are creating winter bird pictures to decorate and add some winter spirit to the halls. We have had an unseasonably warm February, so these birds actually look a little out of place on snow covered trees. However, the kids are really taking pride in them, and they are turning out amazing!!! We started out this lesson by looking at some examples of realism in art. We discussed what makes something a successful work of realism. We touched upon shadows and highlights, color matching, and attention to detail. I printed off packets with color pictures of all the birds so that students could use them as a reference throughout the entire process. We practiced drawing our birds several times before moving to the final copy paper. Students used simple shapes to break up the form of their bird and create a construction line map to work from. I was astonished at how quickly they picked it up. For the final copy we initially used brown paint to add a tree with a few branches. Students decided how big or how small to draw their tree and branches. Once they were confident with their drawing abilities, the student then drew the bird on the tree branch and began filling in with oil pastels. The final steps were to add oil pastel details to the tree, such as, shadows, bark, pine needles, and snow. To finish them off we sprayed them with a squirt bottle of half water, half white tempera. There are still several students working on their finishing touches, but the ones that are finished are lookin good!!!! I wanted to keep the birds we created native to Ohio, so, I let them choose from a Cardinal, Chickadee, or Blue Jay as their subject. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of finished blue jays yet. I will definitely post more finished products soon. If you would like to see the presentation I used to introduce the lesson it is here. My full plan is here.

Peter Max Inspired Guitars

My 6th graders and a few fifth graders are creating paper mache guitars. To initially start the project we discussed the theme of music in the art world. I showed a presentation about music being a common theme in art throughout the ages. I touched on Picasso using music as a basis for many of his artworks. We discussed how music has changed in our daily culture over time. How is it different now than it may have been in ancient times? Technology makes it much more accessible. We focused on the topic of "Popular Culture" what is it? How is music a part of it. What is pop art. We looked at a few pieces of pop art and we finally arrived at the artist Peter Max. We addressed how he took music from a theme in 2-D art, to a sculptural idea in his famous piano and guitar artworks. If you would like to see the full presentation click here. Once we had our discussion underway we began interpreting the project. Each student was going to be building their own guitar. They needed to come up with an initial design for the body and cut that out of two pieces of cardboard. This took some leg work on my part because I had to have my husband and my father cut about 300 sheets of cardboard. I gave each student one 12x18 drawing paper and two 12x18 pieces of cardboard. They needed to sketch out an outline for their guitar on the drawing paper. Once they had the outline they needed to cut it out and use it as a template to trace onto their pieces of cardboard. They then cut out both pieces of cardboard. To the right you can see the two finished pieces of cardboard a student cut. They were creating a guitar shaped like their favorite video game character.

Once you had a front and back for the body of the guitar you then stuffed it with newspaper and taped the edges together. I gave each student the neck of their guitar by cutting strips of tag board. They taped one strip to the front and one strip to the back and again stuffed the middle, and taped the edges. We also used small squares of tag board to create that top head of the guitar where the strings attach to the tuning pegs.
After all that construction we finally started paper mache. It has been about 5 weeks and we are almost done covering them with all our layers of paper mache. Next, I am going to have the kids cover them in gesso and then paint on their designs. I bought twine for the strings, gems and buttons for decorating, and screws from home depot to create the tuning pegs at the top. The kids are having a greeat time, and I am so impressed to see everyone motivated in the art room!! To see my full lesson plan you can click here

Mixed Media Cubist Animals

For this assignment sixth graders learned about the life and work of Pablo Picasso. We discussed his cubist period and the impact it had on the art world. Students used oil pastels, water pastels, and colored pencils to create cubist works of art. We started this lesson by reading a one page biography on Picasso's life that I found here. We then looked at a presentation exhibiting some of Picasso's cubist work and analyzed the characteristics they possessed. You can find my presentation on my Prezi page here.
The kids showed some great craftsmanship on this assignment. We shaded with our colored pencils to create some depth in the work, which became a little time consuming. For the oil pastel and water pastel we colored in fully. After we had filled in every shape we went back around them with black colored pencil to create outlines. The full lesson can be found here.

My First Post

Hi! I am new to running a blog so hopefully I can grow and learn from my colleagues in the Art Ed. blogging world. I have been looking at blogs for the past two years to get ideas throughout student teaching and my first year, and I finally decided it was time to pay it forward. A lot of my projects come from adaptations of other ideas I have seen. I will try to give credit whenever I can find or remember the source. I kept meaning to do this throughout the school year and just never found time. So here it is finally! All the work up to February for the 2011-2012. It might be jumbled up because I am not sure how to change the order of my posts just yet. Here are some pictures of my little art room. The Dear Students sign I saw on Pinterest.
















I have seen a couple different ideas on how to keep kids motivated in the art room. It's always a little bit harder with middle schoolers to keep work ethics up. Some days they seem really excited and engaged, and then the next week they come in and look at you like this is the worst project ever!! To keep that from happening I incorporated a classroom management strategy that one of my amazing mentor teachers taught me. I basically have a class bank going where students try to earn money towards their class total. Its called GLAD CASH. You can earn Glad Cash for answering a question during discussion, working hard, or being a good Samaritan in the art room. I collect all the Glad Cash at the end of the class time and we add it to the class total. At the end of every semester the 5th and 6th grade class with the highest score gets to have an edible art party! The kids love it!! They totally police each other to earn more cash!!

I also give out the cleanest table award at the end of each class. If a table is chosen then each of its members gets to fill out a raffle ticket and enter it into the cleanest table drawing at the end of the week. I choose 3 names every Friday and have them posted on my board for students to see the next week. The students love it! They can either choose a prize from my artist of the day prize bin, or they can add two pieces of Glad Cash to the class total.
I will definitely post more soon about the happenings in my little art room...