Overtaken!

We've been working on these for a MONTH.  A MONTH.  That's like, YEARS in an elementary art classroom.  I'd decided to have one class start while the others worked on their Andy Warhol inspired pieces, which worked well until those two classes were done and then I had three classes working on these large letters (which is about 75-80 students).  My room is TINY, so there's a lot of shifting going on to find room for drying.  FINALLY, my first group finished and took them home today.  

We started with plaster in the first group and papier mache with the remaining two classes (I ran out of the plaster).

This is a great "in process" photo where you can see
the letters stuffed with crumpled up newspaper
around the paper drinking cups we taped inside
to give them a uniform thickness.

The papier mache gives them more control
(assuming they're focused and
have some experience with papier mache.)

The plaster group started (and finished) first.  After the plaster was dry, we brainstormed images that are popular for them.  If you want, you can use the Smart Notebook file we brainstormed together, and you can get it here (it's the one that says Pop Culture Initials).  They used pencil to draw their images on their dry plaster initials, then used acrylic paint to add color.  I tried steering them mostly to primary colors . . . but you know how that goes sometimes.  

Today they added detail with permanent marker:

And took them home!!! The room already feels bigger, even with 50-55 in process alphabet letters still here.

Let's Call It a Comeback

Ah, Payons! If you've taught a while, you remember these gems.  Always hard.  Stuck in the black cardboard tubes, then suddenly (without warning) slipping out and you'd find them later in a water cup.  They stained EVERYTHING.  Most art teachers I know got rid of them.  But I am not a person who gets rid of everything (see any previous posts where I speak of my hoarding ways).  So, I have a box full of them in my painting cabinet (they were here when I came 9 years ago).

This morning we were in our collaboration group and another art teacher was sharing how she's using water soluble oil pastels with styrofoam.  She has them "carve" their styrofoam with a dull pencil, then color the styrofoam with water soluble oil pastels, lightly spritz their papers with water and print.  It works wonderfully, there's more blending and color gradation and they can print several times before they recolor.  Only I don't have any water soluble oil pastels.  I have Payons.  So I tried it, and it worked:

I just used scrap styrofoam that I had.
It's just a design, not a word
(although it looks a bit like one here)

While we were all working someone asked "I wonder if these oil pastels would work on Gelli Plates?"  We tried, and it didn't work at all.  But Payons did! They create a beautiful watercolor effect when you dip the Payons in water, draw directly on the Gelli Plate and pull the print:

In case you don't know this about me, I LOVE my Gelli Plates.  I make Gelli art all the time at home (so I'm totally taking a box or two of old Payons home with me tonight!)

Unlike LL Cool J, I'm totally calling this a comeback for Payons! (And their performance may just knock you out!)

See how the yellow Payon stained the Gelli Plate?
It's not a big deal.

Little Quilling Frames

I've posted about quilling with second graders before, but the lesson I'm sharing today is actually the first quilling project I ever did with second graders.

We started out with those cheap-o chipboard frames from a catalog (they come with a larger, rectangular shaped opening, and these are the smaller ones that come attached to the larger ones).  I could've bought the little quilling strips, but I'm cheap, so I just cut them on my paper cutter.  I showed them how to roll paper, and we got to work:

Now, I'll be honest and tell you that there was a bit of whining that we had to work through, but we made it and [most everyone] did a great job.  Here's some more from our first quilling attempts:

Hearts were the hands-down winner as far as favorite things to make.

Admittedly, a terrible shot BUT you can see the size of the cut paper strips.

I surprised my class today by taping a sheet of white Scratch Art paper to the back:

I didn't tell them how Scratch Art paper works, just gave them a wooden stylus and let them figure it out.  

IT GOT VERY LOUD.  My student teacher has some app on his phone and said we made it to 85 decibels (?) which I totally believe, because they were SO EXCITED.

Here's the final work from my group today:

The excitement didn't slow down a bit when I allowed them to take them home with them today (because I never do that, I hoard everything almost everything until after the art show every year). I'm interested to see the reactions of my last two classes tomorrow and Wednesday!

An Ode to Masking Tape

Masking tape, oh, masking tape, you bring such joy to me!
Your many purposes are not always clear for all to see
I appreciate your durability and ease of use
You arrive in perfect circles that double as stylish bracelets
You lay so perfectly in my drawer, ready at all times

You perfectly attach scratch boards to quilled frames

Masking tape, how would we ever papier mache without you?
I hope we never have to know

For putting up artwork when there is no cork strip available,
You cannot be beat

When setting up tesselations, you hold the pieces together so well

(And look so lovely stacked on tables)

Masking tape, I'm willing to bet, 
Art teachers everywhere would pledge their love to you.


And now it's crystal clear to everyone why I teach elementary art as opposed to say, high school English.
Happy Friday, friends!

Adaptive Warhol

This is a lesson I thought I'd blogged about before, but I can't find it anywhere, so maybe not??? In the style of Andy Warhol, I had my adaptive students print their hands with black paint on yellow paper:

They then cut them out, leaving a "halo" of paper around the edge (paras drew a pencil line for them to cut on).  We then glued those to another paper and cut again:

This glue, cut, glue continued and finally we glued them to black paper:

I wanted them to send me a "selfie" via google classroom so I could print a little sticker in the corner of their papers instead of their names, but only one student has done it so far (this is an adult problem, not a student problem).  I'll get some responsible students on it as helpers next week, and I'll get those stickers on there! For now, these papers are headed to our office "gallery."

Red Ribbon Week

It's dress like a superhero day here for Red Ribbon Week.  I made myself into an art superhero!

I did wear it around the house Saturday night and didn't have problems, but today I'm HOT (nothing like some sweaty shoulders).  And I'm not that fond of wearing a cape while having very short bathroom/peeing time.  Not a good mix. 

I was a bit worried the students wouldn't take me seriously, but it really hasn't been an issue . . . maybe I'll wear this everyday!

Fifth Grade and Andy Warhol

I know I probably say this too much, but I'm really loving these!!!!

Here's the backstory to this assignment--our district went to one-to-one electronic devices this year (all students have chromebooks), and while I'd dabbled in Google Classroom last year, I wanted to get better at it this year.  This project is similar to one I did many years ago in a different district, except last time I took, edited and printed all the student photos (ain't no one got time for that).  Here's what I did: I set up a fifth grade Google Classroom and created an assignment using these directions (let's hope you can access them), then as a group we went outside, took photos and went through the directions all together.  When students had a black and white high contrast selfie, they turned it in to me through Google Classroom and I printed them out.
While all that was getting accomplished, I gave them each a large, 18 x 24 paper to fold into fourths.  We did bleeding tissue on one fourth:

And then a warm painting on one fourth and a cool painting on one fourth (using the block tempera paints):

All of this work gave me time to chase down absent students or students who didn't actually turn it in correctly.
I had decided to have them trace them on clear sheets, and in a stroke of pure luck (maybe genius?) I happened to ask in our main office if we had any boxes of old overhead sheets lying around.  The secretary was SO HAPPY to get rid of them.  In the store room there were more boxes than I could carry!!!
Students taped the clear overhead sheets to their photos with one strip of masking tape and traced the black with extra fine permanent marker:

Only a few are done for now, but after tracing onto three clear sheets, I use hot glue to attach the tracings to their papers:

Sorry about the glare, these are really hard to photograph.

The final step was to have the students glue their photo to the remaining/blank rectangle on their paper.  I CANNOT WAIT to hang these in the hallway!