Nashville needs our help!

In case you haven't seen the news lately, Nashville has been hit with a major flood. Some houses were completely submerged in the flood waters. Opryland Hotel and Opry Mills, both a large source of revenue for Nashville will be closed for 3-6 months. My school, Lakeview Design Center was very lucky, no flooding and only a few roof leaks here and there. Unfortunately, we have had some of our families and teachers that have lost homes or have other damage from the flood as well as lost jobs as their place of work was destroyed or damaged. My art classes are going to try to help out with the remaining time we have in school. We are going to be joining the efforts of http://www.volunteervillages.org/, a website designed by Anne Ayers and Ellen McMillan, FL teachers who have created the concept of Haiti Houses (http://www.haitihouses.org/) in order to raise money for the Haiti disaster. Students create house pins out of mat board and sell them for $5 each. They have raised over $187,000 plus for Haiti. Anne and Ellen were contacted by Tina Atkinson, a fellow MNPS art teacher, and they graciously agreed to not only design a website for the Nashville flood, but also send 500 houses made by their students. My students will be creating house pins and selling them, with the goal of using the money to help out our families and teachers as well as other flood victims. Even if you are not located in the Nashville area, please consider joining in the effort. It's a great project to teach character, and community service. Check out the website http://www.volunteervillages.org/ for info on how to help.

Kindergarten Collage Houses

Kindergartners are very challenging. This is their first exposure to art supplies, and how to use them correctly. One of the lessons that I like do do with them is shape landscapes. This is a great lesson that covers shapes, scissor safety, and how to use glue correctly.

I start by talking about the correct way to use scissors, then I start giving them pieces of construction paper, one piece at a time, and have them cut different shapes (red square, yellow circle, yellow rectangles, brown triangle, brown rectangles, random green shape, and long wavy green shape.) Then I give them a 9x12 piece of blue paper and show them how we can put the shapes together to create a landscape (at this point I teach them the vocabulary word landscape). I also teach the children to use one dot of glue (one dot, not a lot). This project looks great put together and the students love them.

Another Great Website!!!

Another website I have found is Art Attacks, http://www.hitentertainment.com/artattacK/ a British tv show where the host Neil, shows children different art and craft projects that they can do with items around the house. There is one section, called art attacks, where it lists all of the projects that he does, and you can click on them for step by step instructions and pictures. Just so you know, because it is a British show, they use British sayings, such as; use a PVA glue, which is the same as Elmers glue, kitchen and loo rolls are paper towels and toilet paper. I have found some great 3-D projects on this website.