Ms. Malone's art room is going to the birds!

So my second graders have begun working on collages this week. I wanted to make it fun and simple, so I decided to have them create a flock of birds. Only two classes so far have started, once they are all finished I will take a picture of the whole flock, but for now, here are a few of our little chicks...

I gave each student a pre-cut piece of construction paper, and put a pile of pre-cut patterned paper on their table. The student picked out their patterned paper and glued it to the construction paper, and then set the whole thing aside while they worked on their birds. Using more construction paper, they created their birds. If they showed good craftsmanship by not having excess glue, they could choose three feathers to use as the bird's tail. I hot-glued everything together for them, and then we displayed the birds in the hall. They had so much fun with them, and having the feathers as an incentive to finish it neatly was great too!

I stole this idea!

So have I mentioned lately, that I love Pinterest? I have found some amazing lesson ideas, and this is one of them that I have very cheerfully "borrowed". My 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders worked on monochromatic self-portraits the last 2 weeks. They were assigned to use the "color" of their table (each of the tables in my room is assigned a color, so that I can call specific tables to line up, get their supplies, etc). I have a red, blue, yellow, green, orange, turquoise and a pink/purple table (the basket on the table is one of those colors that could be either pink or purple, I insist on calling it purple, since I detest the color pink, the kids call it pink, just to spite me I think! :P ). Anyways... once the students were done, they placed their papers into basket that were labeled with the colors, this saved me from pulling each class and having to separate them. I hung them up in the hallway today, what do you think?

Bulletin Boards

On one wall in my classroom, I have a long bulletin board that I have split into smaller boards. The first picture is of the entire board. On one end, I have used part of the Crystal Production elements of art and principles of design card. On the other end, I used the rest of them. In between, I have my No-no board, which lists the things that I don't want to see in my students artwork. The Artists in Action board is blank for right now. I plan on taking pictures of my students at work, and post them on the board.

Above the board, I have made "shape monsters/aliens". I cut out large shapes, and added eyes and mouths. Then I cut the letters of the words out and laminated them.

Above the cubbies that are attached to the original chalkboard in the room is a markerboard that is kind of silly. It is above the cubbies, and I would have to stand on a chair or step stool to reach it, so I have turned it into my rule board. It says: Out of this world artists... are kind, put their name on their paper, use inside voices, follow all directions, use supplies carefully, stay in their seat and raise their hand. Do You???" On my paper cabinet I have put my behavior board which says "Spacing out?" There are 28 pockets that correspond to the 28 seats in my classroom. Whenever a student misbehaves, I pull one of their cards. They start on green, and can move to blue, yellow, red and no card with appropriate consequences for each.

Outside of the art room, I have put up some displays. On my door, I have used black paper to cover the door, and used my cricut to cut out the words "Please excuse the mess. The children are making MASTERPIECES!" It is simple, but I like it a lot. There is a bulletin board outside the room that I have been put in charge of. While searching Pinterest, I came across a great bulletin board that I decided to recreate.

And finally, Ted (Mr. E) also gave me the words and stars from his art show last year, so I put them on another wall, which gives me 4 walls to use as display space.

New year, new room!

School has started here in Nashville, and I have been very busy in the art room, getting it ready. I'm in a new room, which was a very bland navajo white color. I painted the room two different blues (seen in an earlier post). Then I had to wait...and wait...and wait some more for the custodians to clean my room and wax the floors (it's a new room and I was a little anxious, ok!?!?) Once I got into the room, the the unpacking ensued. This room has way less storage built in, with only one little sink and cabinet in the corner, and a set of open cubbies

that someone had bolted to the original chalkboard.

These cubbies are great, but open to the room, so not the best thing for storing supplies that you don't want the children getting into. So I have used this as my classroom library area. To solve the storage issue, I have 2 large 2-door cabinets, one for paint and printmaking supplies (I have a lot of paint, I admit that I am a hoarder in this area, I unpacked 84 trays of watercolors, not all of them useful, but I hate to throw them away!), the other cabinet for paper and other supplies. Since there is only one bulletin board in my room (albeit a really long board!) I have used the doors of the cabinets as more board space. On my paper cabinet, I have placed my behavior board, and on the paint cabinet, I have attached my scissor storage. The scissor storage is magnetized tool racks found at Home Depot for $12. The scissors hang on the racks until needed, and are high enough that the kindergartners can't reach them.

I found this idea on Pinterest, with someone using knife storage bars from Ikea, but since Nashville doesn't have an Ikea, I improvised. In this classroom I have a door that goes outside, and a window. By the door, I laced my word wall, and by the window, my reading area. Between the door and the window is my long bulletin board, which I have split up into smaller boards, and will post better pictures of later.

I have used the theme of outer space this year, and if you are aware of the blog http://artwithmre.blogspot.com/, you might recognize the big mama alien hiding behind my door. Ted (Mr. E) is one of my friends, in fact, more like family, and when he found out I was going with an outer space theme, he offered me the alien and other things that he had make for his art show last year. I jumped at the offer, and Big Bertha (as I now call her) is now part of our classroom. She will have a sign that says "is your name on your paper?" around her neck, since she is setting beside the artwork storage cabinet. Continuing with my theme, the tables have been numbered with aliens, one at each corner, the numbers of which correspond with the pockets on my behavior board. On each table is a basket that has crayons, markers, pencils, erasers, and pencil sharpeners. This cuts down on time passing out supplies. On the bottom of the chairs, I have rubberbanded 2 layers of felt to cut down on the scraping of chairs on the floor. This keeps the classroom quieter, and save the wax on the floor longer.

My next post will be better pictures of my bulletin boards and hallway displays.

Coil baskets

Along with the guitar lesson, the other one most asked about is the coil pot lesson. I got this one from the Dick Blick website, http://cdn.dickblick.com/lessonplans/paper-coil-baskets/paper-coil-baskets-paper-coil-baskets.pdf In years past, I had taught my students to make coil pots using yarn or raffia, but the students got very frustrated, with the yarn or raffia constantly coming out of the needle, and changing colors. This lesson ends the frustration. The paper coil is glued together with Weldbond Universal Adhesive, which I never heard of, but it is amazing! The lesson plan is very easy, although it tells you to use Inovart self-adhesive print foam for the bottom of the pot. You are supposed to cut a circle from the foam and use that to start the bottom of the pot, creating a "snail" from the paper coil and sticking it on the foam. I felt that the foam wasn't sticky enough for that, they kept popping off, so we tried with just gluing the "snail" as well, and not using the foam. It worked better for us. The children didn't have to hold the coils in place very long, which really surprised me, most got theirs done in 30-60 minutes. We let them dry overnight, and then painted them with liquid watercolors. Just a word of warning, the paper coil really sucks up the liquid watercolors! Embellishments could be added on, but we ran out of time.

Guitar lesson...

I have been asked by a couple people to post the lesson for the guitars. It was really simple. I showed the students pictures of different types and styles of guitars, making sure to include some wild and crazy ones. Then I asked the students to draw their dream guitar. It could have any shape, color or design, as long as it was easily recognizable as a guitar. After they sketched out some ideas, the students were then given a large piece of black paper (20x30) and using oil pastels, they created their guitars. I allowed them to choose to add designs to the background as they wished, or they could leave it blank. Some added a few things, while others completely covered the entire background. They loved working on this project, and wanted way more time than I had planned on giving them.