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.

Check out my new A R T letters!

In preparing to move classrooms this year, I took down some wooden letters that I had on my door that spelled out ART. I have had these letters for 7 years or so, they were painted in primary colors with designs drawn on them. These letters have been moved from wall to door, from classroom to classroom. But this time, the letters broke when I pulled them down. I want to have some sign or something outside my room that lets everyone know that this specific room is the art room, especially since there are 2 art teachers at this school, and one of the rooms has been moved this year. During my last visit to Hobby Lobby, I found some chipboard letters that are pretty large, and thought that these may be suitable. I covered each letter with scrapbook paper and then embellished them with ribbon and scrapbooking stickers. I am very pleased with the outcome, and think that these will look great on the wall outside my door.

Cool Website!

At the beginning of the summer, I was working on the elementary visual arts curriculum team. We were re-writing the K-4 visual arts curriculum, and the four of us were doing a ton of online research for artists. While surfing online, one of our members, my friend Ted (http://artwithmre.blogspot.com/) came across a very interesting website called Pinterest http://pinterest.com/). Neither one of us had heard about it, so I decided to look into it some more. What I have come to discover is that I don't know how I surfed the internet for lesson ideas before this website came along. Think of it as an online bulletin board. After asking for an invitation (which took about 3 days or so to receive), you set up your account and download a "pin it" link for the top of your web browser. Then you can set up as many bulletin boards as you would like with different themes. While you are surfing the web, if you come along something that you are interested in, you click the "pin it" link and a new window pops up with every picture that was on the web page. You pick the one you want, add a comment or description, and then voila! The picture is now on your bulletin board. The best part is that if you go to the pinterest site and click on the picture, it takes you back to the web page that you got the picture from! This is great for lesson ideas! I highly suggest that you check this site out!!!!!

Art-al-Sol 2011

Well, it's Art-al-Sol time again! This summer, I taught 2 week long camps, one for 8-10 year olds, and the other for 10-13 year-olds. This year, we had an unofficial theme of Art TV! (totally visual). Every lesson was based on a different tv channel, such as the Food Network, MTV, ESPN, and others. The children had lots of fun creating tissue paper masks, oil pastel guitars, coil baskets, bas reliefs, silk screen butterflies, sculpey necklaces, Thiebaud inspired acrylic paintings, and other projects. On the last day, we had a wonderful art show with refreshments. The parents loved seeing their children's work, and I loved showing their little artists off! What do you think?

New room and color!

So, in the last post, I told everyone that I was moving to a new classroom. While most art teachers would probably dread this, I actually was excited. I needed a change, and a new room fit the bill! When my principal told me that I was moving, she asked me not to bother the teacher that was currently in the room (5th grade teacher), so I snuck in one day after school to get a look at the room. I decided that the first thing that I would have to do was to paint. The walls were originally Navajo white, which in and of itself is not a horrible color, but is too boring for my art room. Plus, it looked like there were multiple layers of paint on the wall, and they were not consistent in any stretch of the immagination. You could see every touch up and everywhere it still needed to be done. So off to the various home improvement stores I went to get tons of paint samples.

I finally chose two blues, Windjammer and Ocean Blue (which are the second and fourth on the card above). I know that these are some intense colors, but my last room was a bright obnoxious form of lime green called gecko green, so no one can say that I am afraid of a little color. I had to wait until after school ended for the year to start painting. Our last day was Thursday, June 2, and I showed up bright and early at 7 am on the 3rd to start painting. Thankfully my friend Karee came to help on Friday, but I did have to come back on Saturday as well. My friend Ted (artwithmre) came to help on Saturday, and I finally finished painting around 8 pm that day. I have a few pictures, although not any whole room pics, since there are still boxes in the middle of the room that belong to the teacher that is moving out, but what do you think of the color?

Guess What!

So last month I had the same dream for three nights in a row. In the dream, I was busy going through all of the stuff that I have accumulated in my art room, sorting, organizing and packing. In the dream, my principal had told me that I was going to have to move classrooms. I woke up with to-do lists in my head, plans for what to pack first, what supplies are not needed for the rest of the year, what furniture I am taking, and what I am leaving, etc. I told my principal about my dream, and she laughed, saying that she would never have me move, after all, my room is an obnoxious lime green (painted that way so that no one else would want the room). I told one of my best friends about this, and she just laughed saying it was just a weird dream. I kept mentioning it over the month, and I think she started to get a little upset with me. She told me to STOP WORRYING!!!!! Yesterday, I walked into my principal's office to ask her a question and she said that she had been looking for me and that we needed to talk. Needless to say, she needs me to move classrooms, which means packing, sorting, and painting of new room. It will be interesting, as the new room is in one of the pods, and is a pentagon of sorts. Of course, I will take pictures of the new room when finished.