Spooky Silhouette PDF! (FREE download!)

I have finally joined the ranks of Teachers Pay Teachers! I am thrilled to offer my first PDF download (a free one!) of my Spooky Silhouette PDF for you to use in your classroom. It is one that I get requests for even during the winter holidays and remains on the top of my all-time most-read posts.

Spooky Silhouette FREE download on TpT!

For a step-by-step of this project, you can check out my original blog post here.

Enjoy! I look forward to doing this lesson again this year...it's a favorite of my students!

Too Much Glue!

This summer I was contacted to review a book called "Too Much Glue" by  Jason Lefebvre  and I jumped at the chance! The illustrations by  Zac Retz were so adorable, and the issue of "too much glue" runs rampant in my classroom. I've blogged about it a couple of times and have yet to find an awesome permanent solution.

I digress.

Just like Matty in the book embraces his love of glue and turns it into a "masterpiece", I embraced my Kindergartners love of piling glue onto paper and had them make their own gluey masterpieces!

First, we used glue to make wiggly, squiggly, criss-crossed lines of glue (not puddles!) on our 9x12 black paper.

Next, we let them dry for 24 hours (in my case, they picked up the project again the next week since I see my kiddos once per week).

We then used oil pastel to color inside the spaces and shapes the glue lines created. Students had to be careful NOT to go beyond the glue lines (it helps that the glue stays raised on the paper. It gives kind of a "bumper" effect to help students color in the lines.

Students did a GREAT job filling up the entire masterpiece with color!

Layered Landscapes (5 Ways!)

This lesson is an oldie, but a goodie...it was actually one of my very first lessons I taught when I did my fourth graders during my internship 14 years ago! There is quite a bit of prep to this lesson, but the end result is so worth it!

There are 4 "stations" I use for this lesson, and I will explain each one under the accompanying photo.

Before you start anything, though, here are the materials you should have on hand and the papers you should pre-cut for the project!

Materials:

12x18 paper (background)

12x12 paper (layer 1)

12x9 paper (layer 2)

12x6 paper (layer 3)

12x3 paper (layer 4)

Watercolor paints

Bubble wrap

Printing ink

Rubbing Alcohol

Table Salt

Textured Rollers

Here are the materials for each station:

Station 1: Paint with any color watercolor and drop rubbing alcohol onto the wet paint.

Station 2: Paint with any colors and drop table salt onto the wet paint.

Station 3: Paint with "hot" color scheme and roll with ink and textured rollers on top.

Station 4: Paint with cool colors and use inked bubble wrap to stamp on top.

For the background, I had students use 2 cool colors and the "wet on wet" technique over the entire paper. The sun was created using some random painted paper I had in my art room.

Aren't they just SO colorful and fun?!

Splat Monsters!

This is a project I did with my First Graders and had AMAZING results! I originally saw this idea on Pinterest and decided to take it a couple of steps further.

First, we read the book "Jeremy Draws a Monster" by Peter McCarty. I love that book and have used it for several different lessons. 

Materials:

3 bottles of watered-down liquid watercolors (I like the Sax brand. It's well-priced and very brilliant!!!)

1 drinking straw for each child

Google eyes (not necessary but I had a parent donate about 2,000 of them to me!)

black crayon

The elements of creativity PDF

I started out by pouring out a small puddle of liquid watercolor paints onto each child's paper. This was the BEST way I could think of to disperse the paints and it worked well!!!

Students used a straw the blow the puddles out around the paper. They made some very interesting shapes!

We then used some google-eyes and glued them onto the colorful shapes. *Yes, I did this when the paints were wet. This helped my first graders visualize what they would be creating the following week. 

We then used the Elements of Creativity PDF and black crayon to help us draw the arms, antennae, horns, mouths, etc that would turn our monsters into some more recognizable creatures. We used the black crayon to draw a background (most kids wanted outer space or stars or a simple patterned background) and a ground. I totally dig how these monsters turned out!

 Have a MONSTER of a good time with this one! 

Shape Monsters!

This is one of my favorite Kindergarten projects that I do each year!

This is a lesson which stresses Geometric shapes-vs-Organic shapes. The complete step-by-step lesson and literary connection can be found HERE!

Happy Monday!

art is...

As I told you in my last post, I wanted to switch things up this year on the first day of Art in each grade level. My self-portrait idea was getting stale after 10 years!

I originally saw this idea on www.artabroad.blogspot.com and loved her "Art is...." statements her students made. Ironically, the post was also about having original teaching ideas and not just copying others' ideas. Ahem. 

Well, I suppose you could say I'm imitating her idea and not copying?

It's time for all of us to start incorporating the Common Core Standards into our art lessons, too...so I wanted to start with this lesson this year. It made my students really THINK about what art actually is. We applied literacy and creative thought into these...a total WIN/WIN. 

This project was done in two parts...at first, I gave them each a Post-it note and had them write down what art was to them. I created a bulletin board out of those ideas. I also had them write down what art ISN'T...a bit more of an abstract idea (which was very hard for them to write, actually).

We were "word illustrators" for the day...discussing how important illustrations are to primary students to tell a story. We looked at different illustrators and pondered what books would be like without illustrations (which led to a conversation about chapter books and more colorful and descriptive language which create pictures in your head instead of visually...man, these kids can T.A.L.K!)

Anyway, students were to come up with ONE word that described what art was to THEM. There were so many words...colorful, creative, imaginative, fun, epic, awesome...

After they had their word down, they needed to illustrate that word. Colorful sure needed to LOOK colorful. Fun better look fun, and so on...

Getting them to think for themselves...using descriptive language...visually illustrating a thought or idea...defining words...HELLO, COMMON CORE. Having students apply an art project to another discipline...golden.

For this project, I simply used 11x17 paper and photocopied it with the words "Art is" on it. I sliced them in half and each student had their own. With discussion, direction, and production time it took about 70-75 minutes. (I have 55-minute classes, so about a class and a half).

At the end of the lesson, I read the kids the book "Art is" by Bob Raczka. I love the last line in the book "Art is how artists get you to think".

Yep, Exactly.

mosaic names

I have done the SAME project with my Kindergartners and first graders for 10 years (before and after self portraits)...I was ready to do something new! Also, it is becoming harder for me to remember all my Kindergartner's names, so alas the idea for this project was born!

We started off reading the book "Lines That Wiggle" by Candace Whitman. LOVE this book. I also love using our bodies to make lines (it's almost like dancing in Art!) after we read. It's a GREAT first day lesson for those squirrel-y K kids!

I had pre-written all my student's names in white crayon on 6"x18" pieces of black paper. I had little containers of cut scrap paper (approximately 1/2" x 1" but you could do square tiles or dots too!) on each table and had them use glue stick to trace the letters of their names and glue the mosaic pieces on. 

Because I hadn't done this project before and didn't time it correctly (AAAACK! Teacher's worst nightmare!) I quickly gave each of them a silver (!!!!!!!!) crayon and had them draw different lines and doodles from the book in the background. Clearly, spiral lines were the favorite!

The project? Total success. My kids didn't feel afraid to draw (because we didn't! I've come to realize that my Kindergartners were SOOO afraid to draw on the first day, hence one of the reasons I wanted to switch up my lesson) and everyone came away with a successful, colorful art project.

And I'm starting to learn their names. WIN!

What do you do on the first day besides talk about rules and procedures?!