Friday, August 5, 2011

Thinking about the School Year Ahead

Now that August is here, my mind begins to think about the year ahead in the Art Room. I haven't yet gone into school to unpack my order but I'm thinking of my word for the year. Yeap. I select a word or phrase I want to focus on for the year and I link my lessons back to this. In previous years my words have been, collaborate, a pictures worth a thousand words, connections, 5 senses, express it ....oh, I can't think of all of them but you get the idea. This year I'm considering Fearless Artist, Experiment or Collaborate.....I like all three.
If anyone's out there, which one do you like? Do you use words to help focus your year?

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Cake Boss in the ARt Room!

I like to celebrate just about everything. So its no big surprise that I honor our end of year with special projects for each grade level. This past week I just completed Parent ARt Day for Kindergartners and Tye Dye T-Shirt Days for First Grade. For second grade we celebrate by creating my version of Rainbow Cake! Here are a few images spotlighting the Rainbow Cake activity.


Kids read, measure, mix the ingrediants for the batter. We use a simple white cake mix.


The batter is then divided into 6 bowls. We review the primary colors and how to mix primaries to achieve the secondary colors. 


No. We don't lick the bowls! We talk about how raw eggs could make you sick.


I do the layering of each color explaining that you don't want to mix up the colors. Also a great year end lesson to reinforce ROY G BV.....I know I didn't include indigo. I like to only focus on the 6 we need to know now but do tell them that they will learn more in say 4th or 5th grade.


All layered and finished! Now into the oven. We make the cake one morning and then next art class we learn about cake decorating as a career & art form (I like to continually remind students that are is all around us and doesn't only happen with paper and paints!)


Everyone has a chance to try their hand at decorating with frosting. Just like drawing, frosting designs take practice.....but you can eat your mistakes.


This cake was made in a rectangle pan.....I only have so many circular pans & I have 5 second grade classes! It was sooo good and a GREAT way to reinforce art concepts, infuse math & language arts and demonstrate another way art is all around us!




Wednesday, May 11, 2011

ARty Updates

Oh, boy. Keeping up two blogs is hard...and I certainly haven't been good about this one. However, I am making a hugh effort to do better here. I've got a game plan and I'm ready to go. I sure hope who ever is out there reading this will stay tuned....I promise, I will have more posts here.

For now, why not check out the two pages I just created to share. One is crayon cookies and the other is felting. Both are awesome activities and keep even middle school students engaged. Hope you try them. Please let me know if you need clarification. Felting pictures will be coming shortly to make the process easier to follow.

Thanks!

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Winter Self-Portraits


First graders created these awesome self portraits that are dressed for some wintery fun! We included shadows since today, February 2nd, is Groundhog's Day! I don't want that little guy to see his shadow for six more weeks of winter but these portriats look rather 3-D with them.


Our winter break is only 3 weeks away and my next project has to move a long rather quickly. I've planned a 3-D Heart project that I've done in the past. Comes out awesome but takes a bit of time to complete with all the details we include. I wish I could invent a way to make paint dry faster!