Miss French Fry Makes Art

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Thiebaud Takes the Cake.

In a previous post here, I blogged a bit about my Kinders' gumballs based on Wayne Thiebaud, our previous artist of the month.

I was just trying to clean up my camera and up popped some Second Grade Cakes and Third Grade Ice Cream Sundaes based on Thiebaud's works. These bad boys look delish!

Second grade cakes were done with pencil and chalk on gray or blue paper...

The Third Grade ice cream sundaes used a mix of watercolor paints, chalk, and modge podge. It's hard to photograph the modge podge, but each sundae was painted with a coat to give it a "glassy" bowl effect.

Gosh, after all those sweet treats, I am off to eat my remaining box of Girl Scout cookies. Goodbye New Year's resolution of eating healthy. It's fine though, I taught Kindergarten Art today, so I totally earned these cookies.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

This is why I love Kindergarteners.

Don't know about you, but I LOVE teaching Kindergarteners. Now don't get me wrong, after those kids leave I look like a cast member of The Walking Dead, but these kids are awesomely exhausting and exciting.

Here's how today's Kindergarten lesson started:

Miss French Fry: Hi Kindergarteners! Please criss cross applesauce on the rug.
Kindergartener: Can I go to the bathroom? I was so excited to come to Art, I didn't finish wiping.

What the WHAT?!

For this project, we focused on perspective which is a tough concept to convey to little 5 and 6 year olds. I whipped together this large mural below to help kiddos understand how objects change in size the farther they get. The Kinders loooved getting the chance to stick on the smileys in their appropriate place.

We also read The House in the Night by Susan Swanson. This book is a fabulous and beautifully illustrated story with illustrations that clearly demonstrate perspective in a Kinder-friendly way.

Instead of homes, we created some penguin-scapes. Kinders had to create at least 6 penguins, 2 HERE, 2 NEAR, and 2 FAR little birdies.

This little artist worked hard to write our Art Smart words in his penguin-scape.

Now this little artist below always signs his name as JAKE!, so, naturally I call him "Jake Exclamation Point."

He made a point to show me that he took "artistic license" with his penguins, giving one of them "spectacles," and another one saying "SQUAWK." Scout's honor, the kid actually said "artistic license" and "spectacles."

That's all for now, but for goodness sakes Kinder friends, I love that you're excited to come see me, but finish wiping next time. And how 'bout ya throw in a hand-washing too, okay?

Thursday, February 20, 2014

My Man, Magritte.

So, round 1 of the dress like a crazy commenced today...

Not quite doppelgangers, but I think we look pretty related, right? Now, my outfit doesn't come close to my blog crush, but I do what I can sans sewing machine. Hear that hubs?! My birfday will be here soooon.

Lemme tell you what, teaching with an apple in front of my face all day was tricky. There were many a moment where I ended up rocking the backwards hat look, circa 1990. Yeah, that's right Justin Bieber, you belong in the 90's.

Or maybe just not in the United States circa any era, mmmkay?

We kicked off the lesson reading Dinner at Magritte's, which unfortunately is out of print, so track it down if you can! The author/illustrator does a fabulous job taking inspiration from Magritte and Dali's work, both of whom are characters in the story.

Time Transfixed, 1938

We also looked at a LOT of Magritte's pieces. My third graders couldn't get enough. So many smarty arty students couldn't wait to contribute to our class discussion of his work. When they found out that Time Transfixed was here in Chicago, you woulda thought I told them Bieber was visiting our Art Room. I had FOUR different parents come up to me after school to tell me that their kiddos couldn't wait to check it out. Yep, that's right kiddos, get off your sofas and put down your handheld electro boxes, and go look at some art!