Arty Party.

Happy Hump Day and my oh my, what a week it's been!  Some of my classes this week have earned an Arty Party, so I've been test-running Art Centers and what a blast it's been.

In my Art Room, each class is expected to demonstrate our BIG FOUR which are: Be Safe, Be Respectful, Be Ready to Learn, and Be a Problem Solver (and the Bonus: Don't Be a Booger, juuuuust kidding).  If a class shows these positive behaviors during their Art class, they will earn a "crayon" for our crayon closet.

The goal is to earn 9 crayons mostly in ROYGBIV order with the inclusion of pink, black, and white at the end.

Back in the ol' days when I was a Kindergarten teacher, I loved running centers in my room for both Math/Science and Literacy, so I thought giving it a shot in the Art Room could be fun.

I put together an Art Center box for each of my tables...

Each table has about 8-10 minutes with the assigned center activity.  When my teacher timer goes off, they clean, wait for the "switch" cue from me, and off they go to their next center.

Art War is my teacher-created version of Pictionary.  The student in the picture is drawing an illustration of "vegetarian."

Art Terms Tower (aka Jenga), features art specific vocabulary.  Students reach in blindly, pick a block, and if they can define the word on the block, they can play their block.  If not, then the block goes into the discard pile.

Okay, next one up is the Mystery Box.  I had picked up so many awesome and different supplies at this year's NAEA conference (woot woot!), that I was at a loss of what to do with them.  Enter stage right: MYSTERY BOX.

The kids love this activity as there are some super cool tools in the box.  Plus, the inclusion of adjectives and nouns makes it at least somewhat academic, right right?

Roll a Haring and Roll a Picasso I found in the lovely land of Pinterest.  Thank you Pinterest gods!

Hmmm, I don't have any photos of Scratch Art, but that box is filled with 6" x 6" pieces of scratch art paper, which students can decorate and draw into to their little hearts' content.

And the last one is Doodle Dice.  I painted over some old dice and slapped on some line doodles.  Students take turns rolling the dice to create their own piece of abstract doodle-y art.

What do you do for students that reach their goal in your Art Room?  I would LOVE to hear!

Super Succulents and Shoppin'.

After my recent Spring Break trip to The Land of the Cholla Cacti, I've been on a major succulent kick.

I can't get enough and the hubs was so tired of hearing me talk incessantly about succulents and saying the word succulent again and again and again, that he said, "Why don't you get your own succulents?"

So I did.

I picked up all of the pots above at my local Goodwill.  The milk glass one is super cool (because of course I love all things milk glass) and the teeny pitcher was made in West Germany.

Snagged these super succulents at the Home Depot and repotted these bad boys in the thrifted vases.

These days my house is starting to border on crazy plant lady, but nothing beats a little extra oxygen, especially after a day of inhaling Sharpie fumes.

Also picked up a couple of these thangs below:

My inner Dane comes out whenever I see blue and white china...eeesh. 

This little bronze music box was a super cool find.  It works really well and definitely has a Curtis Jere vibe about it. 

 And of course, more milk glass and wood boxes.  I can never pass those up.

That's all for now Arties.  Happy Thrifting to you!

Fab Flamingos.

I blogged a ways back about some of our Dali projects in development, one of which was my Second graders' project based on Dali's The Elephants.

The Elephants, 1948

I was really trying to drill home our two Art Smart words "exaggerate" and "overlap" with this project, so I wore the words every class for the entire lesson to remind the students to use these techniques in their final products.  After all, no lesson is complete without some weird accessory attached to me, right?

After looking at some examples of Dali's works, I "read" my students Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle.  Now I say "read" because the book is wordless, but we could not get enough of the story.  As a lover of all things flamingo, I am in LOVE with this book.  My students loved narrating it as we flipped through it together and studied the flamingo's poses.

We got to work creating the backgrounds with tempera and salt first, then created painted paper with two tones of light and dark for the flamingo bodies and wings.

Next class, we used eyedroppers with watered down black tempera to create the exaggerated Dali-esque legs.

 

Then we cut out the bodies, beaks, wings, etc. and glued them down carefully as the black leggies were still pretty wet.

Final details of google eyes and feathers were added last.

Love the legs on this one!

Have a Fabulously Flamingo Friday!

Rockin' Rauschenberg with First Grade.

I adore all things Robert Rauschenberg and after my recent travels to Palm Springs (post the NAEA convention in San Diego), I got to check out a few of his pieces.

Now, I didn't snap any photos while at the museum as it was verboten, but he was one interesting dude.

Rauschenberg was born in 1925, but didn't start delving into art until 1947 while serving as a Marine.  He became disenchanted with the Abstract Expressionists and wanted to find his own style, so he started experimenting with found objects in his work.

Monogram, 1959

Monogram (see above) was one of Rauschenberg's first combines using strange found objects to create an assembled piece.  The work consists of a stuffed goat, a tire, a tennis ball, part of a shoe, and paint.

Rebus, 1955

I also shared some images of works like Rebus, which are good examples of Rauschenberg integrating 3-dimensional objects into 2-dimensional paintings.  My First grade students loved trying to spy what objects and materials Rauschenberg used in his pieces.

Now, as you have gathered by now, true to the spirit of art teachers everywhere, I am a serious hoarder.  I recently acquired a large donation of mat board pieces from my aunt-in-law, who snagged them from a local frame shop.  They came in all different colors and textures, and I pulled out the scraps with the most texture for our project.

So, I chopped up these pieces into our "canvases" and we got busy with our "combines."  Sorry guys, no stuffed goats or tires in our pieces!

I also collect the castoff papers from the teacher copier in my hoarding closet(s), and we used these to create four stick bridges.   The first graders had to roll up their papers into little pretzel sticks, dot down some glue, and then sing the first verse of "The Star Spangled Banner" every time they were gluing both sides to make sure the sticks stuck.

Needless to say, I have never heard so many strange versions of our national anthem.  "By my dog's early light" and "the Skittles still screaming" were some of the many gems I overheard.

We used only the primary colors of our tempera paints to first paint our backgrounds, then our pretzel bridges.  Mixing AND weaving in one project??? Yeahhhh buddy!

                                                

Next class, we wove the following into our looms:

How do ya like those mad technology skills?  Yep, that's right, nothing beats a whiteboard, scotch tape, and some visual examples.

                                             

Some students chose to do more than 2-3 of each objects, which was a-okay with me.

This little guy was so inspired by our singing of "The Star Spangled Banner" whilst gluing, that he went all Jasper Johns up in this Art Room and incorporated the flag into his painting.

This little artist below didn't quite "get" the weaving component, but his final piece definitely has a Rauschenberg assemblage vibe about it, don't ya think?

Until next time, rock your Rauschenbergs!