Monster Draw!

Since today was Halloween...and the kids were hyped up on candy from their classroom parties, and we had a Halloween parade at the end of the day, I ended up forgoing my planned lessons with my 2nd graders and teaching them how to play the dice roll drawing games I have for free time.  In lieu of Halloween, I went with the Monster Draw that I found on Pinterest!  After the students drew their first monster, they had to either do a second Monster or add a background!  This kept them busy all class, on task, and working in groups! (Here is a second Monster Draw sheet!)

I think this one is my favorite!

Happy Halloween!

The district I work at is very lucky because we are still allowed to celebrate Halloween, Christmas, etc. Every Halloween the Elementary grade levels have a parade of costumes in our big gym and all their family comes to watch. I went as "Arachna-Woman"! Or spider woman to the little kids!

Art Club & Art Fundraisers

Today I finalized my list for my after school art club and I will be beginning it next week!  How many of you do an art club and what kinds of projects do you do?

This is the third year I'm doing art club and this year, I'm going to really try and plan some good projects.  In the past, I have kind of "flown by the seat of my pants," but I need to start making this program a little more stable, reliable and advanced from regular art class.

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These are the two things we deifnitely do each year...the first is that we use boondoggle (plastic lacing) to create bracelets and key chains to sell to make money.  The teacher before me used to do bake sales, but to me, that doesn't really fit well with art (unless we were making creatively frosted items!).  Sooooo, I decided to have the kids do boondoggle fund raisers...we usually do 2-3 sales a year during lunch time.  We make a variety of sizes so the younger kids can afford them as well.  The range from 25 cents all the way up to $2.50 (bracelets).  As we start making these, I'll post pictures of our creations!  The kids get really into making big spiral and zig zag key chains and the metal cuff bracelets.

The other art project that is an art club staple is glass art.  The summer after my first year of teaching, I was able to use the extended day grant our school has to purchase a small glass kiln and supplies for fusing and slumping glass.  I always let everyone in my art club create a 6" glass plate to take home. We also use a microwave kiln to create glass jewelry or key chains.  (Last year we created jewelry for a silent auction to make money...it wasn't as successful as our fundraiser the first year, but we still did pretty good. A lot of people complained about how heavy the glass pendants were...) If you do any fundraising for your art club/art department, what do you do?

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This is what I tell parents about how I choose students for art club.  I come right out and tell them that I look for more advanced students in terms of artistic ability.  I look for mature students who are willing to come every Wednesday during the school year from November until the end of the year.  Students must be able to stay on top of their classwork and their homework.

Students will lose art club membership if they start doing poorly in class because they aren't completing homework. They will be asked to give up their spot if they continuously miss art club without a valid excuse (doctors appointment, family emergency, etc.), if they bully others, have inappropriate behavior on the late bus, and so on and so forth.  I usually have kids drop out before they get that far!

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The first year I did art club we did a major fund raising project at the end of the year the night of the art show. We spent about 4 days after school painting bowling pins to look like famous art.  This had to have been the BEST project ever!  The kids loved painting a weird object like a bowling pin, and they did a really nice job recreating famous art and understanding their artist's painting style!  You can head over to Artsonia to see everyone's bowling pins, but here are some examples! (These are all done by 5th and 6th graders...each bowling pin auctioned for at least $15-$20, the highest one went for $55! We made almost $900 by auctioning off almost 34 bowling pins...) Can you guess which artists they modeled these after?

Anyone have any suggestions to take better photos of sculptures?  I have a really poor set-up, not professional at all!  What I really need is a more professional camera for Christmas...hint hint hubby! ;)

1st Grade Pastel Pumpkin Patches

Well, since we had a half day because of Hurricane Sandy, I only have one finished project to share with you instead of three!  Here is the final project for my realistic pumpkin unit with my 1st graders.  This is the first time I've taught them how to use oil pastels and I did a brief introduction to depth with them.  Most of them understood the idea of using multiple horizon lines to make a hilly scene, but most did not do so well with large pumpkins in the foreground and small pumpkins in the background.  That's okay though, because our next unit will concentrate more on depth!

This is just one 1st grade class that has finished.  We had a lot of students absent today (about 5 from this class alone) because of the early dismissal.  At the end of the week I'll share more after my other class finishes them up!

 

For a first attempt with pastels, I'm very happy!  We have to work on not doing "scribble coloring" but otherwise, these are pretty nice looking!

A hurricane on the east coast???

This week ought to be interesting! We may have a snow day from a hurricane! Hurricane Sandy is making her way up the coast and is supposed to be in NYC by tomorrow evening.

Currently, the schools in St. Lawrence county are being urged to close school early tomorrow to make sure kids can be bussed home safely. Not really sure if I should be stocking up on water and batteries! I guess only tomorrow can tell if Sandy continues her path up through Pennsylvania and New York!

Chihuly Sculptures-2nd Grade

Whoo! There are finally done! We have spent 4 class periods on there...2 Ti color and 2 cutting and melting ad gluing each student's sculpture together! The pictures definitely don't do them justice...

Here's what we did:
1. We drew a large organic shape and colored it using right colors and patterns like Chihuly.
2. On a second piece of Shrinky Dibk, we drew 4-5 lines to make strips and we drew a smaller organic shape. Then we colored them in as well.
3. I called students up one at a time to melt their sculpture and glue them together. I ran the heat gun and glue gun, but when we glued them together, I had individual conversations with students about placement and composition in the sculptures.

Finally onto the next project! (I am posting this from my phone do pardon my pictures if the are out of order...I will link my site reference when I get home from school and have access to Pinterest!)

6th Grade Day of the Dead Masks

Finally!  I can share my 6th grader's Day of the Dead masks!  These turned out pretty great!  Some really wanted to go with a Halloween skull over a Mexican Day of the Dead design...but nevertheless, I had some really great craftsmanship on these!  I had the students fill out the rubric before I graded them, and they were pretty honest and dead on with their grades compared to my grades...which shows they understand what they were learning about and they understand when they aren't working to their potential!  Check back onto this previous post to see the rubric I used to grade these assignments...

I think next year, if I do this exact project again, I will try out using tin foil that was suggested to make the mask forms more of a skull shape...I think that's the only thing that could have made these better!