Mouse Color Wheels

This has been a project four class periods in the making...much longer than I intended to spend on it, but as we got into it, I changed my mind as to how it was going to be finalized.  Originally, I was just going to read Mouse Paint with my K-3 12:1:1 class and then have them make mice in the primary and secondary colors, and then place them in a circle to create the color wheel.

But then...a light bulb turn on in my head and I thought..."Why not create a color wheel based on the art in the Frederick book?!"...and ta-da!  This painted collage project was born!

This is my example of the project.

So, on the first day of this project, we read Mouse Paint.  This was a good review of primary and secondary colors for those who have had me for two years already, and a good, quick way to introduce them to the new students in the class.

On that first day, we first colored this worksheet which I found through Pinterest.  Another great example of incorporating Common Core and color sight words for these students.

Also on the first day, I gave students a piece of manila tag board that I had split into six squares for them.  They painted the first three squares the primary colors (good practice for these students to paint the outline and then paint inside their lines) and then mixed the secondary colors on a plate to paint the other three squares.

On the second day, we read the book Frederick.  I had students then paint a piece of manila paper with white and black paint.  We tried to recreate the look of the rocks in the Frederick book.  We also used paint scrapers to add some cool texture to the paint. (In my first year of teaching, I actually did a Frederick project using a worksheet from the Leo Lionni website, which is where I got the mouse pattern from for this project.  You can see those projects here on Artsonia.)

After we cleaned up the paint, we had about 10 minutes left on the second day so I showed students the video of how Leo Lionni made the mice for his books.

On the third day, we drew our rocks and boulders on the back of the grey painted paper and cut them out.  I had the students glue them to white tag board.  Then, they started tracing the mouse shape (like Lionni's version) on each of their six painted colors.  They cut those out too and placed them in the order of the color wheel on top of their rocks.

Finally, on the last day, the students added legs, arms, ears and eyes, just like Lionni did in his video.  This was also good fine motor skill practice for some students to cut out those small pieces and glue them.

Getting ready for YAM!

Yup, it's that time of year again!  YAM!  Last year I really went all out with a trivia question every day, a spirit week, and two big dress-up days.  Unfortunately, this year I feel like I can't really outshine that (due to time constraints at home ;) ), but do some other exciting things instead!  So, here's a sneak peek at my plans for YAM 2014!

Firstly, I'm going to do spirit days on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday of the month.  Here's the calendar I just made that will be going home with every student:

Second, I'm hoping that my Art Night will make up for the lack of trivia questions this year.  The 12th is our spring conferences night, and since I never have to schedule parent-teacher conferences, I figure this would be a good opportunity to get some parents involved with making art with their children.  If you remember from last year, I did a similar thing with the teaching faculty during YAM.  I plan on using my posters and leftover materials (the small canvases) for this art night.  Generally, the spring conferences tend to have poor attendance across the board, so I will either have enough materials for who shows up, or it will help bring in more parents to school!

The 28th is going to be a big dress-up day.  Last year I had great participation from faculty and students for my "dress like an artist" day, so I'm hoping for equal enthusiasm for "dress like an artwork" day!  I have enough leftovers from last year to give out prizes to the best dressed students, so I'm hoping this will be some incentive to get students involved in the day!

Studio Art: Ceramic Unit Part 2: Pinch

In hindsight, I supposed I probably should have done this project before the slab project...next year.  For this project, I was first looking for perfection.  I know, I know...perfection in art class?  For this, it was doable and every single student succeeded in my opinion!  For this two-part sphere challenge, students were asked to create the most perfect sphere out of two pinch pots.

The first step was to make two pinch pots of about the same size and score and slip them together.

Next, students used a ruler to slap and shape their hollow ball of clay.

Some rolled their spheres on the table to help smooth the surface, others used a wooden rib tool to scrape and smooth the edge.  I did not encourage the use of an elephant ear sponge and water to smooth the spheres.  The only students who used that as an option were students whose clay started to crack towards the end.

 Once everyone completed their spheres...we invited the administrators into the classroom to judge them.  This is the challenge part.  I offered, to the winner, the choice of being able to opt out of a quiz, a homework assignment or for me to buy them a king size candy bar.  Amazingly, I think both winners opted for the candy bar!  Since all of the students did such an awesome job, I did buy some bags of candy and planned on giving them a free day before February break (of which we ended up having a snow day...go figure!).

Students lined up their spheres on a number so the administrators could pick the winner from each class.

The "part-two" of this project is this: students had to carve a non-objective line design into the surface of their sphere.  We will glaze these using the glazes I have specifically for red clay. ***It's also really important to note that before these were set out to dry, students had to poke at least one hole with a needle tool through the surface of the sphere.  This way, the air inside as a route to escape so the spheres don't all blow up in the kiln!***

Part three of the ceramic unit has not been started yet...upon return from February break, students will glaze these projects for firing and then we will work on the last project of the ceramics unit, coils!