Tessellations: Art and Math Teachers coming together

Last week was exploration week for the theme based around the Adventure Science Museum trip. Leslie Franklin the math teacher and I collaborated to teach the students about pattern and tessellations.

First we watched a video on how to create tessellations from crystal. This video was really well done and broke it down really well for the students.

Some of the students did a really great job with this assignment. Others didn't do so great. This is a difficult lesson to do with students with special needs, but you sometimes don't know what they are capable of until they try.

Monet Waterlilies

Hello all! While most of you are enjoying your summer vacations I continue to teach all summer long. (Needless to say I am very much looking forward to heading to Belmont for the TN Arts Academy for my "vacation.") Any who... This year our summer schedule has been redone and we are doing this quite differently. Each week the students enjoy field trips to all sorts of places such as the zoo, wave country, adventure science center and so forth. Each week is a theme based around the field trip for the week- and the teachers/ aid are teamed up and the students divided into 5 classes that are an hour and 5 minutes long instead of 10- 35 minute class periods. New classes are more life skills/ fun based such as cooking, gardening, swimming, art, ect.

This week the students went to the Waynesboro community pool which apparently is the awesomest pool with all kinds of slides and such, so this week is "water week." In art class we created Monet's Waterlilies and have also done some paper marbling with shaving cream. Check out the results.

 Monet's Waterlilies

Materials: Coffee filters, markers, a bucket of water, crayons, water colors, glue, green construction paper (lily pads) and scissors

Shaving Cream Paper Marbling

 

Paper Marbling using Shaving Cream and Liquid Watercolors (or food coloring)

After smoothing the shaving cream over a lunch tray we dribbled a few splashes of liquid water color on top (limiting the students to two colors!) The students then used the back end of paint brushes to make their line marbling patterns. A comb would also work for this step.

A piece of white drawing paper is laid over the shaving cream and gently massaged. When the paper is pulled off the pattern isn't visible yet.

Using Popsicle sticks we scrapped the shaving cream off the paper immediately after pulling the print and the design is magically revealed!

The completely scrapped paper!

The results were amazing!

A Sneak Peak from CHEEKwood!

This past Saturday I went to Cheekwood Botanical Gardens for the first time since Chihuly's exhibition has opened up and OH MY GOODNESS!!! The show is absolutely breath taking! This week for the first week of "Summer School" the students field trips are to the zoo- and the week is "Nature Week." For nature week I'm going to teach the students about Chihuly's artworks at Cheekwood and a little bit about man made versus nature made objects and how they interact with one another. I'm so excited! Then the last week in July I'm taking a group of students to Cheekwood one day and to the Frist the next couple of days following. The students are going to be so psyched as well!

Check out this lesson from Dick Blick on Dale Chihuly I haven't tried it yet but am looking forward to doing it later on in the summer with my Kiddos!

http://www.dickblick.com/lesson-plans/classroom-chihuly/

Ms. Malone's Art Room has already tried it! Check out her results here

Some days you just want to SCREAM!

Recently I saw this lesson on Artsonia. I used the Scream by Edvard Munch to demonstrate a taste of perspective to some of my students- and others just had fun making the face and exploring expression in their versions of the painting. When working with students with special needs, the most basic level of perspective that you can teach them is the idea that when things are closer to you that they are larger then when they are farther way. This is illustrated by the fence that runs diagonally through Munch's painting. I will be posting most of these artworks by the students as it is Artsonia's rule to not post student artwork that depicts a photograph of the students themselves in it... for security purposes.

                                              

Super Sunflowers!

Inspired by Vincent VanGogh's Sunflowers, the students of KDS create their own versions of sunflowers for the classroom bulletin board. This lesson is an altered version of Nasco's Lesson that I got the plan for from their booth at the convention this year. My students colored using oil pastels and glued beans in the centers to mimic sunflowers' seeds. This lesson is particularly good for students with special needs because it helps them work on their fine motor skills when handling the beans! They turned out wicked cute!

Nashville News- The good the bad and the hopeful!

Fellow Art teachers and bloggers!

As many of you may already know, last week Nashville and many other Tennessee counties found themselves underwater from the storms that passed through us. Some folks had minor damages and others lost everything. I myself wasn't affected directly but know many friends that were. This week I did what I could by cleaning out my closet and took about 4 garbage bags full of clothes to a community/ donation center.

Many of you may know of the Houses for Haiti project and how it has raised lots of money for those affected by the earthquake down in Haiti. Now those same teachers in Florida who started that project have renamed the project Volunteer Village Houses, as TN is the volunteer state- http://www.volunteervillages.org/ 

If you have the resources and the opportunity to do this project with your students please help Nashville! Send your contributions to the Red Cross's Nashville Chapter.

On a completely different topic- Dale Chihuly will still be showcasing his works in Nashville beginning today at the Frist Center, later on in the month at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens, and on the 21st the show that was going to be set up at the Symphony is now going to go on over at TPAC- including his lecture! I hope those of you locally will try and make it out to see these amazing works of art! Check out 

http://chihulyinnashville.com/

Chihuly Sea Blue and Green Tower now @ the Frist!