Starry Night over Nashville!

Part of our districts art curriculum is to teach first graders about architecture. I found this lesson on Deep Space Sparkle Blog and gave it a Nashville twist. What better way then to relate it to what they know, here in Nashville that is the Batman Building!

Before constructing their own batman buildings, the students looked at Van Gogh's Starry Night and painted their own starry night backgrounds for their cityscapes...

After their paintings were dry, the following class students drew on black construction paper with white crayons to outline their buildings silhouette, cut them out, and paste them onto their beautiful paintings. Finally we also added some colored construction paper clippings for windows. Here are the results...

Find more on our school's artsonia site!



RIAEA

Today I got an email from the Rhode Island Art Educators Association about an update to their links of resources page on their website. I was excited to see that I am on their page as a lesson plan blogger! I'd like to thank them for including me on their site!

Check out this list! They really did a great job :) 

It's Been a while...

I know it has been a while! My appologies! This school year though has been pretty awesome so far. I'm loving my new classroom, I love that most of my kiddos have returned, and my new principal! Here is a quick little tip that I got from her...

I'm sure like me, many of you probably have an older paper cutter that has a wicked dull blade! I asked my principal about this and she suggested that I take sheets of aluminum foil and cut them with the dull blade. I had never heard of this but it worked great! Thanks Ms. Prentis!!!!

With a new classroom, I have more space to organize my stuff! Here are a few photos of my classroom and closet space!



A new year, A new LOOK!

So this year I am actually moving classrooms. Long story short, last year I was in a regular sized classroom, this year I'm in the room that is intended to be the art room. Last year it was under renovation from the Nashville May flooding. Anyway.... so there are these windows in my room that look out into the cafeteria. Going into the room I know that this will be a distraction to my students. Currently there is an exhibit at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts on Andy Warhol.... here is my solution to my windows!

Here's a thought...

Using Shout Color Catchers for watercolor painting.... I haven't tried it yet, but I surely will be soon!

Warhol Tissue Paper Flowers

Inspired by these Warhol prints...

 One of the projects I did for the Frist Center for the Visual Arts summer camp was a tissue paper print. In this instance I had pre-cut tissue paper flowers, had the students arrange the flowers on their white drawing paper and spray them using a water bottle. Once the papers were sprayed, the students pealed their flowers off of their papers, leaving the stain from the colored tissue. *** Make sure when doing this that your art tissue paper is the type that is bleeding.
Day 2 students go back into their artwork with a sharpie marker to draw details around their flowers. There are so many other things you could use to add grass and I do plan on altering this lesson some before bringing it into my classroom this fall, but I very much enjoyed the results! Also the students didn't much care for the outcomes of their works until the next day when they added the details- or at least I got that comment from one student that I remember... not every lesson is fabulous until it's finished!

Wigging Out Over Warhol!

So this summer I had the privilege of teaching at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in downtown Nashville. I had such a blast, especially since the most recent exhibition to come on display while I was teaching was Warhol Live. This gave me the opportunity to explore some fun Warhol inspired art lessons. I think my favorite was the Warhol Portrait lesson that I did...

First I took a photograph of each student, then using photoshop, I turned those photos into black and white, elevated the contrast, and finally posterized. Then I printed out 3 photocopies of each kiddo, and one copy on a transparency. The students got to color these photos first using the crayola get fx markers, then using crayons with watercolor, and finally they got to chose their own media for their third. I know coloring isn't the most artistic thing to do with the students, but these were 5-7 year olds and it gave them the opportunity to see the different types of media and the marks those media can make. Lastly on the transparencies, the first week's group I had them use acrylic paint on the back of the transparency, so the image still faced the same direction as the rest of the photocopies. I wasn't all that impressed with the results, so the second group I tried having them use oil pastels, and I liked the results better.

Teaching this summer was a great opportunity for me to experiment and inspire me to create lessons for my kiddos this fall. Here are some of the results!