Tape and Sticker Pictures

box of stickers

This was a super fun art project that I forgot to blog about earlier.  We did this at the summer art class I taught at my school.  Tape and sticker pictures.  I wrote about tape and sticker pictures earlier which I love to do with my 20 month old daughter.  The above picture is a box of stickers I made.  I took some sticky address labels, and color photocopied some patterned paper onto the sticky labels.  Then, I cut them into strips, so the stickers would be little squares and rectangles.  The kids used these stickers plus all types of colored tape to make pictures!  There is a wide range of colored tapes you can buy from art catalogs.  Thin, thick, medium sized, neon colored.. etc. I also had some alphabet rubber stamps that some of the kids chose to use on their pictures.  I didn't give the kids any restrictions, because I wanted this to be an exploration of their creativity... of what they could do with a line...how they could arrange stickers and colors to make a cohesive picture...  These were done by kids in grades K-4.

Art Teacher SHOWCASE!!

 For the next installment of Art Teacher Showcase, I am highlighting Ilse Verhoeven.  I have been reading her blog for about a year now. 

What is your blog?
1) http://artlessonsfrombelgium.blogspot.com/

Tell us about yourself and your teaching.
2) I'm a Belgian art-teacher. I have been teaching for 7 years. The last four years I have been teaching children with learning difficulties too. I love teaching them.
Finding projects for those children isn't always easy. It can't be too difficult, but I want to try and find projects they can finish with pride.
I try many different things, try to use new projects every year, try to motivate them as much as I can. I think many other teachers can find inspiration on my blog, just as I have found ideas on all other blogs I follow.

What is a favorite, tried-and-true lesson plan?
3) The simpsons Self-portrait lesson
http://artlessonsfrombelgium.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-role-in-simpsons.html

What is a book you recommend for art teachers?
4) my must have book: http://artlessonsfrombelgium.blogspot.com/2011/05/books-art-projects-and-max-at-museum.html

What is a favorite product in your classroom?
5) My favourite product is this:

I don't really know the English name for it, we call it 'Bister'. It is pouder from dried walnut husks. You have to put a bit of the pouder into water and let the pouder 'melt'.
You get a brownish water paint. It looks like old parchment color. I use it to get drawings looking old.
An example lesson is here: http://artlessonsfrombelgium.blogspot.com/search/label/hieroglyphs

With kind regards
Ilse
Art lessons from Belgium;


You can also be a part of art teacher showcase.  Here is what I posted earlier.
"Summer months are slow in blogland for teachers.  Most art teachers are taking a break from teaching all day.  Some are doing art camps or personal travels, but I know that in the summer months, not as many teachers post ideas, since we're not teaching full time now.  However, summer free time is a perfect time to research ideas, look at art eye candy, experiment and have fun!  So, what I would like to do to help you out in this summer is to feature different blogs.  Maybe one per week (or more if more people respond).  This will be awesome in several ways.  First, you will be able to get a taste of everyone's favorite art projects and visit new and different blogs.  Second, YOUR BLOG could (and will, if you submit a response to me) be featured and more people will visit you and see all the wonderful things you are doing.  We all make new friends and get new ideas for next year!  Sounds great?  Well it will be!!  So I need your help.  If you want to be featured on my blog, then answer the following questions.  Please email them to me at marciadotcom@yahoo.com.  Don't comment on this post with your answers.  If you do email me your answers, you will give me permission to post a couple images from your blog to include in the blog post (with of course, a link to your blog).  If you only feel like answering a few questions, that is fine too.  I would also be happy to feature your own personal artwork.

1.  The name and URL of your blog
2.  A brief description of your blog and why it is awesome.  Tell us where you live and work, what you do, etc. 
3.  An example of a tried and true art lesson favorite that you have taught. (could be in a workshop setting, school setting, or just with your own children or yourself, no exclusions here!)  Give me a link to a post about that lesson, so I can include a link and photo.
4.  A favorite, must-have art teacher or art technique book.
5.  Your favorite product for the art room.

So, what are you waiting for? Email me today about your blog!!"

Book Review 1

I love using children's books in my lessons about art.  Even the older kids like being read to.  It's a way to spark their interest in art, encourage a love of reading and make their learning connections much richer.  And, it doesn't really take that much time to incorporate a short story in the period.   I know class time for art is limited, so you want to make the most of every minute.  Consider just reading a portion of a book (if it is long), just discussing the pictures, or just summarizing long passages of text. 

This summer I went crazy and purchased a whole bunch (like 20) books from amazon.com which were used.  You can often find books for like 1 cent, plus of course, $3 shipping.  I found these books while reading the book Young at Art, which is also a great book for learning about the developmental stages of children's art.  I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about developing quality early childhood art experiences.  Young at Art focuses mostly on ages 0-5, which was very interesting to me since I have a toddler. Kindergartners could probably do many of these ideas from the book, but it is more geared towards preschool level.  This book is worth looking at for it's "books related to art" list alone in the back. 
Here's the book Young at Art:












 I decided I would share with you some of the books I purchased after seeing the lists in Young at Art.  This summer I will do a series of book reviews that you can use in your classroom.  They will be different, and hopefully new-to-you books than the usual art books I have seen used in lesson plans on the internet.  The first one is called The Orange Book, by Richard McGuire and I really love the vintage illustrations in this one.  Here are some pictures from the book:

The story is about 14 oranges and what happens to each of them.  The reason I really like this book, besides the cute illustrations, is that the whole book is colored in BLUE and ORANGE.  Which of course are COMPLEMENTARY colors!  So, I am planning to show this book to my students when I teach about complementary colors. 

Puppets!

Puppets were made during my summer art class!  For this project, I drew a puppet template, which the kids traced and cut out from felt.  They cut out 2 pieces, a front and back.  Then, I hot glued them together.  The kids then cut out other pieces of felt and added googly eyes to decorate their puppet.  They attached these pieces with Elmer's glue.  We added a large stick inside also to hold the puppet up.  We made these really fast because we ran out of time and the kids really wanted to make puppets.  I think the children did a great job!

Puppet in progress-- the glue should dry clear!

wi protests

I just discovered a new blog, O'Keefe's Backyard.... and she's another art teacher in Madison!  (where I live)  Since I'm not part of the public school district (I teach at a private school), I don't know all of the art teachers in my city.  One of the posts she made was about some of the political art that has been cropping up in Madison because of the bill stripping public workers of collective bargaining rights.  So, this in combination with the budget (which will slash millions of dollars from things such as Medicaid and public education, while giving tax breaks to businesses) has led to months of massive protests, people camping out and large groups of people trying to get senators and the governor recalled.  It's been a non stop circus here in Madison.  Anyways, what i was saying is that the post she made about political art reminded me about some of the pictures I took of some pretty decked out political cars.

If you want to see more pictures of the protests check out this flickr group.

Here's a video about some of the protests.

Madison Children's Museum

Daria and I went to the Madison Children's Museum today.  She was scared of pretty much everything.  I don't know why, maybe it was because it was loud and crazy there.  This was one thing she did really enjoy.  It would probably not be too hard to set up something like this at home or a preschool. 

Painting on a large window.
They had different color paints
spray bottles
and window wipers to play with!  So much fun for little ones!

http://www.theimaginationtree.com/2011/06/its-playtime-10-summer-time-fun.html

Art Teacher Showcase Installment #1-- Stephanie Clegg

This is my first installment of Art Teacher Showcase, where art teachers across the world will be sharing with you their favorite lesson and invite you to visit their blog.  If you would like to participate, see the bottom of this post.

The first art teacher is Stephanie Clegg!
My blog is called Mrs. Clegg's Class blog.  My blog started out as a place for students to find out information about assignments and due dates.  It has since involved into more of a showcase for parents, the community, and other teachers.  I teach at a rural high school in Utah.  I am the only art teacher, teaching students 9 - 12.

My favorite project from this past year was Altered books and more altered books.

Here are a couple images from her altered book lesson.  If you want to see more, you'll have to visit her blog.
These are gorgeous!

____________________________________________________________________________

You can also be a part of art teacher showcase.  Here is what I posted earlier.
"Summer months are slow in blogland for teachers.  Most art teachers are taking a break from teaching all day.  Some are doing art camps or personal travels, but I know that in the summer months, not as many teachers post ideas, since we're not teaching full time now.  However, summer free time is a perfect time to research ideas, look at art eye candy, experiment and have fun!  So, what I would like to do to help you out in this summer is to feature different blogs.  Maybe one per week (or more if more people respond).  This will be awesome in several ways.  First, you will be able to get a taste of everyone's favorite art projects and visit new and different blogs.  Second, YOUR BLOG could (and will, if you submit a response to me) be featured and more people will visit you and see all the wonderful things you are doing.  We all make new friends and get new ideas for next year!  Sounds great?  Well it will be!!  So I need your help.  If you want to be featured on my blog, then answer the following questions.  Please email them to me at marciadotcom@yahoo.com.  Don't comment on this post with your answers.  If you do email me your answers, you will give me permission to post a couple images from your blog to include in the blog post (with of course, a link to your blog).  If you only feel like answering a few questions, that is fine too.  I would also be happy to feature your own personal artwork.

1.  The name and URL of your blog
2.  A brief description of your blog and why it is awesome.  Tell us where you live and work, what you do, etc. 
3.  An example of a tried and true art lesson favorite that you have taught. (could be in a workshop setting, school setting, or just with your own children or yourself, no exclusions here!)  Give me a link to a post about that lesson, so I can include a link and photo.
4.  A favorite, must-have art teacher or art technique book.
5.  Your favorite product for the art room.

So, what are you waiting for? Email me today about your blog!!"

I just discovered two new blogs-- 2 posts from them

Paint Chips!  What a cool way to use PAINT CHIPS!  I might just use this next year when my kindergartners design castles.


Face Jugs!  I did a lesson very similar to this when I was student teaching.. we called them Face Vases.  I should try this lesson again. 

Stats

Does anyone else look at their stats and become confused by them?  One of my pages, the Clay Viking Ship lesson was viewed about 800 more times than any of the other lesson plan pages.  I didn't realize clay viking ships were so popular!  :)   Of course, the blog directory was a big hit, receiving the most page views. 

Superheroes on Canvas

In my summer art class, we painted superhero canvases.  The kids decided what superhero they would like to be and drew these on dry wax paper with markers and colored pencils.  Then I used gel medium (on the backs of the paper) to adhere their images to the canvas board.  Then, they used paints to paint a background.  I love them!!  There is a link to the dry wax paper at the bottom of this post.  The ages of my summer class was K-4th, mostly K and 1. 

The drawing has been glued to the canvas.

Starting to paint the background

Painting canvases

A superhero that can turn things into animals!

Bomb dude... ok, so this one is a bit violent.

Below is the wax paper we used.  As you can see it comes 2 boxes, 500 ct. each box, so this would last a LONG time.  I found out about this stuff by reading Art Projects for Kids.. she uses dry wax paper a lot.

Yay, Summer! Yay, Blogs!

I'm at 185 followers now!  So exciting.  Anyways, once I reach 200, I'm going to do a book giveaway.  This summer I need to have a garage sale and sort through all my books on my book shelf.  I, of course, have oodles of art books to get rid of, so I think I will offer a couple of them up here for a random follower!

Please also sign up for my ART TEACHER SHOWCASE.  Just send me info about your blog for these posts.  Don't be shy!  What YOU do is important and we can all learn something from each other.  The replies don't need to be long, and even just answering a couple questions will be fun for everyone.

"Summer months are slow in blogland for teachers.  Most art teachers are taking a break from teaching all day.  Some are doing art camps or personal travels, but I know that in the summer months, not as many teachers post ideas, since we're not teaching full time now.  However, summer free time is a perfect time to research ideas, look at art eye candy, experiment and have fun!  So, what I would like to do to help you out in this summer is to feature different blogs.  Maybe one per week (or more if more people respond).  This will be awesome in several ways.  First, you will be able to get a taste of everyone's favorite art projects and visit new and different blogs.  Second, YOUR BLOG could (and will, if you submit a response to me) be featured and more people will visit you and see all the wonderful things you are doing.  We all make new friends and get new ideas for next year!  Sounds great?  Well it will be!!  So I need your help.  If you want to be featured on my blog, then answer the following questions.  Please email them to me at marciadotcom@yahoo.com.  Don't comment on this post with your answers.  If you do email me your answers, you will give me permission to post a couple images from your blog to include in the blog post (with of course, a link to your blog).  If you only feel like answering a few questions, that is fine too.  I would also be happy to feature your own personal artwork.

1.  The name and URL of your blog
2.  A brief description of your blog and why it is awesome.  Tell us where you live and work, what you do, etc. 
3.  An example of a tried and true art lesson favorite that you have taught. (could be in a workshop setting, school setting, or just with your own children or yourself, no exclusions here!)  Give me a link to a post about that lesson, so I can include a link and photo.
4.  A favorite, must-have art teacher or art technique book.
5.  Your favorite product for the art room.

So, what are you waiting for? Email me today about your blog!!"  And because I can't have a picture-less post:

Art Camp Sketchbook

Art Teacher SHOWCASE!!

Summer months are slow in blogland for teachers.  Most art teachers are taking a break from teaching all day.  Some are doing art camps or personal travels, but I know that in the summer months, not as many teachers post ideas, since we're not teaching full time now.  However, summer free time is a perfect time to research ideas, look at art eye candy, experiment and have fun!  So, what I would like to do to help you out in this summer is to feature different blogs.  Maybe one per week (or more if more people respond).  This will be awesome in several ways.  First, you will be able to get a taste of everyone's favorite art projects and visit new and different blogs.  Second, YOUR BLOG could (and will, if you submit a response to me) be featured and more people will visit you and see all the wonderful things you are doing.  We all make new friends and get new ideas for next year!  Sounds great?  Well it will be!!  So I need your help.  If you want to be featured on my blog, then answer the following questions.  Please email them to me at marciadotcom@yahoo.com.  Don't comment on this post with your answers.  If you do email me your answers, you will give me permission to post a couple images from your blog to include in the blog post (with of course, a link to your blog).  If you only feel like answering a few questions, that is fine too.  I would also be happy to feature your own personal artwork.

1.  The name and URL of your blog
2.  A brief description of your blog and why it is awesome.  Tell us where you live and work, what you do, etc. 
3.  An example of a tried and true art lesson favorite that you have taught. (could be in a workshop setting, school setting, or just with your own children or yourself, no exclusions here!)  Give me a link to a post about that lesson, so I can include a link and photo.
4.  A favorite, must-have art teacher or art technique book.
5.  Your favorite product for the art room.

So, what are you waiting for? Email me today about your blog!!


_________________________________________________________________________________
Here is my example.
The name of my blog is Vivid Layers, because I tend to use bright colors in my artwork and I love the look of layers in art.  There are many layers of learning in education and art is an important layer in a child's foundation of knowledge. 

I teach at a school for academically gifted and talented students.  It is a private school in Madison, WI.  I love teaching at this school and the kids are wonderful.  I work with grades K-6, although the school goes up to 8th grade.  My students have art for 40 minutes, twice per week.

One of my favorite art lessons this year was the Pacific Northwest Coast paper mache masks.  with the 3rd and 4th grades.  They were so much fun and the kids LOVED it.  We got so many compliments on these masks.

A favorite art product for Crayola Color Switcher markers-- the kids love them and they look awesome!












A favorite art book of mine:  Beautiful Oops!

Art Camp 1st Day

I am teaching 2 days of art camp in the afternoons this week.  On Monday, one of the projects we made were sun tiles.  I picked up some glossy ceramic tiles from the hardware store.  They looked at a few pictures of Mexican clay suns and they sketched their sun idea on a piece of paper.  Then, using pencil and sharpie markers, they drew their sun on the tile.  On the back of the tile I superglued a picture hanger.  I also sprayed the pictures with a sealant, but I think you could probably leave the sealant off.  The ages of the kids were mostly Kindergarten and 1st grade, with a few older kids as well.  I love these!  A perfect summer project.

Sketching the sun

Ceramic Sun Tile

Picture of a Mexican clay sun

Picture hanger glued to back