Books and Question about Kiln Shelves

This week, I received two books that had a few of my activities published in them!  I responded to a call for lesson plans by Gryphon House and was happy when mine were chosen.  These look like fun books for a pre-school or kindergarten teacher.  The activities are geared for early childhood.  I have been seeking out various outlets for publishing, since I have always wanted to be a writer.  It's also fun to get free copies of the publications and it's a thrill to see your name in print!  When I was little, my dream was to interview celebrities for magazines! 

An activity about rocks.

What can you do with a dot?  You may recognize this project... I recently posted about it on my blog.

This is a weaving project I do with 1st graders, but it can be easily adaptable for younger kids.

And now a question for teachers who are knowledgeable about kilns....

I have a kiln shelf that has glaze stuck to it.  I have tried scraping it off to no avail.  I simply cannot scrape anymore off.  Do you have any suggestions?  Is this shelf a total loss or is there something else I can do to save it?

<------------------- my poor shelf.

And now a happy picture for you!  My niece Sonia and my daughter Daria playing with bubbles.

Kindergarten Rainbow Fish Sculptures

First, DON'T FORGET TO ENTER THE GIVEAWAY FOR THE PICK AND DRAW GAME!!  I will be picking a winner on April 1.

Rainbow Fish is an awesome kids book to go with fish art projects.  The kindergartners made rainbow fish sculptures from water bottles.  I learned about this idea at the NAEA conference.  The lady who presented it did it with large 2 liter bottles, but I used little water bottles instead.

Steps:
1.  Cut off the bottoms of the water bottles ahead of time for the kids.  Cut squares of tissue paper for the kids to use.

2.  The kids used paper mache glue paste (you could use mod podge or diluted glue as well) to adhere the tissue paper flat to the bottle.

3.  Next class period, kids used construction paper to make fins.  We glued these with O'Glue bottles (or regular Elmer's glue would work fine.)  Then, they cut eyes from white construction paper and used black marker to draw a circle in the white eyeball.  They glued on sequins to decorate the fish.

4.  As the kids were working I had them choose tissue paper, which I stuffed and hot glued into the back of the bottle.  I flattened the end of the waterbottle to kind of make it more narrow and fish-like and stapled the ends together.  Some of the staples were not sticking well, so for those, I just hot glued them.

5.  Poke a hole in the top with a pointy stick/awl, attach a bent paper clip and tie a string for hanging!

Here is the book Rainbow Fish, in case you aren't familiar with it.  We are also making 2-d fish pictures which will be finished after Spring Break

Books I'm Loving Now

I love to read.  Of course I do, I'm a teacher.
Here are some of the books I'm loving now!

I can't say enough good things about Lynda Barry's collages and drawings.  They are just so fun and chock- full of inspiration.  She came to Madison recently to do some artist-in-residency programming and I am kicking myself now that I did not get tickets to her lecture.  Apparently, she brought Matt Groening with her to speak!!!  He is the creator of the Simpsons.




When Wanderers Cease to Roam is a delightful book full of lovely, airy watercolor sketches and drawings.


Street Sketchbook Journeys is fantastic if you are into edgy, urban, graffiti art.  I could see photocopying some of the pages for use with older kids at school.  I wouldn't leave the book out for full perusal, but bits and pieces would be inspiring.




Next up, is The Pulse by Seth Apter.  Seth is a really great guy who has participated in many mixed media collaborative projects and has a very active blog.  Seth is also a psychiatrist, which is a fascinating combination of careers.  I think art and psychology go hand-in-hand.  One of his projects is going to be in the Featuring Magazine which I am working on.

Seth had a call for artists and had a list of questions to answer and prompts to create artwork for.  There is a wide array of answers to the questions in the book.  One of my quotes is in the book and my blog is listed in the back, which is pretty cool.  I'm not going to lie, I'm bummed my artwork wasn't selected, but I suppose there was only so much room in the book...  keep trying, right?  Anyways, the book turned out lovely and it was fun to see everyone's responses to the questions. 


And finally, another book I am loving now is Jesus for President.  There are photographs and art scattered throughout the book which makes for a meaningful and interesting read.  If you are a Christian (or want to learn more about who Jesus was) and interested in how politics fits in with his teachings, this is a very interesting book.  How do we live in the modern times when war is ever-present?  What about social justice issues?  The first half of the book is about the history of Jesus and the church and the second half of the book leads into the present day.  I'm not through with it yet, but I'm reading it slowly, savoring and trying to understand each chapter.

Chinese Calligraphy-- 3rd grade

The 3rd graders have been learning about China in their social studies class.  They practiced brush painting with Chinese calligraphy brushes.  These were made into a little accordian book.  Watercolor painted covers were glued on to the front and back.

Beautiful Oops

If you haven't seen Beautiful Oops yet, you must find a copy and look at it.. It's my favorite book ever!





The first graders looked at this book in class and then they were presented with a creative challenge.  Each child chose a piece of colored paper with a hole in it.  Holes of various sizes were pre-cut into papers of various colors.  They had to figure out how to turn this "oops" piece of paper into a work of art.  The process was the exciting part as the kids folded paper to make pop-outs, placed cellophane behind the hole and colored around the hole.  Flaps, shapes and even black dot stickers were added to make a creative picture.  I would love to see how other teachers would teach a similar project.  Let me know if you decide to use this book for a project.

Start with paper with holes cut out.

Everything I Know about Pirates-- 3rd grade

 Tom Lichtenheld, an author and illustrator, will be visiting EAGLE School at the end of October.  To prepare for his visit, many of the classes will be seeing his art and listening to his books. The Intermediates are focusing on his book Everything I Know about Pirates.  After reading his book, the students are drawing pirate pictures!

First Week Books

During the first week of school I like to read books to my younger classes to introduce art. I think it is good to tie literature to all subjects and allow them to see connections through storytelling. These are ones that I am going to read this first week:

Kindergarten:



















1st Grade:















2nd Grade:















3rd Grade:

Inspirational Book I'm "reading"

I am going through this book called The Element, by Ken Robinson.  I'm actually listening to it in my car on cd!  I find that listening to books on cd is a good way to pass the time in the car.  I've only listened to about a half an hour, but I already recommend it.  It is all about creativity, nurturing different types of intelligences, finding and developing talent and pursuing a career that utilizes all of your creative talent.  So far it is fascinating.  I heard of this book from Jessica Balsey's website, the Art of Education.  I would love to take one of her classes and I will probably do so someday. However this year I already have all of my professional development workshops and conventions lined up, but maybe next summer.  Have you read anything good lately?

Don't forget to sign up for a chance to win an art teacher book!!  There are only 3 people signed up so far, so your odds are pretty good :)

Book Review 2

Linda Barry combines funny comics, drawings, and text in a book for adults about how to get your drawing juices flowing.  There's how tos are more for an adult who just wants to get started drawing.  Her own comics and art are what is really inspiring for me!  I also enjoy her commentary and questioning about the drawing process and creativity.  In one comic the dialogue says, "If you use coloring books past the age of ten, you will wreck your imagination forever.  Who says?  All the scientists.  Just warnin' ya."


"When you are little you will draw pictures for no reason.

What does a line do?  It's not something that you are good at or bad at.  It's something else.

You move your hand and you scribble all you want and it feels very good.  I can remember that feeling.

What makes us start drawing?

What makes us stop?"

I think this book is probably more for adults, as some of the pages have some adult-like things on them-- such as a monkey smoking cigarettes.  However, most of the pages you could show your children who are aspiring comic artists.

Here are some of the pages from her book Picture This.

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. 

Rainbow Fish

   

Rainbow Fish

 by Kindergartners

First, we read the book Rainbow Fish.

Then, the kids drew pictures of fish.

Next, we colored them using neon crayons and regular crayons.  Color REALLY hard and thickly.  Demonstrate this to the children so they see how to color darkly.

 

 Next, paint with watercolor on the background, to fill in the water.  The paint will resist.  We used these watercolors.  They give a bit of sparkle/glimmer.  Not a lot, but a nice touch when you look at it up close.  We also used regular watercolors as well.  The kids could choose what kind they wanted.
   

Finally, after all was dry, we added sequins with glue and outlined the fish with black paint.  Aren't these great?  Combining literature and art is one of my favorite things!