Art Teacher Challenge

I'll bet a lot of school auditoriums or meeting rooms look something like this before the school year starts. This is our auditorium--two very long bulletin boards extending down both sides of the length of the room.

Who gets to transform this room with a little art magic?? People like you and I. Luckily I got a couple of good friends (newly retired) to come and help me with the transformation this year.

Last week I was painting captions and spattering them in my bathtub with primary colored paints.

Today it all came together with design backgrounds, lettering and most important, children's art that I had saved from last Spring to post now. Here are all the creations with links to their lessons: (regular readers will recognize most of these lessons from prior postings)

Link to Dot lesson: http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2015/05/lots-of-dots-in-kindergarten.html

Collage Kitties

Link to lesson: http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2012/11/collage-cats.html

Collage Fish: http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2015/03/im-pretty-sure-i-could-be-happy-doing.html

Crooked Buildings, Crooked City: http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2015/06/art-and-math-everywhere.html

Intersecting Lines in a Ring: http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2015/03/lines-in-ring.html

Circles in a Circle: http://kids-finelines.blogspot.com/2015/05/kindergarteners-and-kandinsky.html

So what to do now while I wait another week for school to start?? Think I'll kick back with an iced mocha and read. I seem to be on a mystery tangent lately and have this whole stack lined up to entertain me as summer creeps to an end.

For those of you who have already started school, I hope you are off to a great start!!

Art and Math Everywhere!!!

Two weeks ago, when kindergarteners started creating their buildings for a collaborative EXTRAVAGANZA to be revealed in August when school starts up again, I thought the focus was going to be the use of Color, at least that's what my lesson plan indicated.

Well, I was only half right -- read on . . .

I started with a Smartboard presentation on "crooked and colorful buildings in the world" with a focus on the art of James Rizzi and the architecture of our local star, Frank Gehry. In 1978, Gehry remodeled his family home experimenting with some building materials that were pretty unusual at the time. He, of course, has gone on to design some spectacular buildings that seem to soar into the space around them with anything but perpendicular walls! Since his house is walking distance from our school, it seemed that a look at some of his buildings around the world would be a good place to start our classroom discussion.

Then our art began. Kindergarteners spent Day One painting buildings a variety of colors using cake tempera. First, I modeled how to paint using the broad side of the brush to get fatter lines AND how to paint all in one direction.

Then we switched to liquid tempera to paint the windows. I demonstrated how you can let the brush do the work of painting the squares and rectangles by just pressing and painting a short stroke. Students also tried to paint their windows in straight rows to indicate floors in a building.

 We let these buildings dry.

On Day 2, using white and GOLD tempera and Q-tips instead of brushes, kids made a background using line designs that we had learned about three weeks before.

While the paint was drying a bit, kids outlined their windows and doors with a Sharpie. And this is where the MATH popped up and took over. One little boy started counting his windows as I walked by. I stopped to watch and talk to him about this (he had 24) and the rest of the table got wind of what was going on and started counting. Well, pretty soon everybody was counting.

It would have been fun, time permitting, to have figured out how many windows there were in all, but since time was running out, I posed the question, "Do you think we have more or less than 100 windows in all?" That led to some pretty interesting responses!!

As I said, I am saving all of these "crooked creations" for a giant crooked city display in the Auditorium for when school starts in August. Be sure to check back for the big reveal!! AND . . . have a glorious and rejuvenating summer!!! 

By the way, I first did this lesson with 5th graders a number of years ago with a bit more emphasis on design details on buildings and use of complementary colors. You can find that lesson HERE.

Lots of Dots in Kindergarten

Here are some lovely little kindergarten paintings drying. They will soon be tucked away until their big August reveal!!

At the same time as this painting is going on,  I am also starting to box up supplies to get ready for the school's BIG summer cleaning. We have new protocols this year that call for packing up anything not stored in a closed cupboard. It will be nice to have everything really clean, but right now it feels like getting ready to move!!! That is a whole story unto itself!

Meanwhile, in planning for an art display in our Auditorium to kick off the 2015-16 school year, Kindergarteners are painting lots of dots:)) This is so we'll be ready to celebrate International Dot Day (Sept. 15th), based on Peter H. Reynolds' book, The Dot.

I have done lessons like this before with 4th graders (with a little more color wheel art content included). You can check that out HERE. I originally found out about Dot Day from Hope Hunter Knight's blog back in 2012  -- thank you, Hope!!. You can find a link to her dot lesson through the above link. 

This week I started talking a bit with kindergarteners about the book and how Vashti started by just making a mark and then her art grew and grew.

We took a look at some different kinds of lines that markers can make and gave the lines names. Some of the kids' names were:
        "Curly-Q"
        " Wavy"
        "Mountain tops"
        "Train-tracks" . . .   You get the idea:)

Using a black permanent Sharpie I demonstrated how to make concentric circles, one a "skinny pathway" and the next a larger space for painting. Students followed along.

Then they either used line patterns from our chart or made up their own lines to fill their "skinny pathways."

I had them come back to the rug to talk about using "Mr. Brush" so that our brushes would last a long time. I share with them that I have one set of watercolor brushes that have been used at our school for over 50 years -- TRUE STORY!!

I showed them how to clean their brushes between changing colors and test to see if they are clean by running the brush along the top of their hand to see if the water is clear.

Then it was back to their table to paint all the large circles between the black and white pathways.

Love the asymmetry of the middle piece!!

The girl on the left spent a lot of time mixing the colors in the lower left part of her work using her finger.

This little guy didn't quite get the idea of leaving alternate areas blank for the paint and filled them all with patterns. He was so intent on what he was doing I didn't have the heart to stop him!!

Of course, you'll have to check back in August to see all our dots displayed. By then all these boxes I am packing now will be unpacked and we'll all be ready for a brand new school year!!

Kindergarteners and Kandinsky

Earlier this year our Kindergarteners made their own renditions of Kandinsky's Squares and Concentric Circles -- you know, the one we all try with kids sooner or later. Well, this week we are taking a look at another Kandinsky work, Circles in a Circle. Here are a few of ours drying in the sun.

And here is a sort of grainy shot of the Kandinsky from the Smartboard. Sorry for the quality of my picture:(

We talked about how many circles we saw, how many lines, size and colors of circles, directions of lines, etc.

Then the fun began. I had prepared part of the large circle with a crayon line for kids to cut to finish it up. I wanted them to practice cutting, but, from experience,  I knew doing the whole drawing and cutting on the fold thing might be too much for the time we had allotted.  They glued their circle on their boards (9" X 12" illustration board - but paper would be fine, too).

I know, this isn't a circle. It was my first sample and it's an oval -- that works, too!!

To decide how many circles to draw inside, we rolled dice at each work table (and drew that many with washable markers - I like Crayola brand markers for this) -- some large, some small, some within other circles - all drawn freehand. I heard LOTS of counting and comparing going on during this part of the lesson!! Using primary colored crayons, kids colored a few circles. Then they drew some straight lines - also with washable marker.

Finally, out came the paint brushes and students gently painted plain water over their marker lines to blur them and get a "painterly" look.

So, what skills did these little ones practice: cutting, gluing (a dot is a lot), drawing (shape, line), color choice and placement (balance, repetition), using a straight edge, use of a paintbrush (we still have a ways to go before we get that all right!!).

Recycled Weaving

You may remember that a week or so ago I was experimenting with "faux weaving" using  cut up cereal boxes (here). Well, that got me to thinking how fun it would be to use this as a jumping off place for introducing real weaving. It is hard for little fingers to cut cardboard, so for Part 2 of my project I switched to cut up strips of magazine pages. As with my previous lesson, I began by gluing strips onto a square piece of board (about 4" X 4"), first horizontally, and then vertical strips on top. Notice that I left space between these strips to make the real weaving easier.

Then, starting on one side of this assemblage, I wove a paper strip under and over the already glued strips. The weaving is easier for little ones if they hang the loose ends over the end of the table. I wove two strips on each of the 4 sides.

To keep the strips from moving around, put a little dot of glue under the strips at each end. This is a good way to reinforce the "one dot is a lot" concept of using glue!!

And, voila!! It looks like a real weaving, but actually only the last two strips on each side were woven. I then cut the strips various lengths on each end to add interest, and let the glue dry.

This could be finished at this stage, but I think it is fun to play around with different backgrounds, too. For this first option, I used a plain piece of medium value illustration board:

 Next, I tried a diagonal placement on a board treated with glue, paper and crayon (more on this in a later post):

 And finally, I tried the weaving on a board I had painted earlier for another project:

I like having children make these kinds of choices with their art to help train their "eye" for seeing contrast and composition alternatives.