Pinch Pot Faces with Growing Hair!

Make Face - Grow Hair!!

 I saw this tonight on Pinterest  and it reminded me of a project I did years ago that I need to do again! Be sure to visit Kathy Barbro's blog for info on her project along with lots of other great resources! 

 I like the flesh tone Kathy used on her planter. Years ago I did a similar project with 4th graders. We created pinch pots with faces. After they were complete we added potting soil and grass seed or perhaps chives - I don't remember which. They sat along the window sill and each week the students watched as their faces grew hair. It was a fun project that caused a lot of talk among the other students.

I think it's time to do it again!!

Here are a few of the finished faces -

Grant Wood Inspired Landscape Collage

A fun collage project with painted papers!

I was getting one of my favorite lessons from last school year ready to send into The Teaching Palette today and decided I'd post it here. My goal for this blog is to share all the project I did last school year here. I find so many great ideas from all of you creative art teachers that I want to be sure and give back some great ideas. As art educators we are always "stealing" from each other to better our own lessons for our students. I think we are the one group of professionals that do not care if our ideas are copied!

Any way...back to the lesson - 

This project took me 3 art days with my students. I took one day to introduce Grant Wood to them and we discussed his art - especially landscapes. We talked about how he showed distance and space in his paintings and we talked about how the sections of land contained different lines, colors, and textures.

Day 2 was their favorite - and mine! A busy art studio day of painting papers using brushes and lots of other painting tools to create texture, color, and design into the papers. The ooo's and ah's that I heard as they looked around at each other's papers. "How did you get that?! Oh...can I use that tool next?!"

It was a fun art time of total creativity. It was all about the process!  

The hardest part was reminding them that if they didn't put their name on the back before beginning painting  - they most likely would not get that paper to use next week.

The last day was spent creating the landscapes. This too was a fun time. Students shared papers with each other so that they would have many different sections on their landscape. By the end of class we had a box filled with painted paper scraps and a whole class full of interesting landscapes.

Some students who worked slowly just had levels of ground for their landscapes. Students who were quicker with their cutting and gluing had time to add more paper shapes to create trees, bushes, houses, and crops to their pictures.

I helped students as they finished to mount their picture on another paper  - some two colors to add extra interest to the finished work. 

Picasso Inspired Wire and Pantyhose Sculptures

This was one of the last projects I did with one of my 5th grade classes last school year. It was a big hit and surprisingly not as difficult as it might have looked.

Students were introduced to the art of Pablo Picasso and then sketched out a Picasso-like portrait.

Before next class I had my #1 helper (my wonderful husband) cut a 2x4 scrap, we had left over from one of our many home improvement projects, into enough pieces for this class. I cut the hook off of wire clothes hangers and drilled a hole big enough for the hanger to go in.





The next class was spent bending the wire hanger into a shape the student wanted, placing it into the hole in the wood and covering it with a knee high nylon stocking.

A coat of gesso was applied to the nylon and then students spent 2 more classes painting their Picasso inspired portrait sculptures using acrylic paints.

If you were a Superhero what would you look like?

ColorSplasher G - that's me!

Ok...I am such a follower...but I can't let my members of my PLN have all the fun. I had to join in and create my own Superhero.

So what are my super powers? Well...one is adding a splash of color where it's needed. But the most important super power I have is the ability to create an environment that allows students to show self-expression and creativity.

What would you look like as as Superhero? What would your powers be?

Create your own at http://www.ugo.com/games/real-life-superhero-generator-heromachine .
To save your picture once you've created it - just take a screen shot of it.

Harold and the Purple Crayon - A Kindergarten Lesson in Line

An Introduction to the Art Element of Line

This is one of my first lessons of the school year with my Kindergarten students. I always target the Element of Line first with all students so this fits very well into that. We begin with a discussion of what lines are and how to we can make a variety of them. Then I read Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson.  We go back over the book after reading letting the students pick out the different kinds of lines Harold made. Then students are given a paper that has Harold on it and they use a purple crayon to draw some of the lines that Harold drew.

Large paper for group drawing - about 5 feet long

As students work on this individual paper. I lay out a large piece of white bulletin paper onto the floor. I have students, one group at a time come over and draw on the big paper with extra large purple crayons (ones like Crayola So Big crayons).

This paper is displayed with a big version of a cut out of Harold holding a purple crayon.

This book is a fairly small book and sometimes hard to share with a large group of students. This year I created a PowerPoint to show to the students on the Smartboard or projected on a screen.

You can find this PowerPoint here on my Art with Mrs. G website. That website is currently under construction as I set it up for my different schools and move some data onto it from a MobileMe website. But the Harold ppt is there for anyone to use.

Circle Paintings On Display

The Circle Paintings from the first week of school are now on display. I look forward to hearing the student comments as they look at all the paintings! Click here for an explanation of this project.

Crazy or Not - First Art Class of the New Year = Painting!!

The first two weeks of the new year have come to a close and I have a weekend to renew and regroup for week 3. This year I decided to approach the first class with students a bit differently than I have in the past. Instead of spending the 45 minute first class of the year with rules, procedures, and creating art portfolios, I decided that we would jump right into the new year with a fun, energetic project. 

I chose to do "Circle Painting" with my 2nd through 5th graders and adapted it to "circle drawing" with my Kindergarten and 1st grade students (see this modification at the end of this post). If you haven't heard of Circle Painting yet - do a quick Google search on it. There are some YouTube videos out there on the subject also. Here's my take on the basic gist of circle painting: a group of people get together to collaboratively work on a painting. Each person adds something and expands off of what others paint. This can be one large painting or a circle of smaller paintings.  This sounded like a wonderful first day project. As we were working on them I could be emphasizing one of my important rules in my art room - Respect. Working together as a group requires students to respect each other and their ideas. So even though I didn't spend a great deal of time boring students with art room rules -we had fun as one of the rules were explained and practiced.

Here's how I set up my circle painting - 

I have my students in groups. I hadn't yet put my students into seating charts yet -so I just made sure the groups were even. Depending on the size of the class - the groups ranged from 3 to 5 students each. Each table had a large 18x24 white paper labeled on the back with the class code. I squirted a little tempera into about 35 cups (I have some rather large classes this year!). A brush was placed into each cup. Students were sent to put on a paint shirt and pick a cup of paint and stand -not sit- around their table.

Before students were told to start - I went over how they were going to be moving around the room and how they knew when it was time to move. I assigned each table a number 1 student who would be responsible for starting the painting by painting a circle in the center of the paper. Once that student finished the circle the rest of the students could begin to paint on the paper. They could paint inside the circle, outside the circle, adding lines, designs, shapes, whatever they wanted to add. I asked for them not to paint words at all and we went over how to be respectful of what someone has painted. Adding to someones painting is what they need to do - not to destroy or paint over what someone has done.

After I noticed that all students had painted at least a little something painted on the paper at their table I rang a bell or made a clapping pattern that signaled them to move to the next table and continue with that painting. We moved clockwise around the tables and they were allowed to trade paint color at any time. After that initial painting round I only let them paint about 3-4 minutes before I sounded the alert to move to the next table. My goal was to get them to every table and then back to their original table.

Everyone enjoyed the experience. It was interesting seeing the reaction of the students when they returned to the table where the painting had started. Some were pleased at the results, while some were a bit upset because someone had changed something they thought should have been left alone. It was a great cooperative project and I believe it will stick in their memories.

Here are some in-progress pictures from different classes -

Kindergarten and 1st grade modification:
I was not brave enough to do the circle painting with my youngest groups of students. They just were not ready for that. Instead of painting we did the exact same project but called it a "circle drawing". I introduced Line as an Element of Art. We went over how to draw a variety of lines and then I explained how they were going to do these circle drawings.

Using crayons and markers they did the same thing as the older students did with paint - just a lot less mess and confusion. They had fun doing this and were even a bit more cooperative when it came to making marks off of someone else's marks.
Sometime before the end of the school year I plan on revisiting this project with these little ones and have them do the circle painting when they seem ready for it.

Here are some pic from the "circle drawings" -