Creative Collaborative Collages

This was a great exercise for my students. We had been looking at positive and negative shape as well as rhythm for several weeks. Students had created stencils of a figure in action, based off of gesture drawings we did from some amazing student models (these kids can hold a pose for ever, aka 1 minute). We had used our stencils to make repeated shapes for some rhythm drawings. But before getting rid off the people that we had cut out to make our stencils, we had this little 50 minute collaborative lesson. 

Students worked together in collaborative teams of 4 or 5 students. They had to pick a setting, and show overlapping. Each team was given an 18x24 piece of construction paper in black or light blue, their choice. Students were allowed to use paper from my scrap boxes, scissors, glue, and construction paper crayons. The people in their collages had to be in action, and they had to present their collage to the class at the end, telling us what was happening in their artwork.

I was slightly surprised how much the students were engaged in this assignment. The one above is of jumping on the trampoline, all the way to the sun.

This one was from my special education kids. They told a long story of one of them fixing the roof of the teacher's house, while tow of them went for a car ride.

The project above is awesome. These students asked if they could make it a sculpture. I said sure. It is a camping trip. They even folded the sleeping bag around the character looking up at the stars.

A little game of street basketball.

This has been the most engaged I have seen my 3rd graders get this year in a collaborative project. At my school it seems rare that I see my 3rd graders in imaginative play. This assignment was a real joy.

Paper cubes.

As part of our explorations of form and architecture in 2nd grade, students created construction paper cubes. I got this idea from the Davis Digital textbooks that our district adopted this year. I have been springing off of their unit on architecture, putting my own spin on the lessons.

Students selected 12 six inch long construction paper rectangles, then folded each in half lengthwise. After all 12 rectangles were folded, students created the bottom, then top of their cubes. The sides were added to the bottom, then the top was added.

 I did find that 2 inch by 6 inch rectangles were easier for the students to manipulate than the 4 inch by 6 inch rectangles that I started with. I only gave the students one day (50 minutes) to complete their cubes, as I have no space in my art room to store three dimensional works. Most students did not finish these in my room, but were so excited about them, that many of their teachers allowed them to finish them back in their home rooms.

To end the class, if cubes were finished, students stacked their cubes either for height, or to create a modular building. After the first day of creating these, the word spread throughout the school and each day classes were asking if this is what they were going to get to do. To me, that is a great sign of success. That, and them all remembering the term "form," and are able to tell me about height, width, and depth.

Materials used:
2 inch by 6 inch construction paper rectangles
Glue

Wooden Block Architects

I have had a lot of great lessons in the past few weeks, and no time to post about them. This was from two weeks ago, and may be one of the best days in the art room my 2nd graders have ever had. This lesson has a ton packed into one day; collaboration, play, reflection, and much more.

Students started off using wooden blocks to collaboratively build a house. They had 5 minutes and everyone in their table group had to be part of the build. 5 minutes is a lot of time. Some groups built, tore down, and rebuilt multiple houses until the time was up.

Next, students photographed their houses. I only have one camera, so a few selected students were chosen to help. This went quickly, and with a bit of direction.

After photographing, students created observational drawings of their houses in their art journals. This was the most successful observational drawing exercise we have had this year. I think it was because these were built from shapes that we had already practiced drawing, and they had the hands on experience of manipulating those shapes to create what they were now drawing. 2nd grade students actually drew their buildings in 3d from their own view points, not something that they created in their heads. I was blown away.

After drawing from observation, students had to label the parts of their house; door, window, garage, porch, etc. Lastly, right before clean up, table groups had a contest to see who could build the tallest tower. Unfortunately, this went by so fast I did not get pictures of the towers. Students had one chance, and kept building until they fell over. 

All of these activities happened in one 50 minute class. It was a great day.

Materials use: wood blocks, pencils, erasers, digital camera, student-made art journals.

Texture with Playdough

Kindergarten and 1st grade have been learning about texture for the past few weeks. This week we talked about petting zoos, and how different animals feel. Students rolled slabs out of Playdough, or didn't, then cut out the shape of an animal, and finished by adding patterns with the clay tools to create texture.

Previously, students have drawn line patterns to create texture, done texture rubbings, and even used the texture plates with the Playdough. Playdough has been a big hit.

Here are some more pictures.

Ojo De Dios

Just a quick post here to show what we have been doing recently. My 4th graders have started a weaving unit. As our intro project, we created Ojo de Dios. I remember doing these when I was in the third grade, back in the 80's, and going back many times after that and making them again on my own. So, I figured if I got something out of it as a kid, surely one or two of my students would get interested. Guess what? I was right.

Since teaching the 4th graders how to create these, I have been ones made at home brought back to me as gifts. I have also had many students go home and make much larger ones and bring them back to show me. That brings me joy. I even had one student who is often extremely checked out, or asleep, or just a behavior/attitude nightmare, wake up and get super excited about these.

Here are some more pictures.

There were many great Ojo de Dios made, but for some reason I did not take many pictures during this project. Probably too busy helping. One thing that was awesome, was that students that really caught on and finished early set out helping the struggling students, and did a better job teaching this than I did. I will be starting this with my third graders soon. This is a quick assignment that I would definitely recommend.

Paint Party Reward

I love reading blog posts from other teachers that give me tips or ideas that I can incorporate into my classroom procedures, or give ways to make things easier for me. I hope that this post is that kind of post for someone out there.

A little background:

My classroom is in half of a portable, with no sink (or should I say, I have one of those portable sinks with the hand pump and a jug under the counter. Aka no plumbing), and large class sizes. With the exception of one grade level I always have a class and a half, on average 36 students, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a little bit less but never much less. So, painting projects have always seemed like a challenge for me in my classroom. Overcrowding often leads to spills. Cleaning brushes and paint containers always seems to take more time than I have. Lucky for me, I was a house painter for over 10 years and feel that if I could clean brushes then, that I can do it now. However, the challenges of my room had led me to only using watercolors because they are easier to clean up, and only letting each grade level have one painting assignment per school year. Which means constantly hearing " Mr. Fleming, are we ever going to paint?"

Down to the helpful information:

Back in December, I stayed late in my classroom and was being a good little art nerd and listening to AOE Live while cleaning my room for the holiday break. While listening to Episode 18 with the lady from the blog Painted Paper, I heard something that got my wheels turning. She mentioned not having water at the tables for students to clean their brushes, but having them clean their brushes out on paper before dipping in a new color. That seemed to answer all my problems. Laura Lohmann, if you read my blog by any chance, thank you. Not having water at the table means no spills. In an overcrowded room, I hadn't found any way to prevent spills, not even the large roasting pan under the wash cup worked, they just tipped that over too. For a long time now, I have been contemplating ways to bring more painting back into my classroom. The one trick of cleaning on the paper was the piece of the puzzle that I was missing.

If you look in the above picture, you will notice that I rolled paper out across my table that is actually a little less in width than the table itself. I told my students that the exposed table area there is a no paint zone. This prevents them from leaning into paint. The other tip with that is this, no students are allowed to tie their aprons. They all whine about this till I demonstrate why. Letting them hang low, prevents the students from leaning against the table and getting paint on their pants. Additionally, I do not have to help anyone untie a knot at the end of class. I tell them if they tie their apron, they can not paint until the knot is out. Students were told as they entered the classroom, that on paint party day, nobody sits down. You can't sit and partaayyy. This is actually a clever way to keep sleeves out of the paint.

Another trick I pulled out was only having primary colors. I told my students this Friday that they could paint anything they wanted, as long as it was appropriate for school, and as long as they mixed color. "Experiment, see how many different colors you can mix." I do plan on having a color mixing game for Paint Party 2. For mixing colors, I showed the students to mix their colors on their artwork. This cuts down on how much paint is used. I also showed them to get all of the paint out of their brush that they can before dipping into another color. This actually works well, if they do not load their brush too much, that is something I need to work on for next week.

Speaking of frequency of paint parties. I am using paint parties as a reward. At my school, I see all classes during the first four days of the week, Fridays are a rotating schedule. One Friday I will see all of my Monday classes, the next I will see all of my Tuesday classes, and so forth. I have been doing a behavior contest at my school for 2015-16. Classes can earn up to 5 points per visit to art. 1 point for how they enter the classroom, 2 points for not interrupting instruction, 1 point for using table voices during work time (not screaming at the person next to you), and 1 point for clean up time. The class with the most points at the end of a grading cycle gets a trophy for their classroom, that can be taken at the end of the next grading cycle if someone gets more points than them. (I got the trophy idea from an article by Michael Linsin, author of Classroom Management for Art, Music, and PE Teachers) As long as the home room teachers are behind it, this has worked very well. However, I wanted to sweeten the  deal for the last semester of the year. If classes earn enough points before they come to me for their rotating Friday, then they earn a paint party.

Friday paint parties allow me to set up paint supplies in the morning and not worry about clean up until the end of the day. They give the students something to work for that they really want, and give me something to remind them about when their behavior is starting to step away from ideal.

As for clean up, sandwich bags inside of my paint cups is the best trick of all. I saw this on one of those classroom hack lists. Without water, cleaning paint containers takes for ever. Another plus to this is, at the end of the day, I just squeeze the air out of the bag and seal it. No paint gets washed down a drain.

As a house painter, I learned that one of the easiest and cleanest ways to clean brushes is in a bucket. Students simply drop their brushes in my water bucket. Once they are all collected, I swish them around, drop them in a second bucket with clean water, swish them around again with the bristles touching the bottom of the bucket, shake the water out of them, and let them dry. I use the buckets that Model Magic comes in. Oh, and don't worry, all of that paper on the table does not go to waste. It is cut down after class, to be used either as scrap paper, or as collage paper.

I can not wait till next Friday for the next paint party. I had all of the kids cheering this past Friday, and way pumped to earn another paint party. We will see how good this works for behavior this week as they try again to earn a party.

I almost forgot, some classes did not earn a party. They had to walk through class looking at the paint party materials to get their alternate assignment. My last class of the day got to watch as I cleaned up from everyone else as they worked on their alternate, silent, writing assignment. Does this make me mean. Maybe, but I hope for the classes that did not have good enough behavior before, that they will want to try a little harder now.

Make it 3D!

I know I probably shouldn't pick favorites, but the drawing above is my favorite drawing of the week. My 2nd graders started a unit on architecture this week. When given time to draw a building of their own design in 3D, one of my second graders drew this awesome monster gas station. I told them they could draw any kind of building they wanted. What I love about this drawing is the overlapping inside of the gas pump area. We haven't covered overlapping at all. 

This kind of drawing started last year when I taught Kindergartners and first graders how to use diagonal lines to make shapes 3D. They loved it, and yes, we did cover height, width, and depth. What sold them was showing them how to apply this to drawing cars. They went home and practiced drawing cars all summer. Many of them came back as the 2nd grade version of a 3D drawing master. So, for my pretest, they had to draw a square, triangle, circle, and car shape in their art journals, then use diagonal lines to make their shapes 3D. Here are a couple of pretest examples.

Check out that truck. I am impressed.

After their pretest, and before their buildings, we read a bit from our digital textbooks. Our district adopted the Davis Digital art books this year, so I pulled some of the pages up on the Promethean Board. I like to turn the pages into I Spy and Matching games. We discussed what an architect is, and then the time was given to them to design their own building. Here are some more examples.