Kinder Jasper Johns

This is a project that I have done before with kindergarten, however, in keeping with giving the students more choices and teaching them to make artistic choices for themselves, I had 3 versions of this project going at one time.

The first project started out by using tempera paint (in either warm or cool colors) to paint a folded piece of paper. Once the painting was done, they used oil pastels in the opposite color scheme to create lines in each box (wavy, zig zag, dotted, straight, etc). Then I had the letters A-H that they traced onto construction paper. They cut them out and glued them in order.

The second project used color sticks to color their paper. They used markers to create their lines and then they glue die cut letters on each square.

The third version of this project used oil pastels to color their paper, tempera paint to create their lines and then glue die cut numbers in each square.

Pin It

TAEA convention in November/ Every Artist.me display

At the TAEA (Texas) convention this year, my school participated in the EveryArtist.Me project. The students created trading cards showing their idea of gratitude. I displayed some (I had over 800 and had limited space in my car to transport them) of them on black foam board. These were then put on display with other districts from around the state of Texas.

Pin It

TAEA convention

Leaving for TAEA convention today in Dallas. Looking forward to 4 days of like-minded educators, art, exhibit tables and fun!

A little nervous about doing a presentation for the first time- even if it is on a small scale. Luckily, I am going first. Tomorrow, 8-9 am and done! Then I can enjoy the rest of the weekend without worries.

If you are in Texas and you are heading up to Dallas for the convention, stop by the Simple Sketchbooks Walk-Up table and say hi! I believe I will be on the second floor.

Will post pictures on my return. Pin It

Choice Based Art Education

I am looking for some help/advice/information from all of you art educators out there....

I am beginning to do some research on Choice Based Art Education. This is something that I would really like to implement at my school. I am easing into it this year, by giving the students a variety of options in their final products. I have not been able to give up complete control... yet. It is a learning process for me and for the students.

What the students have been creating so far this year has been wonderful and I would really like to learn more about fully implementing it next year.

Are there any of you who already do this??

It strikes me as very similar to the way I taught when I was in the content classroom (K-6 and multi-age) and I would love to get back to it! It seems like a very natural way of teaching. Ideas, suggestions???

Pin It

Retirement Centerpiece

 A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to have some students create a centerpiece for a retirement party for one of our district personnel.

Since we were working on such short notice, it had to be something that could be worked on before school (I pulled a handful of students who are here early) and it had to be something that I had materials handy for.

Ceramics!

 I used my extruder to create a tray full of coils. The students used the coils to build a bowl. I had them build it around a large plastic bowl that I had handy in the room, using it as a mold.

I have these cute little sun molds that the students used to add decorations to the outside of the bowl.

It dried pretty quickly, so I was able to fire it within a couple of days of building the bowl.

Once it was fired, the students chose the colors for glazing.

They wanted it to be bright, happy and colorful- blue, red, purples, yellow and orange!

I fired it one more time and am quite happy with the results of our spur of the moment, 1 week project!

I just happened to have some paper mache fruit that my first graders had finished for our Cezanne project.... Ta da!  A retirement centerpiece!

Pin It