Here is a video I made for my third graders. I teach them how to paint a cute little woodland animal on a small slice of wood.
We are using these slices of wood for our annual class auction project for the school gala. I am going to put these slices of wood at the bottom of a wooden tray and cover with resin. 🤞
I made two "How to Draw" pages of woodland animals that we are using for this lesson.
In this video I teach you how to use an old embroidery hoop as a loom and make a circle weaving.
I have a lot of old, large embroidery hoops that I once thought I would use with kids for screen printing... but never did! I came across a few interesting pictures of embroidery hoop weavings on Pinterest and decided to try it for myself. It was fun! Plus, I got a new theme song for my videos, so this was it's premier!
Here is a little video I made showing how I used miniature paint pots I got from Amazon to make custom palettes for a project my second graders are working on. If you want to see the project they are doing, here is a video about that!
Here are the Paint Pots I got for this project. They have worked well for teaching on a cart this year, but they are hard to open when you have to do all of them at once. My hands started hurting opening and closing them for filling, and the second graders were completely distraught about it. Third grade however, did fine.
I spent some time this summer making more videos... but this time not for my awesome YouTube Channel... but for Artsonia's.
My first video was the one I sent in as the "audition" I guess... and you had to introduce yourself and it seemed weird. I talk in weird voices and make faces all the time to a group of kids and never have to watch myself doing it. The project is good though. I wanted to teach a nice simple concept, and I wanted to make sure that I was catering to kids doing art at home. It works. And I'm hilarious. It's also the only one that has a cool soundtrack, because they told us not to add music to the rest ☹️
The videos get more and more embarrassing after this one! My daughters are looking into the witness protection program. I can't wait till they publish more. 😶😃
You know how you are getting supplies ready for that one project, for that one grade - and you have to cut some 3" x 6" black, and 5" x 5" orange, and 6" x 17" this etc... and this-size-this etc.. and you end up with all these weirdo scraps of paper? I used to throw all those weirdo pieces into a box and use it for scrap. Or I had boxes for different colors. Or I had boxes labeled "squares and rectangles only!" Or I'd say I'd use it for another project at some point- but digging through it to get enough of the correct size, or the colors I wanted wasn't worth the time. I would just cut new pieces. The box would sit, and grow. Usually the black and yellow strips would take over and at some point I would recycle everything because I was sick of seeing it.
I kept cutting papers for projects over, and over, and over, year, after year, after year. I was always getting weirdo scraps and I was always wasting paper. I realized it was time to stop the insanity. So, I got crazy organized instead.
I started simply cutting my scraps into strategically sized pieces that I know I frequently use for other projects. Like - right away. Don't put them in a box and say you will do it later.
I had to cut a bunch of black pieces for these little kindergarten crows. When I was done, my paper trimmer was full of a random assortment of strips and rectangles. I cut them down into 2"x 2", 3" x 3", or 4" x 6"... you get the idea. The common sizes you repeatedly use over and over.
Then here is the anal retentive part. I have all these beautifully labeled boxes that tell me where to put those sizes. Beautiful = cardboard boxes from fruit snacks, Amazon, and Costco that I painted yellow on one side.
The next time I have to prep a crow, pumpkin, clown body, or notan leaf, some of the pieces will be ready for me!
I even save the 1" strips for paper weavings, and seemingly other random strips too. This is also a handy method for those crazy hectic days when you are passing out supplies and you're like, "Oh shoot, they need purple squares too...!" Although, that never happens to me. I am always prepared for my five back-to-back classes as soon as they walk through the door.
I love to move art supplies around in my art room and label things with my Dymo printer. I even wrote a whole book about it.
We made Mandalas in Fifth grade to reiterate some radial design/balance info and complex patterns and repetition. I included a little of the art history/cultural information too.
This project also knocked out our diocesan assessment, AND was supposed to be a good warm up for our collaborative church auction project. An awesome gel glue batik quilt! But, the best laid plans...
I started out with this slideshow discussing what we were going to be doing. I took photos from the internet, and turned it into a slideshow teaching what I wanted to teach. I DID cite my sources at the end though!
I knew the concept itself wasn't going to be confusing for them, but actually making the mandala would be a little more difficult. I wrote out instructions - and even as I was writing them, I kept getting confused. If I was getting confused, I knew my fifth graders would have no hope. So, I made this video. The idea is always to show it to them first, and then have it stop and go as we work on it together.
The video definitely helped, but what doesn't help is not having light boxes when you are trying to trace. All and all we got through it! Here is the entire Artsonia Gallery.
Once this project was in the books, I set forth to complete the mandala gel glue batiks I was hoping would come together into a neato quilt for our Class Auction Project for our church gala. Well. I only see these friends once a week for 40 minutes... on a Monday... and we ended up having two Monday snow days and I was even sick one of the Mondays too. The quilt never made it to fruition, but the small batiks did!
We transferred our original mandala to the fabric with glue during one class (I had xerox copied them) and painted with acrylic the next 2 classes. I then took them home and soaked them in hot water, and threw them in my washer's rinse cycle! I was so done with mandala's, I didn't want to spend another week on radial design!!
That would have been a pretty funky quilt! Right? Anyway, my washer seems to still be working fine. While much of this was going on, we also had a circular weaving on a CD project that they mostly worked on independently.
I swear, if this class does not know what radial design is after this trimester... I am going to lose it!
Notan Design! It's a classic fourth grade art project. Isn't it? I have never once in my many years of teaching ever taught Notan design, but I saw this pin and thought, ooooh this looks cool.
My fourth graders had just finished up this seriously long color spectrum painting project, so we did not paint our papers, but perhaps in the future, this will be a nice twist.
We discussed positive and negative space, which was also discussed in our color spectrum project, and learned about Notan Design from this slideshow.
Okay, I always fess up that I am a picture stealer from the web. I'm not selling anything, I'm just resharing what is already out there...however this time, I'm resharing another slideshow that I worked into my slideshow to make it work for me. It was from SlideShare. I edited to my needs, and do give credit at the end. By the way, my fourth grader's heads' just about EXPLODED when they saw the face in the vase pictures. They were mesmerized. This was about 10 minutes of our whole discussion.
I passed out instructions, and every child was super confused. I knew this was going to be a tough one for some friends to grasp, so I made another video.
The kids were super impressed that I drew my leaf in one shot on the tracer without sketching, mistakes, and erasing. Pro-tip- I had it drawn in white colored pencil on the paper first.
Students made their tracers first. The project isn't about the tracers though, it is about the positive and negative space and complementary colors. I had about 6 students struggling to get any semblance of a leaf on their card and offered "pre-made" tracers to the entire class at the very end of the hour. That small handful took me up on the offer. My only intention here was to not have them already turned off from the project after the first step.
We folded and traced onto the colored paper. The trickiest part is the cutting, like I showed in the video, it's easy to forget what you are doing and just start cutting. But don't. Make sure students cut on the fold first! Then cut our their shapes. After that it is pretty easy peasy.
A few kids had a hard time figuring out the positive and negative parts, but overall it was smooth sailing.
The last day we went over our rubrics all together.
First grade learned about the color spectrum and the colors of the rainbow by looking at the art of Alma Thomas. I started by sharing this little slideshow about the artist and her art. We discussed her color paintings and specifically what colors she used, and sometimes what colors she used them in.
We started our own Alma Thomas inspired rainbow collage with construction paper. To mix it up a little bit, I told them they could start in the middle with one square, like it says on the directions... but it didn't have to be red. For whatever reason this made the place go bonkers. I said if they didn't feel comfortable mixing it up, they should use red, but if they were up to a challenge they could use a different color. It was a sneaky way to differentiate.
Then on the board I wrote:
Roy G. Biv and we talked about what each one of those initials meant.
Then I wrote:
Oyg B. Ivr
Ygb I. Vro
Gbi V. Roy
Biv R. Oyg
Ivr O. Ygb
Vro Y. Gbi
The pressure was on doing that in front of a bunch of 6 & 7 year olds and not making a mistake. I did in fact make a mistake and a kid caught it.
The students just had to look at the rainbow order that they actually started with to complete the rest of their collage. I had the strips of paper up front in traditional rainbow order as well to help them.
I made this video for the Artsonia After School Art Club! It's basically everything you need to know for this lesson in under 10 minutes.
My third graders rocked the pastel chalk pumpkins this year. It is one of those classic lessons that isn't too difficult to get awesome results, but admittedly, sometimes they "get" it and sometimes they don't.
First, before I get into the actual lesson, I want to bring something to the attention of the art teachers out there. This first pumpkin was outlined with traditional Elmer's Liquid School Glue.
This pumpkin below was outlined with Jot, AKA Dollar Tree glue.
Under normal circumstances, I despise the Jot because of it's glossy, and honestly, not as adherent and liquidy quality, but in this instance it is amazeballs! I love the way that turned out.
I have Jot in one of the schools I teach in because the students bring in supplies to donate to the art room and about 2/3rds of the kids purchase the kits where I have dictated the brands etc...and the other 1/3rd bring in rando things. Sometimes rando things are okay. They'll bring in amazing artist quality pastels that I would've never asked for, or super nice sketchbooks for their cubby, but sometimes you end up with Jot glue.
Back to chalk pumpkins. I began this lesson with a slideshow where we discussed still life objects, and what makes up a still life. I am completely honest about stealing images off the internet for my slideshows for educational purposes.
The second part of the slide show discusses analogous colors, but I usually save that until after the drawing part of our project is done.
I have been using direction pages a lot this year. They have been great for when kids are not paying attention, kids who need a little extra help, and for the kids who are constantly asking what they are supposed to be doing. Sorry, this one isn't the best quality. It was before I learned I had to use a 5B pencil to write it out! Anyway, the directions page shows the kids how to draw the pumpkin. I draw with them too. Like I said, the direction page just help keeps them on track. It's not a substitute for my teaching.
As they drew the additional objects in their still life, I had little items for them to look at set out around the room. Some kids did just take ideas from their imaginations though, which I said was OK. I tried not dissuade them from anything Halloweeny though, simply because our art shows at both schools are in the Spring, and pumpkins will look okay, but jack-o-lanterns will look out of my place in my opinion.
Once we have our still life drawn, I have a video of me adding glue and color to my project. It is about 5 minutes and gives those visual learners a little extra nudge to see what it is exactly we are going to be doing.
This is the first video I made for this lesson way back in 2018- before my production skills were as refined as they are now. It's shorter than my Artsonia version, but doesn't really give you all the info. :)
The practice coloring sheet isn't really necessary. They could just practice on one of the pumpkins they practiced drawing. However; my kids usually practice in their sketchbooks, and it got kind of messy last year. So, this year they practiced on this pumpkin, but I printed the rubric/assessment page on the back...and well....when I went to grade projects it was also very messy.
Timing wise, this project may have it's issues. The gluing of the black paper has to be done the week prior to using the pastel - so if you end up with a weird time thing - I sometimes have them put a glue outline on their practice papers too.
Besides the video, I did go step-by-step through their practice page on how to mix the colors. I walked around as they did the rest to see if there were any major issues.
As mentioned above, I had great success with this project this year! I hope you do to! Check out my school Artsonia galleries below.
For my middle-schoolers architecture unit, I decided to concentrate on the Victorian era. It's close to winter break so I've chosen our drawings to be gingerbread houses!
I've stolen some images from the Internet and put together a PowerPoint presentation to show the class.
The PowerPoint shows images of Victorian Style gingerbread houses, and real gingerbread houses. It also lists some of the architectural attributes of Victorian homes that I want the kids to learn.
I also made a handout with directions and key vocabulary. It includes the rubric for this lesson as well.
Here is the first video where I show how I drew the project. This demonstrates how they should start with simple shapes then add detail.
Here is the second video where I paint the gingerbread house with watercolor.
I held a special Modern Art Masterpiece Class at No Corner Suns Art Studio on MLK day. I had seen this little idea on Pinterest. Using masking tape to mask off a canvas, and painting over it, and thought that would be a fun thing to try.
A fun thing to try... yes. But is it art?
Isn't that the real struggle? I want my studio to be a learning place, yet I want to appeal to the masses too. What I've learned is that I can have it both ways. It is a matter of finding FUN and SUCCESSFUL lessons that do actually teach something. No matter the age.
This little class began with a discussion of Modernism to an extent. We looked at some Mondrian, and Miro. We talked about horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines too. Once everything was taped off, we got only the primary colors and spent a lot of time mixing, mixing, mixing! Then we painted. It was one hour, it was fun, and look at those faces! It was successful.
Today is the final day to get your own digital copy of "Your Art Room's a Mess!" for a mere $6. If you are on the fence, peruse these free chapters and see if you find it useful.
There are 24 more sections after this. If you like what you've read, this is your last day to get the complete book as a .pdf download from TeachersPayTeachers for only $6.00! Whippee! (or go ahead and download the iBooks version for 11.99) The sale will ends today. Thank you so much!
I was recently inspired by Tumblr Artful Artsy Amy and her post "What is Art." I decided to try it out as a nice warm-up for my 3rd-5th graders on their first day of class.
We watched and discussed Amy's slideshow, "What is Art" and then wrote our own answers or definitions on our paper hands. I loved the answers and I loved that my students were actually thinking of solid answers.
My end product wasn't as aesthetically pleasing as Artful Artsy Amy (I had hands written on every which way!) but the overall message gets through! Plus, I have a great bulletin board for curriculum night.
Most people spend their summers off lounging by the pool drinking mai tais, but I wrote and illustrated a book and put it on iTunes!
Your Art Room's A Mess has been a labor of love for the past few years - and it's finally officially done!
It just hit me one day how many weird little rituals and odd routines an art teacher goes through every day to maintain order and basically teach. I never learned this stuff in college, I learned it by doing it, and most times it took a bit of trial and error. How great would it have been to have a reference guide helping me along the way.
Check it out, and pass it along to any new elementary art teacher you may know!
I begin teaching the parts of composition in kindergarten. As the students get older, I reiterate these terms as much as possible. By third grade students start to put these parts into their artwork automatically without necessarily being directed to.
I created the Parts of Composition worksheet to reinforce the idea of foreground, middle ground, background and horizon line. I like to tell the students to imagine the painting as a window. If they crawled through the window, what would be the first thing they hit? Would it be large or small? Soon students are creating space and showing depth in all their drawings.
Integrating art with classroom studies is a fabulous way for students to make connections. I used to love making Ancient Egyptian Canopic Jars with my third graders. It was simply a matter of putting two pinch pots together for the body, and one upside down for the head. Here is the worksheet I used to introduce these works of ancient art. You will also need to supply the students with a page of hieroglyphics. I found a nice one here. I apologize for not having the resource for my canopic image.
Color wheels are one of those assignments that kind of have to be done, but can be very boring and confusing for the students to understand.
Many state learning standards require that students grasp color theory by intermediate school. Thus, turning an artist's tool into something the students actually enjoy creating may be a challenge.
I have tried MANY different takes on the color wheel. Colored construction paper, painted swatches, textured Model Magic and even ceramic tiles.
My latest idea was to have students go on a treasure hunt in the collage boxes and in magazines for colors that matched. They turned out beautiful!
What ever the media, one issue the class always has is assembling their color wheel appropriately. The colors will look beautiful, but it is important that students understand that they need to be in the appropriate order AND they have to line up correctly. I put together this little worksheet to help students with the assembling of the color wheels - no matter the media! Hope it works for you.
I made a worksheet using popular masterpieces to help younger students talk about their aesthetic responses to artwork.
Attached is my Feelings in Art worksheet. Have students look at the subject matter, body language, and colors to help gauge how a work of art makes them feel. There are no right or wrong answers, and it is interesting how students interpret different things. I hope it starts a lively discussion for your class.
I apologize for not including my resources and for the fact that the worksheet itself isn't the most aesthetically pleasing! Hopefully you will find it useful in your artroom.
I was looking for a nice introduction to Frank Lloyd Wright's art glass this morning for my fourth graders. I came across this nice packet put together by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. A great in depth resource that my students could understand. Frank Lloyd Wright's Art Glass
I started simply cutting my scraps into strategically sized pieces that I know I frequently use for other projects. Like - right away. Don't put them in a box and say you will do it later. 
