Middle School Christmas Ornaments in Oil Pastel - with PowerPoint and handout

This is my first year with my middle-schoolers, and I have had a rough time knowing what skills they have, and which they still really need to work on.

After our last value study project seemed like a real struggle, I thought I'd take it easy with a step-by-step guide on drawing and shading color values with Christmas ornaments.  This project is not concerned so much with the reflections of the ornaments.  We only concentrated on 3 parts: cast shadow, mid-tones, and highlight.  We also practiced building layers with our oil pastels and mixing tints and shades.  Also, I teach in a Catholic school - so Christmas ornaments are A-OKay.

I started with a handout full of stolen images from the Internet and a PowerPoint too.  We discussed the parts of light and shade that create value and the difference between grayscale and monochromatic color schemes.

The handout coincides with the slides on the PowerPoint and discusses vocabulary.
Next, I take the students step-by-step through the process of drawing and coloring and rendering their Christmas ornament in 3D. They do actually have an ornament in front of them to look at and draw.  The slides were up on the TV as the kids worked, so we mostly all stayed together, but some friends needed additional help.

      

Included in the handout is a rubric for this lesson.  Overall I am pleased with the results!  I only see my middle schoolers once a week for 45 minutes.  It was a learning process at the beginning of the year, and I felt I was never going to get through any sort of curriculum.  We've started working smaller and less independently, and that seems to work.  Here are some student works:

Do you have table artists? Free PDF and PPT download featuring artists with a Chicago Connection.

I like to hang artists' self-portraits and notable works above my classroom tables.  I sort them by color.  My six classroom tables go in rainbow order, ROY G. B(I)V.  I choose an artist to correspond to each table color, and instead of always calling "red table, go get your glue..."  I will say "Suerat's go get your glue."  This helps reinforce artists' names and gets my students familiar with many different artists.

This year I chose six artists with a a Chicago connection.  The artists in this series are:
Jonathan Green
Faith Ringgold
Georges Seurat
Pablo Picasso
Alexander Calder
and Frank Lloyd Wright.
You can download a printable pdf of their portraits and visuals here.
I print the pictures and mount them to construction paper, and laminate.   This year I also took the students through a little PowerPoint with a bit of information about each artist.  We used Visual Thinking Strategies and studied each work carefully.

After our PowerPoint presentation, we learned about how to act in a museum.  I had several other works of art by these artists printed and laminated too.

Free Color Wheel coloring download with lines that do not make any sense!

I do not know what I ever used this thing for, but it is kind of fun, and it is a cool free download! Knock your socks off with this crazy color wheel with lines that do not make any sense!

Design a Button! Free worksheet download for designing in a circle.

I had students make buttons for Youth Art Month this year.  They turned out great and the kids were super excited.  They wanted to make buttons for themselves!

In my classroom I have "Winning Tables" and basically, each table is a team that needs to work together to be quiet and stay clean.  I award points and keep a tally.  At the end of the quarter the "Winning Table" earns a prize.  The prize used to be stuff from Oriental Trading Company, but I really got sick of that junk.  I decided instead to award Custom Buttons!

My students loved the song Roy G. Biv and even when we were not studying color theory, they wanted to hear it.  I designed these fun buttons and ordered a pack from my favorite button makers, The Busy Beaver Button Company right here in Chicago.

My friend Dianna at The Friendly Neighborhood Art Teacher also uses buttons in her art room!

I made up a handout for kids to design their own button.  Maybe in the future their designs will become our winning table prizes!

Glue Sponges save the day! Here is a "How to use a glue sponge" tutorial slideshow for classroom use.

I have a long twisted history with glue in my classroom.  I started to get the idea about implementing glue sponges when I saw an awesome poster about their use in my Tumblr feed.  After my last glue saga post, I had another teacher suggest glue sponges and told me to check Pinterest.

I was intrigued and decided it was time to make some glue sponges.

I am going to interject here with my own pity story about what a pain in the neck it was just to get them made.  I put in a money request from school to purchase the sponges and tubs from Target.  I thought that would be easy since I go there enough.  However, I ended up never having time to go to Target and peruse bins and sponges.  I had money to spend, and no time to spend it.  I usually have 3 kids in tow and I usually have other shopping to do, and - aint nobody got time for that...!  I wanted to just order them online, but Target does not sell sponges and Gladware online, and neither does Blick.  Finally, I had the opportunity to go solo to Target and buy my supplies.  I could not find regular 'ol cello sponges in all of Target Greatland.  I ended up buying the ones with scrubbers on one side.  Even those were hard to find and I cleared out an entire endcap.  Next, I had to find the Gladware.  I was stuck in this Corningware/green lunch box aisle and could not find regular Gladware anywhere.  I finally gave up and was just going to purchase the more heavy duty lunch box things.  Then, I stumbled upon the Gladware several aisles later with the trash bags and such.  I had to figure out all over again what size to get, and how many.  I wanted 12 for each school I teach out - for a total of 24.  Gladware is sold in packs of 5 and the sponges were packages of 6 or 2.  It's a good math problem and I screwed it up. I'm still short sponges, and that should of been the easy part. I had all my supplies finally, and I spent one morning putting glue sponges together.

I was anxious to use the glue sponges with the kids, but the Pinterest page told me to wait and let them soak overnight.  The next day I inspected my glue sponges.  I was excited, but kept thinking about how the kids are not going to know how to use these, and they wont be able to see me demonstrate how to use it properly.  Plus, they might forget key details! They might make a huge mess!!

 I spent my afternoon putting together this PowerPoint, "How to use a Glue Sponge."

I played it for the class and had it going on repeat throughout the hour.  I have had great success with it so far and the glue sponges have been fantastic!