Manage Your Messy Weaving Center! Cut an entire skein of yarn quickly.

I think the pandemic and isolation has had some residual effects on my art teacher resource output... I made this video that didn't really need to be made.  But, hopefully you find it helpful!  It has worked for me.

It didn't really belong on my YouTube channel - since those videos are mostly for students and lesson directions.  So, it has found a home here on my mostly neglected blog.

Enjoy!

Artsonia After School Art Club: Paint a Peacock with Me!

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. 😶😃

Succulent Still Life Junior High Art Lesson

Basically - I bought a whole bunch of succulents last year and managed to kill most of them before we even had a chance to get to this lesson.

Kill succulents?  Yeah.  I don't know. Too much water?  Not enough sun?  Not enough water? Too much sun. No idea.

I wanted each eighth grader to have their own, then for our second project we would make a clay pot for the succulent - but they got too dead for that.

The succulents, not the eighth graders.

Here is the lesson directions and rubric.  Its on TPT, but it is free. I did not actually follow the directions that I had written out though.  I wrote the directions thinking we were going to be looking at photographs of succulents, and not have the actual succulents in front of us.  The directions we actually followed are in this video.  The rubric included is also a little generic, and I altered a few things after I taught this to my actual students.  But it gets the main points across.



One of the coolest things that did happen with this lesson was all of the students using their music stand lights from Uncle Jon's Music in beautiful downtown Westmont.  I highly recommend investing in a set for yourself. 

Victorian Architecture with Middle School - Gingerbread Houses

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.

Rousseau's Jungle in First Grade and two fun videos!

One of my favorite units in first grade art is learning about Henri Rousseau and his tropical jungle pictures.  I always begin by showing a few Rousseau paintings, then watching "Dropping in on Rousseau."

Several kids were very interested in Henri Rousseau's Surprised.  They kept telling me they had seen it on Nick Jr.  I looked up the link, and sure enough, just as they said, two kids go in to the painting and kind of explore.  It's fun!  During my search, I also came across this video, which I decided to share with my classes:

This one was a little more informative.   Plus, it lead me to the entire series of "Your Paintings" which I could probably use in the future!

Our first lesson in our Rousseau Unit is a torn paper jungle collage.  I just love how tearing and gluing paper can turn into something so cool, and how successful each child can be!

Our year in Art. 2013-2014 Art class video

I put this video together to show at our Festival of the Arts.  It played in our gym as families walked around the first floor and took their seats for the choir concert.


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Linnea in Monet's Garden and the onset of Spring. Finally.

When I was pregnant with my first daughter, the onset of Spring coincided with art teaching becoming a lot harder.  It was my last trimester and I resembled Violet Beauregarde. Everything was difficult.  Everything.

This was when I became familiar with a wide collection of videos made for the elementary art room.

Linnea in Monet's Garden was on old VHS that came with my classroom.  I was teaching the life of Claude Monet and the students were going to start sponge painting some garden scenes.  The movie was a nice little break.  The kids really enjoyed it and would recall so much information for weeks after.  For me, watching it several times for all my classes, I started over analyzing it.  I started to get irritated by the dialog, and I really started to hate the pace of the story.

Briefly, Linnea likes to visit her elderly neighbor and drink soda, talk to herself, and look through his art books.  Somehow they decided to take a trip together to France.  Mr. Bloom has been there before, and really wanted to share the experience with Linnea. I guess?

That doesn't make much sense to me, but my students never seem to question why she is going to France with her neighbor.  I like that it mentions that it cost a lot, and I think showing the plane heading into France is great for the kids to understand just how far away it is.

The pacing is slow.  The movie is over 30 minutes and my students get very antsy.  I try to make sure they hang in there until they actually get into Monet's Garden.  Stopping and reviewing what has already happened seems to help.  It does start to get exciting when they intermingle photographs, cartoon, and paintings.

The climatic scene is when Linnea is on the Japanese bridge.  She is so excited to be on the actual bridge from Monet's painting.  She says, "It can never be more now than it is right now."  I don't get that.  I cringe when I hear it each time.  I always think the kids are going to ask me what she means, and I wonder if I could explain it as a transcendental experience or something.

This wasn't meant to be a review of the movie, just a story about my experiences with it.  Just think about how many times you will have to watch it.

I started a mini Monet project with my first graders this year.  It's been a long time since I watched Linnea in Monet's Garden and I thought it might be nice for this lesson too.  It happened to be on a day when Chicagoland experienced a teaser of Spring (high 50s!)  The school was warm and windows were open.  The wet spring breeze filled the classroom as we sat in the dark watching the slow relaxing movie.  I was reminded of all the memories of my first experience with the movie over 10 years ago.  And of course, during the second viewing, all my snarky dislikes of it.

Two weeks after we watched Linnea in Monet's Garden, students recalled many facts about Monet's life and paintings.  That was what I had wanted from the get go.

I supplemented our learning with Susan Rodriguez's Travels with Monet.  There are a lot of nice facts and exemplars in this book.

Check out my classroom and procedures from 12 years ago! "Art Rules!" video - with wild original music.

I think this was pretty awesome at the time, who am I kidding... it is still awesome.  It was the early 2000's and iMovie was taking the world by storm.  This video served as a showcase of what we were doing in the art room.  I popped it on a VHS and had it running repeatedly during our open house/ art show.  The kids and the parents loved it.

My sister-in-law (the talented voice in the song!) convinced me to dig it out of hiding and post it to the YouTube.  It had been years since I watched it!  I was amazed at some of the procedures and routines I still do in the art room, and contemplated the ones that have gone by the wayside.  It has also made me want to produce an updated version.  We will have to see about that!
Finally, my husband is the most talented musician in the world.  He wrote the music just for me, but it you want to hear some of his actual music, you should visit  FlatCatsMusic.com or IceCreamVendors.net or The Astronauts.

Watching a video - Learning about horizon lines.

I snapped this picture today in second grade. I liked the way my room was dark, and the video was projecting, and everything was calm.
We were finishing up a project, and I decided to show this short little video on drawing a sofa, on a horizon line.  It is pretty weird, but the kids enjoyed it and understood where horizons belong.