How to save your child's art and your sanity

Thanks to an idea from a recent post at Mrs. Knight's Smartest Artists, I did some research for an article for our school's newsletter. Here's an excerpt:

Scanning or photographing your child's most treasured pieces is a great way to preserve them and de-clutter your home.  Once the favorite pieces are chosen and digitized, here are some fun ideas:   

1.  Make a photo book. (Super easy on shutterfly.com.  I like the idea of adding photos of the child along with the art.)

 http://kayewinieckidesigns.com

2. Make a poster (I made mine at shutterfly.com, they are also available at snapfish.com)

Here's one I just made for my Lucy Goose

3. Make pretty much anything else you can think of... notecards, mugs, totebags, calendars, oh my.  There are companies that will embroider your child's work onto bathtowels or even create a plush toy based on your child's drawing!  Snapfish.com has a lot of options.

http://www.childsown.com/

http://www.alittlebitfunky.com

Textured Ice Cream Cones

It's that wacky time of year and I was looking for a non-messy but fun one period activity to keep the little monkeys occupado while I'm finishing report cards and handing out portfolios.  Mission accomplished, there are several incarnations of this lesson floating around Pinterest these days.  I did them today with Kinder and Grade 1 and the kids so far have loved them.

Monochromatic Memories

"My father was four years old when his father died in a car accident..."

"We went to the mosque to pray for him..."

"I was on a swing and it was too fast.  I was six.  I fell off and was bleeding..."

For a week, I was sick.  For PE, we had swimming and I missed the whole thing..."

"I broke my arm at school.."

"I felt sad and mad..."

"My grandma died and I was two years old..."

This Grade 2 unit focused on the many ways of self expression.  In art class,we talked about difficult times in our lives-- specifically times where we felt angry, sad, ashamed, in pain or frustrated.  I showed them Ms. Kristin's Gallery of Depressing Art Powerpoint and we investigated what the artist was trying to express.

To prep for the final painting, we did a few things:

1) Practiced tints and shades with tempera
2) Sketched 4 memories of a difficult time in their lives
3) Decided where on the final painting each memory will go-- one was large, one was upside down, one was on the side of the page, and one was medium sized

When everything was sketched on the final paper, the kids made 5 lines going all the way across the page in different directions.  The directions for painting were, anytime they crossed a pencil line, they had to change to a new tint or shade.

After the painting was complete. the kids came up to me one by one with their painting as a reference and told me the story.  I typed as they spoke and printed it out-- -they could  cut and paste it in whatever way they wanted onto their final piece.

Portfolio cover sheets

 

I was inspired by a post over at the Art of Ed about making cover sheets for art portfolios.   I wanted the cover sheets to be a broad overview of the year in art class.  Since my current job entails teaching the little ones (kinder to Grade 2), I needed to minimize the written reflections.   I especially like the idea of drawing the 3D pieces that have already been sent home, so they're aren't forgotten.

I'll post some finished ones as they come in.

Collaborative Ceramic Bead Mosaic

True confessions time: I almost threw all the beads away. In January I saw lots of cool medallions and beads on Pinterest and thought it would be a great thing to do with my Grade 1's since we didn't have a lot of clay.  I got the kids all jazzed up to use glaze and fire them-- not thinking for a second that DUH you need special equipment for glaze firing beads.  Equipment that I don't have.

So the bisque-fired beads sat in the clay room for months, unpainted, unglazed and unloved.  Finally some keen kids pestered me enough to begin thinking about them, but I still had no idea we were going to do.  Putting them on yarn and sending them home just felt too summer camp-y. When it became clear that the holes in the beads were all different sizes and that many would not fit on a heavy gauge wire, I decided we needed to just stick them to something.

What We Did:

1)  We had many chats about the power of collaborative art (showing them Yayoi Kusama's The Obliteration Room helped.) I also showed them this super cool tile mural and juxtaposed it with just one of the tiles, all alone and sad.

2) They got to choose one color of acrylic for each bead and it took them two 45 classes to cover their beads completely.  Each child had about 5 beads and they were textured so they needed to really work to get them covered.

3)  The next class was their favorite-- they used paint markers in gold, silver and black to decorate the beads.  This marked the end of their personal ownership of the beads- when they were decorated they "said goodbye" and put them on a tray with all the other beads according to color.  We made a big deal of it, "Goodbye precious bead, you know Mommy will always love you.  Be a good boy and enjoy your new life with the other beads..."etc etc etc.  The kids thought it was hilarious. 

4) The boards were painted after school and each class got to glue one section.  During their art class as they were working on something else I called one table at a time and they got to come up and stick them in the glue.  It got progressively harder as space got tight.

And there you go...what's that saying about necessity being the mother of invention? :)

The Scream

Did you know that Munch's The Scream (recently sold for almost 120 million bucks) is the second most recognizable piece of art in the world, second only to the Mona Lisa?  Appropriations abound, and the kids really got a kick out of looking at them.

The Grade 1 artists made their personal versions by drawing lines on paper that were radiating from one point and practicing some blending with oil pastels.

a la warhol

a la mccauley culkin

a la homer

a la lego

One Year Blogoversary and some Monkey Business

First, the blogoversary-- I started blogging one year ago today when my students in Cambodia began work on a Chihuly inspired chandelier.

Thanks to Mr E for showing me that it could be done!  Thanks to Phyl at There's a Dragon in My Art Room, Art Project Girl, MaryMaking and Pat over Sharpie Woman for being among the first to actually read and respond to my posts. This blogging business is a lot more fun when you know someone's out there reading your stuff.

And second, the Monkey Business.  It's "spring" (if you can call 100 F spring) and I let my behavior modification plan go to seed. Bad Idea Jeans.  I fortuitously stumbled onto the Teaching Palette and found a fabulous post and video by an art teacher who uses Whole Brain Teaching strategies.

Using some of the strategies she uses have really changed the atmosphere in my classroom.  Managing the class in a silly and fun way=fantastic. :)  I highly recommend check out the whole brain teaching site.  I amended Katie Jarvis' system somewhat by using a Happy Monkey and a Depressed Dog.  If the kids are following the rules, I give the monkey a banana-- if they're not, the dog is sooooooo sad so I need to give her a bone to cheer her up.

If the monkey gets more bananas than the dog has bones, the kids from that class "wins" and get a happy monkey smiley face on the chart.  There's no incentive past that and nobody's asked for it, ha ha!!  They are excited enough to count their smiley monkey faces and compare the number to other classes.