Kindergarten Pasta Pots.

It is really hard to figure out what to teach Kindergarten at the first of the year. They don't know much, but really just want to make art. It is also hard for them to sit still for directions.

I forget this sometimes.

I found a lot of lesson plans online, but not many for Kinder, and where there were Kinder activities they wanted me to PAY! ugh. I understand the desire for teachers to try to earn money for their program, but education should be free. so here is one that I did, free of charge.

Something they will always sit still for is a good story. On the second day of class this year I read my Kindergartners "Strega Nona." To make a long story short, in this book Strega Nona has a magic pasta pot that gets hijacked by her employee and almost buries the town in Pasta.

This lesson centers around working together, and lines. the students have a huge piece of paper for each table, and on each paper is a pasta pot. The kids at each table have to make pasta coming out of the pasta pot that is not too fat, and overlaps. Overlapping is a huge challenge for these kiddos. I show them with my arms how you cant see through the arm in front to the arm in the back, and we practice by yelling STOP and HOP when
we want to over lap. It's goofy, but it works.

First week down..... a lifetime to go.

I have officially finished my first week as the full time art teacher! I am SO tired, but it was so awesome having my own classroom, and my own students. I even stayed late-ish today to hang some artwork. Will be posting images of some beginning of the year assessment activities very soon.
Time for sleep.

Sewing on a budget!

Just found a cool DIY website GiannyL Shows you how to re-purpose old clothing using nothing but visuals and a Latin sound track. I could watch these all day.

Until next time.

Hooded scarf

I'll be making as many of these as possible this winter. Pictures to come.

Update: I LOVE the way these work as scarves, but the hoods don't look great on me. I gave lots as gifts, and everyone loved having an instant hood at my aunts very cold Boxing Day party.

Cello Lesson!

My classroom management professor loves to assign projects that seem mildly pointless until they are complete. For this project my randomly assigned partner N had to teach me to play the cello! It was really fun the first time, then I realized we recorded the lesson with no sound. Epic fail on my part. N was considerably less enthusiastic about teaching me the second time around, but had lots of patience with me. I think the lesson was a huge success! I showed N how to do gesture drawing, and he did a really neat drawing of his cello he hung in his house.

I wanted to add the video of me learning the cello with no sound, but blogger says no, and N may be upset with me, so just use your imagination!

Until Next time- Happy Bow Circles!

My Evolution/ Old school examples

I have TONS of art that I have made through out my career as a student. I know I don't have the lesson plans for these, but you may be able to use them as inspiration for something.

 

This was watercolor ( I think)and colored pencil the whole year I was in 5th grade we did mid evil inspired things. I also have my gargoyles, and will try to take pictures.

 This was my second year of painting I think, so I already kind of had a grip on the media, I don't remember there being much of a prompt for this. we went outside, my teacher talked about trees and how artists used to study nature...... Yeah I wasn't listening, there was a cute boy in the class. BUT we got to sit outside to paint, and had to do practice sketches before we started. I vaguely recall using a mini dry erase board, which I'm sure I thought was neat. You can buy melamine board at Home depot for pretty cheap, cut it up, and have a cheap class set of dry erase boards. Crayola makes dry erase crayons if you are wary of giving your kids smelly markers.



Chalk pastels on dark paper with a model. Good for practicing highlights and shadows. For secondary this could be adapted with still life set ups or a manikin. The point was highlights, not nude models!! Make sure you get a dark paper with a good tooth. This was Strathmore dark drawing paper and was awesome.


Write your name in a triangle, trace it all over the page in reflecting ways, and volia! Radiating name design.


This was painting class in High School, we were lucky enough to use oil paint back then. I used a program similar to photoshop to make a photo I took monochromatic (I made mine a negative too). It was a neat way to learn about tints and shades on a more sophisticated scale in HS. Plus, it was me, so I was instantly hooked.



This was a silly project I made up for myself at the end of the year. I got really into copying masters paintings in acrylics on a small scale, which I should post later, and this kind of evolved out of that. The image in the middle is a study I did for a self portrait, which I glued to some Masonite, with a matte board frame. Trees were kind of my trademark in High School. The lettering is Greek and random. this would be a cool "About me" project, the lettering could be things about the student, and around the self portrait could be stuff they are into.


This got me interested in German Expressionism. It was a 10 min extended gesture activity. The length was fine in college, but for secondary students I can see interest loss after 5, which is a shame, because having to go over my lines is what makes this image I think.



The prompt for this project was pick a song, draw how it makes you feel using hatching and stippling. For your students you may want to specify the song needs to be appropriate. I sketched everything out with a pencil and went over it with sharp lines using a Micro pen. I still want to go back and fill in the background so it is very dark and the box will pop.
BTW the song was Portishead: Glory Box

Melted Crayons

In the never ending task of organizing my craft space (pictures of finished product coming soon….. I hope) and the frenzy of back to school shopping (teachers snag those marker deals while you can) I realized that most of the crayons that I have in the giant shoe box under my desk are awful. After going through and picking out all the tiny nubs and random no brand crayons, leaving behind only good looking Cryolas (really, any thing else is just a waste of money) I had almost a full box of crayons left. Since I am a pack rat, and totally unable to get rid of anything that I know could still be used, unless I’m giving it away to someone to use, I decided to make some new crayons.

The exciting thing is, making your own crayons is really easy, but they aren’t going to be the skinny sticks you’re used to, unless you have a mold. The advantage to not having sticks is that the crayons will be a lot easier for little kiddos to hold onto, and you can give out multi colored crayons in goodie bags, or as prizes, and kids are always excited to see the cool colors in their crayon. These flat wafer crayons are also perfect for texture rubbings.

Step 1: after separating out the crayons you want to use, peel of the paper wrappers. Depending on how many crayons you have, this could take a while, so put on a good movie, or grab a friend to talk to and help out. After your first 200 crayons your fingers are going to hurt if you are peeling with just your nails (and by the way, paper cuts between your nail and finger really hurt.) I would suggest getting an exacto knife and slitting the paper down the length of the crayon, and then peeling away, much easier and much faster.

Step 2: Pick out the colors you want to use, break them up into small pieces. You can do this snapping them by hand, but you might get a bruised finger. A hammer works well too. The smaller the pieces are, the quicker they melt, and when a crayon doesn’t melt all the way, then it is susceptible to cracking. (as seen)

Step 3: Stick the crayon pieces in a mold. I used a mini muffin tin, but you can use anything as a mold, as long as it will go in the oven or stand up to heat. Candy molds can make cute shapes, but if the mold isn’t metal then you will have to pour the wax in. Do this by melting the wax in a jar using the double broiler method, and pour wax in mold. If you want to do multi colored crayons this is not the best way to go.

Step 4: Turn the oven on at 250 degrees (keep warm setting on my oven) and bake the crayon mold until all of the wax is melted, this will take between 7 and 10 minuets.

Step 5: Take tray out of the oven and stick it in the freezer. Leave in the freezer for about 20 minuets.

Step 6: take out of freezer and pop crayon wafers out. The colder they are the easier they will come out. But be careful, the colder they are the more likely they are to break if you pop them out and they fall on the table. (as seen)

While the new crayon discs look cool compared to the nubs they used to be, they are unfortunately no better then the crayons they originally were. This means that if you have been buying cheapo brands like rose art your new discs are still gonna suck. The good news is that the cheap crayons tend to rise to the top when they melt, so you can rub the bad part off if they accidentally get mixed up with good quality crayons.

So have fun, experiment. You can do crayons according to seasonal colors, complementary colors, solid colors or even a rainbow. This is an easy project for kids to help out with too, they will be excited to color with something that they made. If you don’t want to keep all of the wafers you made, you can always give it to your students art teacher, or a local daycare, I’m sure they will enjoy the new crayons much more then the dirty broken pieces.

UPDATE: My mentor during student teaching shared her method of making rubbing crayons.

1. Use an electric skillet and soup can to make a double broiler. Fill skillet with water and soup can with crayons. Turn on.

2. When crayons are melted pour crayons into a mold. My mentor used the plastic balls that bubble gum machine prizes come in, sitting in an egg carton.

3. Put mold in freezer.

The pros: crayons melt all the way, so breakage is reduced. You don't have to heat up your whole oven.

The cons: You might have to find supplies, they aren't always in your kitchen like my method. You cant make multicolored crayons. the colors mix too much.

Until next time!