Think warm 2011 quilts

Last year when we got back from winter break I decided January would have the theme of, "Think Warm." I was looking to do projects that focused on weaving and quilts. I had what I thought were a ton of great lessons but in the end it was one of the most frustrating months of teaching in my life. Weaving projects have a steep learning curve and old crappy school scissors DO NOT cut fabric. This year I will be slashing some of my projects and trading in different projects with the same concept but hopefully better results.

Kinder and 1st symmetry quilts were high prep on my side but excellent results for the kids. Now that I have all my templates made I think things will go smoothly this year. We talk about slide, mirror and radial symmetry using these three quilt patterns.
shoo fly churn dash pinwheel or double pinwheel
I choose these patterns because they have students cut squares into either triangles or rectangles and allow for easy manipulation to achieve the patterns.

I give the students the squares needed for each part in the correct color and then a "quilt puzzle guide" to glue the shapes onto. they have to cut their shapes and match the color of the shape to the shape and color word on their puzzle guide.

If you are interested in exploring math and art using quilting...or you happen to like to quilt (like I do) I would highly recomend the website www.quilt.com and then going to the "Quilt blocks by block type." This no frills website but has all the quilt blocks you could ever want in 4, 5, 7 and 9 patch. There is enough variety to keep students of all ages working on their math and art skills. They also have really nice quilt coloring sheets and each quilt block gives you step by step directions.

You could really challenge your older students, which I plan to do (4th and 5th grade) with more complex designs that still work off squares cut into triangles and rectangles. I like to use
summer windsJacob's ladder card trick
for the older students I give them square of colors to choose from and a image of the completed quilt square but they must figure out how to cut and arrange their squares to make the design.

Back when I taught 5th grade, in a much nicer school, I had my advanced math group also find the area of the each of the shapes. This was great practice for finding area of squares, rectangles and triangles.

You could, given the time, money, supplies and interest, take these projects into the realm of fabric, even just cutting the shapes out of fabric and gluing them down. However, I find cutting shapes from fabric without a rotary cutter to be pretty frustrating and I will not be going there.

As for the 2nd and 3rd graders, they will be learning about Faith Ringgold and doing a project many of us have done based on her book "Tar Beach."
I will have the students draw, or collage, or a combo of both, a picture of them flying over our neighborhood or city. Around the picture they create students put squares of fabric to create a patchwork quilt border. Last year I tried to have the kids make the squares out of fabric. Our school scissors will not under any circumstances cut fabric. So I tried the paper cutter...that worked a bit better but not good enough for me to cut enough squares for around 200 students. I had seen another teacher do this project and use some wonderful Roylco decorative papers as the "fabric" squares. I think that is a great idea. I happen to have a stack of scrapbook paper from a teacher who gave up her scrapbook hobby so we will use those in place of the Roylco. I hope for better results this year...ones that I could even post~

1st grade art

Man the poor 1st graders are getting the short end of the stick this year. We have been in school for 14 weeks and I have only seen the classes 7 times! Most classes I have seen about 25 times.

A strange and unfortunate mix of assemblies, field trips, days off of school, assemblies and teacher double booking has robed the kids of art class. Unlike most grade levels at my school 1st grade only comes to art once a week for 20min instead of twice a week for 20 min at a time. Let me tell you it is hard to get much of anything done with 29 1st graders in only 20 min.

The only project we have completed that I feel good about took us 4 of the 7 classes we have had together. I'm a bit late putting up the photos but this is our harvest collage. A merging of our non Halloween, Halloween pumpkin, a painted paper gourd and a ear of finger painted Indian corn. Along with the help of a hot glue gun and a collage student who needed to get some volunteer hours we added the corn husks that you would usually use for making tamales.

These were influenced by the harvest collages lots of different schools did but special thanks to Holly at Lines, Dots and Doodles for her idea.



click to enlarge

2nd grade owls

And for the last of the owls, 2nd grade texture owls.
A major theme in 2nd grade is texture and understanding the difference between real and visual texture. Students drew 3 large leaves on green paper and then used warm color crayons and my homemade rubbing plates to add visual texture. Then we used our little fingers and small motor skills to tear brown paper and collage it onto our owls to create real texture. Finally I caved in and got out the large google eyes.

I have focusing on building a sense of community and teach about public art by having the kids do more collaborative art this year. So we took our leaves and owls and combined them to make a fantastic owl tree. We also talked about camouflage and why owls would blend in with their environment. We pulled in the science words predator and prey while we were at it.
(click to enlarge)
I also went the extra step to put out the labels explaining what we were working on during the project.

I'm glad I took a photo though because within 48 hours my typed up explanation has been ripped down and trampled by wet, muddy feet.
even our less, ahem...gifted...kiddos made cute owls!

Way to go 2nd grade!

3rd grade owls

What can you do in two 15 min art session with a stack of scrapbook paper scraps? Make some super cute collage owls. Of all our owl projects these were the school favorite.

4th grade owls

Our 4th grade project was a dumbed down version of this stunning lesson from That Artist Women. I honestly don't have her skill level with watercolor painting but I sure like to try her projects myself to help improve my own skills and then simplify them for my kiddos.

This project started back when I was out sick and I had two different subs do the drawing of the owl with the kids. I had the sub follow the how to draw owl sequence I posted back in my owl project idea post. I still don't know where the drawing sequence came from! Anyway I had left a stack of card stock with the first step, a letter W in the place and in the size I wanted the kids to stick to. It must have worked out because 95% of the kids had a usable drawing when I got back.


During our next time together I had the kids use a sharpie to go over their pencil lines. Then we used brown oil pastel to add feather and branch texture to our owls. Next I gave them a white oil pastel to draw leaves in the background. Some kids were too frustrated with the white and used yellow instead and that worked out looking pretty good also.


During our third session we painted our owls and used the warm colors to paint the background. Some kids asked to add splotches of green and I said that was Ok. We also talked a bit about analogous colors and why owls would be brown like the trees they roosted in (aka what are the advantages of camouflage) then we talked about what snow owls would be white...camouflage and adaptation. Just a nice little science tie in. I asked the librarian to read Owl Moon to the kids to go with the project but she never got around to it. Oh well...so goes it when you only have class for 20-ish min at a time.

5th grade owls

you know the drill, click to enlarge

Whooo loves owls? I dooooooo! We did owl projects in 5th-2nd grade and everyone whooo saw them liked them. Let's start with 5th grade.
I am working on building the 5th graders confidence in drawing and getting them to make artistic choices. This was my first, "artist's choice," drawing lesson. I choose steps of the drawing that were required and steps that were optional. This allowed each student to personalize their drawing to their own taste, interest, skill level and desired amount of work. Ohhh look at me, I differentiated.

The drawing:
I started by guiding the class through a basic owl drawing. No tracers allowed for this one. We started towards the top of the paper and made a fist. I had them place their fist on the paper and "draw" around it with their finger. Then I had them use their pencil to draw a oval- circle shape about the size of their fist. Next we drew the body of the owl using a basic oval and the idea that the body should be about two heads high. At this point the kids added a beak, ears if they wanted them, design around the eyes and on the face and some w shaped lines for feathers on the tummy. Onto the wings. Students could make the wings laying to the side of the owl, stretching out or with one wing bent to hold something. Next we drew a branch for our owl to sit on and added the feet. Students could put leaves on their branch if wanted. Then I had students add a moon (in the phase of their choice) and stars if they wanted. Finally students could have their owl hold something. Some chose a heart, others had their owls hold baby owls or teddy bears or even a mouse for dinner. Everything was inked over with waterproof felt tip pen.

The painting:
After this was all done we spent two class sessions painting our owls (one class is still not done) I showed the kids how to mix different shades of brown with their watercolors and used touches of blue and purple to create different feather textures on the wings and body. We talked about painting one section of a drawing and then moving onto another area to let the paint dry before we went back to the first section to keep paint from bleeding. We practiced keeping our paint not to thick and not too watery. Eventually we did a wet on wet wash in the back and added salt to make the star/snow effect.

The results: I would say at leat 85% of the students felt good about their drawing. That is way better than usual. I was quite pleased with their drawings and creativity. Our painting results were less successful. We did our drawing on 60lb card stock...my "good" paper alternative. I can only afford to have students do one clay project a year and one project on good watercolor paper. As this was a new lesson I didn't want to risk the 5th grade's one piece of watercolor paper on it. I wish I had. Doing detailed watercolor painting on anything but watercolor paper tends to lead to so so results. Still quite a few kids got a pretty nice end product. It would be interesting to do this lesson with tempera and small small brushes, but I just love the look of watercolors.

stage fright and oil pastel landscapes

Well in the last week I have amassed over 100 followers who now look at my blog. I also got put on another top blog list. To some this might mean blogging victory...to me it means stage fright. I started this as a place to keep my lessons and vent. Then as a place to record for myself what the students artwork looked like from year to year. I feel like the more people who read my blog the more awesome it needs to be, the more insightful the dialog, the more impressive the projects and end result from my students. That is not really pressure I am looking for. Hence my stage fright. I'm also feeling more hesitant to talk about my personal struggles at my school. The more people reading my blog the higher the chance that someone will suss me out and rat me out to my school/my district? Then again, it seems of all the people who read my blog who show their personal info the closest person is in Seattle...well aside from a few of my personal friends. So I'm probably being paranoid. For now I will try to pretend/hope that only 20 people actually read my writing and the rest just scan my photos for lesson ideas and move along.

Onto the art. The oil pastels I can buy from my district wear house drive me nuts. I've always been unhappy with their lack of vibrancy, lack of coverage, how absurdly fast they are gone and how easily they break and the fact that they wont blend. To me a major part of using oil pastels is their ability to blend giving you new colors and a painterly effect. With my district ones one color just slides over the other or balls up. Very frustrating. To my great joy the kindergarten teacher was cleaning out her closets between conferences on Tuesday and found some boxes of Crayola oil pastels that a parent had brought in years ago. She did not want them and gave them to me. I promptly tried them out (the octagonal ones) Wow! I hate to be a brand whore but those Crayola's are a LOT better than the school's generic ones. I know what I will be using my next five weeks worth of Jo-anns coupons buying.

To the project at hand. It is a good standby for teaching landscape, warm and cool colors and using up the little bits of old oil pastels. I usually do this project with 3rd grade as they have the small motor control to draw with the glue. This lesson took 1 20 min session and 1 35 min session. We started by talking about foreground, mid ground and background. We made a practice sketch on white paper. We make a wave line at the bottom of the paper. Then we added hills/mountains for the mid ground. Finally we made a circle in the background and used concentric circles to fill the sky area.

After they made their practice sketch I gave each student their black paper and had them make their final drawing with pencil. I then showed them how to go over their lines with white glue. I emphasize that the tip of the glue bottle MUST touch the paper or the will get a blobby mess.
Set the papers FLAT to dry. During the next session I had the kids use the left over bits of oil pastel to color the for and mid ground in cool colors and the sky in warm colors. In the past I have let the kids choose to use cool colors in the sky and warm on the ground. Either way looks good. Lots of people use chalk pastels for this lesson, but then you have to spray to fix.

see the trees

hey look, I don't just steal art projects and talk about doing them, I actually have the kids do them and eventually take photos and put them up. Hear is a snapshot of our tree unit with photos of a about half of the lessons. Enjoy.

the "raindrop" tree project I made up to teach 3rd grade about overlap and working on perspective

2nd grade's texture trees inspired by the lesson at We Heart Art
4th grade once again did this lesson from Kids Artists. We ran out of black paper for the background and we used blue instead....I like it better with black. This year I also had them practice their tints to create variegation around the "moon" using paint instead of oil pastel. Too early in the year for this...they got really frustrated. Lets not even talk about how frustrated they got cutting out the black trees. This was one of my fav projects last year. Next year I'll go back to the original version.



Too many people have done this project to give any one person credit for it anymore. But it is the basic tape resist tree. Lots of people do it as a winter Birch painting. We don't have Birch trees in Oregon so we did a fall version. This was 5th grades 1st time painting with acrylics. They liked how rich the colors where and how fast it dried. I liked how each student was able to take the basic directions and come up with their own unique twist on the cluster of trees.


and as always the office bulletin board...click to enlarge. In there are some 1st grade Klimt inspired trees that I didn't take close up photos of for some reason. I did those with a very small group of 1st graders who were done early with some test.

Lesson for week before thanksgiving

Oh November you strange month you. Well I guess you are not strange...its just all the holidays in you that makes you strange. This is our only full week of school this month. All of next week is non school days for the students thanks to conferences and Thanksgiving. On the plus side we have made excellent progress on our owl projects. All of 3rd grade has completed their owl collages. Two out of three 4th grade classes have painted their owls in the foliage. 5th grade has done their owl drawings and are ready to paint. Best of all, both the students and staff are feeling good about the kids work. I'm telling you...owls are always a hit.

So this week:
Kinder- I lost track of time so we will stick with our concentric circle turkey as we are working on shape right now and I found the site this came from Preschool daze


1st grade made their corn for their harvest collages and their gourds so all we have to do is cut out all the pieces, pumpkin, corn, gourd and create our composition with them and add some silk fall leaves.

2nd grade: hum, thanks to holidays one class is done and ready for a new project while the other classes still need to finish their texture owls and leaves.
Cas-2 finish texture owls
Cul-2 finish texture owls
Pru-2 has big moon paintings from a Halloween project that fell through. I want to take the big moon as the background and do the scarecrow drawing from Art Projects For Kids, have the kids cut out the scarecrow and glue it on the moon so we get a little perspective going on and we can hopefully use up some of the bag of raffia I was just given. I figure the drawing will take up the 20 min long class session and the painting will take up the 30 min class session


3rd grade: Just did some really fun owl collages/mixed media with my old stash of scrapbook paper. About this time each year I have the kids do a simplified black glue landscape. In the past I have done the one from artsonia (basically this project...not sure where this photo is from, you know the project)
with black paper and oil pastel or chalk pastel. This year I'm going to let the kids choose....two tables will have oil pastels, two tables will have chalk pastels and two tables will have tempera paint.
we will sketch and black glue during our 20 min class and then add color during our 35 min class. Am I crazy for letting them choose their media? Possibly. Am I so low on oil pastels and chalk pastels that I don't have enough for a entire class at a time? YES. I may rethink this later and have everyone paint.

4th grade: Brady still needs to paint their owls, everyone else is done with their owls
J-4 and C-4....torn between two projects also from Art Projects for Kids (can you tell I was cursing her site for projects?) The first one would hit up a ton of 4th grade standards (Oregon has no specific elementary art standards aside from make art, look at art and learn about artist so I use California standards for lack of better idea)
This project works on proportion, figure drawing, positive and negative space and can use complementary colors in the background.
(I'm sure we will end up doing this)

However, I want to do this entomology project sometime soon! I need to find out what grade level studies bugs and then decided if they are old enough to make the little box the bug goes into. You could draw so many types of bugs! From moths to stink bugs to stick bugs!
maybe after Thanksgiving break I will have the 4th and 5th graders make them. They could do a little research on their bug/insect and make a label like in a museum (always trying to squeeze in some writing)

5th grade: both classes need to paint their owls. My twice a week class is going to get started on the 5th grade clay project which is scissor birds (I wish I knew where I got this lesson/photos from so I could give them credit!!) I've had these photos on my laptop for several years and finally feel confident enough to try the project. We will start by making the collage version and then after break we will make the clay version.