Collaborative Beginning of the Year Keith Haring Paintings

First and second graders looked at Keith Haring's website under the kids section to learn facts about his life and work as an artist. The first graders traced each other's bodies and worked in small groups of 4 or 5 to paint in the figure. The second graders were responsible for outlining the figures in black and adding the painted black lines and shapes in the backgrounds. This was a great one day lesson for the first week back in art:)

**Thanks to Leah at What's Happening in the Art Room for the great idea!!**

YMCA After School Program Art Show

Through out the school year I worked with our after school program and held an art club. In the upper grades I let the students make their own choice for the subject matter of their paintings. It was interesting to see their choices. For the lower grades, we did abstract tape paintings. They they turned out great and the parent turn out was great for the show too!

#Student Selfies

I started the year at a new school this year, same district. But NO MORE TRAVELING for me!!! It has been so wonderful being in only one building. I have never had so much prep time in my whole career now that I'm not  buzzing around town between schools.
So I have 500 or so new names to learn of all my students. I thought a perfect beginning of the year project would be self portraits. Since I had to unpack 8 years of art teaching hoarding, I wanted an easy lesson with little prep. I found this lesson with all the templates in both English and Spanish on the Teachers Pay Teacher website, which was submitted by Art With Jenny K (THANK YOU!)

The kids loved it, it puts a modern spin on self portraits, and used language they are familiar with. And it was nice to get a piece of artwork up from every student right away.

Baird Lego City

First project of the Year! All students and staff colored in a Lego person. If student's finished early I had them help draw clouds, buildings, playground, ect. I like to do a quick project right away to get artwork hung up in the empty halls:)

Artist In Resident Kirsten Christianson

My school was lucky enough to have paper making artist Kirsten Christianson working with all the art classes for one week in February.
Kirsten is based out of Sturgeon Bay, WI and creates artwork using handmade paper. The theme for our art project was "snow falling on branches". The kids loved it and was amazing to hear the discussions with Kirsten about her career as an artist!

4th and 5th Self Portrait Zentangle Arm Prints

4th and 5th graders made these awesome arm prints! They traced their arm and hand first on colored paper. The first day they looked through magazines to find 2-3 images that described themselves or was a picture of something they liked to do or were interested in. Once the images were glued to their arm prints, they created Zentangle designs in the empty space. I had Zentangle books and print outs for them to look at to get ideas for their designs. Then they cut and glued to black paper where I had written Reach For The Stars.

Grade 3 Handprint Tree

 Third graders worked collaboratively to make a grade level tree. They traced their hands, designed and colored in, then glued to a tree I had pre-cut.

Grades 1 and 2 Collaborative Circles

After going over rules and expectations for the year I needed something simple and something that would be successful for all my students right off the bat. We talked about working as independent artists, and then also working collaboratively as artist. Each student got a section of a circle to color and design how they desired. I told them to focus on being creative and neat. Then we glued them together like a puzzle. Great, easy project to get the art juices flowing and the halls decorated quickly!

First days of school Project

I think the first week of art is always the toughest, because you have to review all the classroom rules and procedures. It's so much talking and I know the students would rather be working on projects. So this year I shortened my introduction to the art room to bare bones so we could get to a project right away. I figured I could address specific procedures as they come up through out the year. So I got this idea from SmART Class blog, THANK YOU!! It turned out so great and I've gotten so many compliments on it from other staff members. And of course the students love hunting for their portrait. There was about 20 portraits that I didn't add to the big collage, but I will be hanging those in my art room for a mini college.

My mini collage in my art room of students who didn't finish in time for the bigger display.

Chihuly Tower

5th graders studied Chihuly too. I know these Towers are all over art blogs now, but they are so cool. It was nice to have my two fifth grade sections work together to make this sculpture. It took us almost a month to complete working on it here and there between other projects. I found it to be a great stress relief for my special friends from other classes too when they needed a break from their work or a distraction for awhile. It really brightens up the entry way to our school:)