Monday, January 27, 2014

A Favorite Common Core Connection

Common core is the big buzz around schools and teaching so over the summer I planned a few ways that I would use to connect art. One of my favorite lessons that I'm doing is paper mache puppets for a Readers Puppet Theater with second grade. Over the next couple of weeks I will show and tell how they are doing. Students are all excited about every aspect of this unit!

Our first step, naturally, was Paper Mache!



Students love the mess of it all! Even when they complained, they really meant- This is awesome!


Next, students paint the puppet heads white and to decorated their puppet bodies. I recruited parent volunteers to sew puppet bodies over the holiday break and that was a HUGH help!

I'll be posting our next steps soon so please check back to see their progress!

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Have You Tried A Choice Based Art Lesson?

I'm always up for trying new things and I've been wanting to do a choice based art lesson for as long as I can remember. Whats held me back? The structuring of it! I just couldn't get my mind around how it would work....for the students and for me, the teacher.

So I feel like I finally organized a lesson in such a way that it will work for both parties. I'm doing a choice based Portrait lesson with my 4th grade and have just begun the process. I decided to use a restaurant theme and made a menu that outlines this process.

We began last week with a "Tasting" An art medium tasting that is. Students rotated through 3 tasting tables to simply explore 3 possible materials; printmaking, tempera paint and collage. I also had 3 examples of art made using these materials so they had some idea of the possibilities.


Table 3 was printmaking. Students used pre made cards that had various materials you could use when making prints....yarn, foil, cardboard, foam, bubble wrap, etc....


Table 1 was Tempera Paint. At this stop, students followed a recipe to create skin color. They made both a light and a dark flesh tone sample card.


At Table 2 students make a sample card of a few different paper options when creating a collage.

To culminate our tasting students gathered with their sample cards and decided what medium suited them for creating their portrait masterpiece. I was thrilled to have students from each class fill all 3 mediums.

When asked about their thoughts on the Art Medium Tasting event students said they LOVED the experience! Next week we will have our Appetizer event: Sketchersice. Students will rotate through 3 tables to discover 3 ways to sketch a portrait.

Check in next week to learn how it all went.