Today I wrapped up week #3 of school! Man oh man - do I miss the summer! Waking up at 5:15am every morning just isn't really my cup of tea.. This year my school had our students rotate through all 8 discovery (specials) classes during the first 8 days of school (normally we see them for a few days at a time). This was so that our students could meet all of their discovery teachers.. and get to see all of our classrooms. Last year I went 1 1/2 months before seeing some of my rotations, so this was a welcomed change! So during the first 8 days of school I introduced myself, went over my classroom rules, some procedures, and assigned seats for 48 separate classes! After all the boring introductory stuff, I also had my 2nd-5th grade students work on a collaborative mural project. This lesson comes from Don at Shine Brite Zamorano! We started by looking at the artist Libs Elliot. I showed students some examples of her work and then we briefly talked about how she was able to simultaneously create a sense of unity and variety in her artwork. After looking at some of her pieces, we landed on a slide which showed the GORGEOUS mural that Don had his students make, then I explained what we were going to do! Students were instructed to create a square patch with construction paper, that would be added to a nearly school-wide collaborative mural project inspired by the work of Libs Elliot. At each of my tables I put a basket filled with 6"x6" squares, large triangles (cut from 6"x6" squares), and 3"x3" squares in a number of different colors (colors were switched out for each rotation). Students were told they needed one large square, one large triangle, and two small squares (which could be cut into smaller triangles) - then the rest was up to them! I used the following schedule for my color rotations: Rotation 1- Scarlet, Magenta, White Rotation 2- Red, Scarlet, Orange (some), White Rotation 3- Orange, Gold, Red (some), White Rotation 4- Gold, Yellow, Light Yellow, Orange (some), White Rotation 5- Light Yellow, Hot Lime, Holiday Green (some), White Rotation 6- Hot Lime, Holiday Green, Turquoise, White Rotation 7- Turquoise, Royal Blue, Sky Blue, White Rotation 8- Royal Blue, Purple, Lilac, White I gotta be honest - the prep work for this one was INTENSE.. but the results are STUNNING! For this project (and really all my other projects), we used Tru-Ray Sulphite Construction Paper. If you haven't used it before - you haven't been living! Their paper comes in super vibrant colors AND it doesn't fade (which means this display will be up for a while)! To hang, I glued down the squares onto sheets of butcher paper, and then used packing tape and command strips to attach it to the wall. Command strips were ESSENTIAL to getting this to stay up!! The other specials teachers and I think that there is some kind of conspiracy going on in which the county is spraying something on our walls to make sure no tape sticks to it. I really think we're on to something!
Want to show school spirit in the most creative way? Students can help create this tiger mural for your school! This is perfect if your mascot is a tiger, if you are studying tigers, or if you just want a creative art project for your students. You might hang this in the office, library, or hallway for everyone to see! Helpful instructions in the guide will help you create the collaborative mural. 42 pieces print on regular paper to make the mural. Each section is coded with a pattern. A key at the top of each sheet tells students which color to use according to each pattern. Once the pieces are colored in, cut them out and assemble into the large mural! The final mural will be about 4 feet by 4 feet. Supplies Required: Students can use markers, crayons, pastels, etc. to fill in their pieces with color. Only orange, black, white, and green are used. Everything prints on regular 8.5 x 11 paper. You will also need scissors, glue, and a large piece of bulletin board paper to attach all the pieces. I recommend gluing all the pieces to a large piece of bulletin board paper and then attaching the entire mural to a wall or bulletin board. Click the preview to see more details. Looking for more collaborative posters? Browse them all here!
Earlier this year, my co-worker Jayne found the idea to make a collaborative school-wide paper mural based on the artwork of Thank YouX. The idea for a student mural originally came from Jenell Novello and you can see the lesson plan write-up on Artsonia. She also so generously provided the lesson plan and templates on Google docs. Thank You X got his name by accident. In 2009 Andy Warhol’s spray painted portrait was spotted on a city street in L.A.. … Read more... →
Our silhouette mural is finished! It went pretty quickly once we got started. Each of the figures represents different subject areas at school. Students in grades 4-6 did most of the painting and I had some students in 7-8 grade do touch-ups, edging and fine details. I made a video slideshow of the steps we made to paint the mural to show for the whole school. The school presentation has lots of photos of students in it. I made … Read more... →
The beginning of a new school year is exciting but can also be a little bit nerve-racking for children and teachers alike! The first days need to fulfil several objectives including allowing everybody to settle in, to begin to re-connect/make new connections and to be filled with enthusiasm for the year ahead. Whole school or class projects are a great way to start the year with a bang, so here are 16 ideas to inspire and make everybody feel part of the team.
The past few months my students have been making feathers for a group mural. This idea was inspired by my friend and celebrity in the art community, Cassie Stephens! Head on over to her blog and check out her magical art teacher'n treasures at Cassie Stephen's Blog!! Her original inspo was international street artist, Kelsey Montague. Her inspiring murals challenge people to ask the question "What Lifts you" "What makes your heart Soar?" My students are going to be writing about their passions and inspirations that "lifts" them! I want each student that comes to my art class to feel as though they are walking out with wings on their back, so they can bravely rise up to their dreams with courage and passion! I want them to feel confident in themselves and know that the sky is the limit! First, students painted on watercolor paper with tempera paint using a value gradient of tints and shades using one color plus black on the left and white on the right. They had to blend the colors so thet the different shades did not look like stripes One group did primary and secondary colors red, orange, yellow, green blue, and violet. The next group would paint intermediate colors, red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and red=violet Fourth and fifth graders used 9' by 24' paper and 3rd graders used smaller paper the next class, students then traced different shapes of feathers using white prisma color pencils and cut them out then they decorated them with unique lines and designs with white prisma color pencils My wonderful and extremely talented student teacher, Naz Kaya Erdal and I layed them out on three large sheets of black butcher paper until the feathers looked symmetrical. Once we finished the shape, we taped each feather down to the paper with painter's tape Then I hung that bad boy with TONS and tons and TONS of staples!! The next morning the kids were SO excited to find their feathers turned into GIANT wings!!! I hope the parents who come to visit will snap a pic in front of the wings and post to #ArtisFly and #riseupandsoar hashtags for social media!
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Earlier this year, my co-worker Jayne found the idea to make a collaborative school-wide paper mural based on the artwork of Thank YouX. The idea for a student mural originally came from Jenell Novello and you can see the lesson plan write-up on Artsonia. She also so generously provided the lesson plan and templates on Google docs. Thank You X got his name by accident. In 2009 Andy Warhol’s spray painted portrait was spotted on a city street in L.A.. … Read more... →
Collaborative projects! Collaborative projects are one of my favorite things. I love them at the start of the year and the end. I love doing them with the whole school or just a grade level. I love using songs, themes, artist-inspiration...you name it. I just love collaboratives! We've done a TON over the years and I thought I'd put them all together in one big ole blog post. So, here you go: my 20 Favorite Collabortive Projects. Be sure and click on the links, many of these have how-to videos. Check out this blog post on how we created several canvases in this style for our school and the school library! Students worked in table teams to create these positive four-letter words to describe our school! Here's a simple, fast and fun project using clothes pens, paint and words that describe who we are! A fun mural based on the book You Be You was created by nearly all of my students. You can learn about the process of creating our fish here. Read all about the making of the mural itself here! Another book we used for inspiration is the book by Todd Parr called It's Okay to be Different. You can check out how we created these collages here! The Our School Has Heart mural was a piece with a contribution from each student in the school. You can see the breakdown of who created what in this blog post. Our clay collaborative mural is a bright and shiny beauty that hangs in a prominent place in our school. Each student contributed something to this piece...you can read more about the process here. One year, we created a Village of Kindness as apart of our art show! Each student upcycled a milk carton that our cafeteria queen cleaned in the dishwasher. The students made little doors that opened and said kind words to those who peeked inside. Students worked together to create the landscape on the bulletin board. I love to do collaboratives at the start of the school year. I especially like ones where students celebrate our school and that set a postive tone. That was the idea behind this collaborative! Another fun way to start the school year is with some selfies! We've created them for a monochromatic mural. You can check out the video here. Inspired by the artist Romero Britto, this mural was created by my students when I was out for jury duty! My sub just played the video and when I returned, I assembled the mural! A collaborative mural that definitely made the rounds was this one! The kids loved creating the feathers and it was a beautiful thing while in the hallway but I will say...it was a lot of work to assemble. All the details here. My fourth graders created this collaborative one year that lives at the front entrance of our school. We even 'wrapped' it for Christmas and brought out admin out for them to unwrap it as it was hung on the wall of our school. We kicked off this school year with our What a Wonderful World collaborative mural. Details and video tour here. Here's another look of our school mural. Above that, you'll see our Learning for All collaborative! During our field day one year, my students rotated through many art stations. One of them was this alphabet and number series. My librarian requested them and we just love how they turned out. Click here to see them framed and hung in our school library. Much like our monochromatic collaborative, this map collaborative was created with a self-portrait of each of my students! We are the tigers at my school so we do tiger-themed artwork every so often. This mural was created by first graders of all of their tiger drawings. You can find a how-to video right here! In table teams, my third graders created a Rizzi City inspired by the artist James Rizzi. One year, we did super-sized works of art inspired by Andy Warhol and Vincent van Gogh! When these came together, they were stunning. All the details can be found here.
We had a lot fun studying real candy prices as our inspiration for our Pop Art Candy Paintings. Tempra paint and black Sharpie outlines adde...
Wall art ready to be framed
Kids can make something pretty incredible when they pool their talents.
5 Collaborative Projects for Any Time of the School Year % %
Every Year we try to do some sort of All School mural in the beginning of the year. This year we did a Lego theme. Each student made a lego...
sorry, couldn't locate a source for this photo This might take a while to complete (I rarely take a sick day), but I found my newest and best (I think) ever sub plan. Are you like me? I rarely plan for those days when I have to be out and end up dashing around madly pulling things together last minute and being hectic when least want to. This image inspired me to put a sub kit together that includes a lesson plan, markers and pre-cut papers. Now I'm always prepared with a grab and go lesson. The entire project stays in the box until 500 (or thereabouts) papers are collected and a final design is made. The hands look fabulous, but I think we'll change it up a bit. Peace Sign? Dove? Butterfly? What would you do?
Every blank wall is a canvas waiting to be filled.
Learning About Salmon in Grade 1. I have lots of ideas to share: books, video, life cycle wheel, salmon stream mural and sunset salmon art.
“Chromatic Cascade” by Jen Stark, Los Angeles Jen Stark herself! Parking Garage Mural by Jen Stark, Los Angeles Jen Stark is a Los Angeles based artist known for h…
I am surprised that I am up posting right now as today was an exhausting day. The kind of day I would not trade for anything but I am tired. The art room was double booked all day today and will be again tomorrow to make sure that all of my 1-5 grade artists are able to meet Will "Kasso" Condry, Muralist, to view him painting a mural in the art room "live" and to participate in a collaborative circle painting project that I am running. Busy, busy, busy. All that were in the art room today know one thing with certainty---> Will Condry is quite incredible. Before I fall asleep, here are a few photos from the day. Update: June 28, 2013. This blog post has been VERY popular due to Pinterest and has generated thousands of page views for this blog since Dec. 2011. If you create a project inspired by this post, please share your results and link back! Have fun! I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE THESE CIRCLE PAINTINGS .....and now..... Kasso mural sneak peek...and he's not nearly done.... He painted in these expressive circles the "skeleton" for this section of the mural in minutes. student asks a question to Will Condry while he paints
Earlier this year, my co-worker Jayne found the idea to make a collaborative school-wide paper mural based on the artwork of Thank YouX. The idea for a student mural originally came from Jenell Novello and you can see the lesson plan write-up on Artsonia. She also so generously provided the lesson plan and templates on Google docs. Thank You X got his name by accident. In 2009 Andy Warhol’s spray painted portrait was spotted on a city street in L.A.. … Read more... →
The beginning of a new school year is exciting but can also be a little bit nerve-racking for children and teachers alike! The first days need to fulfil several objectives including allowing everybody to settle in, to begin to re-connect/make new connections and to be filled with enthusiasm for the year ahead. Whole school or class projects are a great way to start the year with a bang, so here are 16 ideas to inspire and make everybody feel part of the team.
I am back in the classroom at Keller Elementary in Green Bay after taking a year off to be home with my three little ones. I am blessed bey...
“Chromatic Cascade” by Jen Stark, Los Angeles Jen Stark herself! Parking Garage Mural by Jen Stark, Los Angeles Jen Stark is a Los Angeles based artist known for h…
Every Year we try to do some sort of All School mural in the beginning of the year. This year we did a Lego theme. Each student made a lego self portrait. The fifth graders made giant Legos, and decorations for the background. Some of the teachers made one and the students have had so much fun looking for them. I gave them all this template, but they could cut off the arms and legs to reposition them as they wished. They used markers, crayons, fabric and paper scraps to decorate them. You can see the PE teacher with fabulous sparkly shirt, sparkly shoes, and there were some cool shiny pants but someone swiped them! YIKES!
It is always tricky to have a finished piece of work after one lesson that is decent to put up in the main office area! Here is a quick display that everyone loved and the 3D aspect added greatly t…
Middle School students will love this pop art lesson that focuses on the principle of movement. It also makes a great abstract portrait that is frame-able!
“Chromatic Cascade” by Jen Stark, Los Angeles Jen Stark herself! Parking Garage Mural by Jen Stark, Los Angeles Jen Stark is a Los Angeles based artist known for h…
Need a fun and foolproof accent wall idea for kids? Check out the this easy DIY mountain Mural. A wow factor project that takes just one weekend to complete. The kids are officially out of school which means we've transitioned to all of us under one roof all day, every day. So I'm pulling out
This is from when we studied Keith Haring! Had a really fun time gettin...
We are off and running at Zamo! As usual, I am starting the school year off with a collaborative project that is low stress and high impac...
