Fine Arts Night '14 is in the books, and I think it was the best one to date - so much to hear, see, do! This music and art celebration ...
It's the same apple tree from last year, except I added the "3rd grade is going to to be totally sweet" part. I think it looks fun. I'm jus...
Art Festival and Family Art Night- How to run a Family Art Night. Increase attendance and promote your art department with engaging art activities.
reality
It's been all cricket sound effects around the blog lately. Why? Let's think. What event that typically happens in the spring is an all-consuming vortex of time? Oh, yeah. The art show. Pre-staging the show in the AM…on the stage. The art teacher prior to me didn't do an art show. I'm not really sure why. She was an outstanding and well-loved teacher, but the show just never happened. I'm of the opinion that parents as well as teachers and administrators need to know what is going on in the art room. I feel compelled to show off the work that my students have done all year. I'm driven to display two pieces of artwork for every single student even though my numbers have gone up by 100 students in the time I've been at Thomas. I'd display more...if I could just get more to fit. This year, we had nearly 1,000 individual pieces of artwork in addition to the group stop motion animation film that the entire 5th grade created. The 7th Annual Thomas Elementary Art Show was a big hit. Several hundred students, parents, and families attended to check out the amazing students work and eat some delicious cookies. The show is just up for one evening. While its time is fleeting, the art show is hugely important to my students. For the rest of the week following the show, students were telling me how fun it was and how they enjoyed showing their work to their families. Yes the art show is a LOT of work. Things of great importance typically are.
Art Festival and Family Art Night- How to run a Family Art Night. Increase attendance and promote your art department with engaging art activities.
World Geography can be boring for students but you can make it FUN! Your kiddos will LOVE creating their own globe using a balloon and cut-outs. This set includes: Student materials list and directions, detailed continent shapes, more broad continent shapes (easier cutting), compass graphic, continent labels, ocean labels, North Pole labels, reference map of the world. Balloon Suggestion (affiliate link): 12"latex balloons (100 count), Royal Blue Don't want to use a balloon? Some teachers have told me they've used paper mache, pumpkins, and posters. If you happen to take pictures of your completed projects, I would LOVE to see them! You can tag me on Instagram (@Learning_Lab) or email them to me at [email protected].
Art Festival and Family Art Night- How to run a Family Art Night. Increase attendance and promote your art department with engaging art activities.
butterflies, open house, back to school night, summer countdown
Open House ideas. Great activity for students to do to show during Open house.
Original art for a Maclean’s cover Illustration by Oscar Cahén 1950s From www.oscarcahenillustration.com * The first exhibition of Oscar Cahén’s illustrations since his lifetime will be shown in New York at Illustration House in October 2011 (opening night Oct. 1).
Ever have one of THOSE weeks? Where life is chaotic, stressful, and messy? Where things don't go your way and you find yourself late at night picking apart all the things that went wrong? Well... we just had one of those weeks. (Ok... if I'm going to be honest... probably one of those months...) And I wish I could say that I was patient and loving and wise and kind and strong... but I wasn't. When life spirals out of control, I find myself doing two things- (1) taking naps and (2) doing easy art and craft activities. It's surprising how these two activities revive my spirits. So today I wanted to share this really easy art activity that my preschooler and I recently worked on together. Inspired by Meri Cherry, we made our own GIANT family process art. This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support! For my full disclosure, click here. Several months ago we purchased a GIANT CANVAS from our local thrift/scrap store. (We got ours for $4! Score! But if you can't find them where you are, you could also just purchase canvases online too.) Our canvas was already half painted light blue, but we didn't mind. On our first day working with the canvas, we grabbed our tempera paint and just painted the whole thing however we wanted. (It was quite freeing, to work on a large canvas with no intentions in mind. We just enjoyed painting it however we felt.) Several days later (once our paint dried), we grabbed our oil pastels and kwik stix solid tempera paint and got working again. :) As you can see, we're both big fans of vibrant colors! Here's a photo of our finished (for now) artwork. I look forward to adding on more details and colors and watching the canvas evolve over time. And that's all. I hope this post finds you well, friends. As always, here's our current list of favorite art books for you and your kiddos to connect with and enjoy! Our current 15+ favorite art books: Colorful Dreamer A is for Art The Iridescence of Birds Modern Art Adventures Mix it Up Press Here Any Ed Emberley Book The Day the Crayons Quit Beautiful Oops Dog's Colorful Day Too Much Glue Harold and the Purple Crayon Day with No Crayons Artist to Artist Artist Ted The House Baba Built A Blue Butterfly: A Story of Claude Monet Sandy's Circus The Most Magnificent Thing The Artful Parent Ain't that the truth! Let's Keep in Contact! You can always find more easy and fun ideas on my Pinterest, Facebook, or Instagram accounts! (Or subscribe to my email mailing list by filling out the pink bar at the top of the screen.) Happy making, friends!
Helen Frankenthaler artist study and process art project for kids! K-8. This is a fun engaging art lesson using puddle painting.
I’m always looking for fun and exciting ways to get parents into the music room during parent teacher conferences. I want to bring them in with something fun and engaging that will get them excited about music. One of the greatest successes I ever had was when I created an […]
No Sew No Glue -Wall Quilt Art: Do you love patch work?....see an amazing wall quilt you would love to hang on your wall...but just don't have the sewing skills or the time...to do that? I've seen and admired so many quilts...but just couldn't picture myself...cutting and se…
Tonight's open house night at Hassan Elementary. I plan on opening my classroom up to families and inviting them in for art activities. I'm hoping by creating a fun space for the kids right away, it will make it exciting to come to art class. Update: I am amazed at how well this worked. There were lot's of families in my room checking out the station. I was able to talk to parents as the kids played with the fun activities. The families of Hassan are amazing!! I can't wait to work with their kids!
Available versions: day, night, winter Also I'm open for commissions
Art Festival and Family Art Night- How to run a Family Art Night. Increase attendance and promote your art department with engaging art activities.
Art Festival and Family Art Night- How to run a Family Art Night. Increase attendance and promote your art department with engaging art activities.
Open House Ideas {Fab Ideas from the Weekend Warriors} 5 comments Tips and Tricks, Weekend Warriors It's time for Weekend Warriors! I love our monthly link up. I really do! Our goal has always been to share great ideas with you, but we are always striving to make things better. Over the past month we've made some exciting changes to Weekend Warriors. First, we have a new look! Eek, don't you just love it? Another change we've made is to open up the linky! That's right, if you have a blog and some ideas to share that go with the current month's theme, then grab the buttons, post away, and link up! We'd love to check out your ideas! So, let's get started with this month's theme! This month, we are linking up to share our favorite Open House ideas, and more! We hope to share some fun ideas that you can use at your own Open House, or whatever annual nightly event your school might host. Warning, you are about to be photo bombed. My apologies in advance. But, I have lots of ideas to share with you. Each of which helped make our Open House a successful event. I truly hope you can take an idea or two away from this post! We recently had our Open House, so I thought it would be fun to take a peek at what we did. This year we spruced up the inside of our classroom by displaying new work on our bulletin board. It's always so nice to hang fresh work up for these kinds of events. The kids had a blast making this adorable display from Bright Concepts 4 Teachers. They wrote about why their future will be so bright. The parents loved this display! I kept our self-portraits up so the kids could play a guessing game with their families (you may recall from a few posts ago, that I never take this board down, or change it out). A few weeks ago, I removed the name tags that were on display with their artwork. With the names gone, the kids asked their families to figure out which portrait was theirs. It was a fun to watch this! If you're looking for a fun way to get students interacting with their families and their work, this is a simple way to do so. Just have your kiddos complete a self portrait, put them on display, and watch the fun unfold! Look for quick and easy projects to fill smaller spaces in your classroom. We put together this quick and easy little "board." This space is actually where I hang my anchor charts, but I didn't need those on display, I wanted student work on display. The students finished the prompt and colored their iPod. Easy peasy. You can grab a copy of this quick project here. Another idea is to spruce up your desks or table groups. That's exactly what we did! The students wrote letters to their parents thanking them for attending and noting the things they wanted their families to look at. We set these out with newly decorated name tags and bouquets of tissue flowers. I had the students hide their well loved name plates in their desks and they made new ones. I simply cut some white card stock into strips (2 1/2 inches by 8 1/2 inches) and wrote the students' names on each one. Then, they used colored pencils to decorate! This is my sample (and I really should have colored a bit darker...oops). I will be laminating their name tags so that they can use them as bookmarks. They are very excited about this! The finishing touch? We made some fun tissue paper flowers to set out at our table groups. Aren't they amazing? The following Monday, I sent them home with the students (they each took home a mini bouquet). My sweet colleague suggested this idea, and I am so glad she did! It made our room look super cute, the parents were really impressed, and the kids had a blast. And, they are super easy to make! To make these beauties, you need some tissue paper circles (I used 4 inch circles that I cut out on our die cut machine), pipe cleaners, and some "vases" (I used the small Mason jars). Fold one end of the pipe cleaner over (twice). Stick the opposite end through a mini stack of tissue circles (3-6 pieces). Gently slide the circles up to the folded end. Then, take your whole hand and scrunch the circles upward. Then, open the layers one at a time and rescrunch each one. Finally, trim the stems and stuff them into some Mason jars! Another fun idea is to set out any class books you might have. My students were so excited to show these to their families! Finally, to create a calm and welcoming environment, make it smell nice! I can't be trusted with a Scentsy, but I love the Air Wick plug in air freshener. I found a great tropical scent the other day and plugged it in. Our room not only looked great, but it smelled great! I realize this is soooo not necessary, but it's a nice touch. DON'T FORGET IT: PIN IT! Don't forget to visit these fabulous ladies to grab some more great ideas for Open House and more! And, if you've got some great Open House and More ideas to share, feel free to link up! An InLinkz Link-up Share It:
A curriculum developer and teacher who designs lessons & activities to teach common core standards in language arts,math & classroom management.
I was at a charter school recently and saw this really cool display of projects. Each student’s project was on one side of a box. Rope was strung through each box (with knots and washers to s…
Happy Saturday! We are going to a wedding later. At the beach. I will probably freeze in my dress, but that’s what my husband’s suit jacket is for. Actually, I don’t even know if we’ll be outside. I just know we can’t park at the wedding venue and have to catch a shuttle. It ... Read More about Open House Picture Palooza
Try this easy water drop printing activity, where art and science collide!
Brilliant ideas from brilliant teachers like you.
