Art Club Workshop Today: Chihuly Chandelier

Art Club will meet today in room G5 after school from 3-4pm. Our project this month will be a Chihuly chandelier made of plastic bottles and tissue paper. This will be on display for our "Night of Art and Dr. Seuss" Show on May 24th.

This lesson came from the great Mr. E at Tulip Grove Elementary. We will try to make you proud Mr. E!

Graffiti Tag Names

I remember whenever I used to observe art classes in college, there was one high school art teacher in Union City, Hilary Webb, who did a unit over graffiti to her classes. I remember them coming up with so much awesome work and how much they LOVED learning about it. Ever since then, I knew I would want to teach graffiti to each of my classes every year.

If you are not teaching graffiti right now as an art teacher, I would strongly adivse you start. This is an amazing thing to teach on to our students. It's such a big part of their culture and generationa and it really does apply to them so much. I have taught graffiti to all ages, and I have yet to have a student (yes, even those troublesome ones!) who did not enjoy this unit.

I usually start off by a PowerPoint that opens up in discussion over the topic of graffiti. Do you think it should be illegal? Why or why not? What are some ways our cities can prevent art vandalism? I also make it clear to them that IT IS A CRIME if you graffiti property THAT IS NOT YOURS. Then I follow up with a lot of examples of graffiti from all over the world. The internet is FULL of amazing graffiti examples, and the kids will be so blown away!

I've done a wide variety of projects for graffiti. For 7th Grade I decided to keep it simple and assign them a "graffiti tag name" drawing. They all had to come up with a tag name, like all graffiti artists and create a signature. I loved this project! I feel like it was a great first time graffiti project especially for younger ages. When you get up higher in grades you can play around some and require them to draw more letters, but I was so impressed with these. They all had a lot of fun coming up with their own tag names too. Here are just a FEW that turned out awesome.

Art Show Prep

 This is going to be the first art show I have ever done in school! I am feeling really overwhelmed by how much awesome art I have gathered from my middle schoolers. Because this is my first time doing a school-wide art show, I am trying SO HARD not to stress!!! It has definitely been a lot of work preparing all of these art pieces. I really would have loved to mat them, but because of my budget being a little low towards the end of the year, and the fact that I don't have a mat cutter, I decided just to staple them to black paper. Overall, I think it's working very well and it's really been easy this way!

My main concern right now is having a wide variety and having around the same amount of items for each grade. I decided to have a seperate section for 6th, 7th, 8th and Art Club. Right now, 7th is hurting for more art work. I did something stupid and gave back ALL of my kids' art work to them the first semester of this year so now I am lacking those pieces big time. I'm trying to just track down some of my fall semester kids to tell them to bring me their work.

 8th Grade Section. We are missing their tape and monster sculptures here. 

 Part of my 6th grade section. They will have a TON of work to display.

 Some of my Art Club bubble paintings.

 

Art Club's melting crayon paintings. I LOVE HAILEY'S HEART!!!!

So when is the big day??? MAY 24. 5-7PM. It's going to be a great night!!! So excited!

 

Scratch Art Animals

WHEW!!!! It has been a BUSY month. We finished up TCAP last week and I got a MAD case of the upset stomach. So needless to say, I've been quite indisposed these last four weeks. My student teacher Jessica is now finished up with her time here and about to graduate at Cumberland :) She did a lot of fun projects with my kids while she was here so I decided to show them.

8th graders made tape sculptures and they are currently finishing up scratch art animal.

WHEW!!!! It has been a BUSY month. We finished up TCAP last week and I got a MAD case of the upset stomach. So needless to say, I've been quite indisposed these last four weeks. My student teacher Jessica is now finished up with her time here and about to graduate at Cumberland :) She did a lot of fun projects with my kids while she was here so I decided to show them.

8th graders made tape sculptures and they are currently finishing up scratch art animal.

Great beginning project

My student teacher, Jessica, currently finished this project with my 6th graders and I thought about how wonderful it would be for a first time art project. She reviewed the elements and principles of art, paired them up and had them create a visually pleasing poster that illustrates them all. I was pretty impressed with how creative they got with their layouts. It also is helping them learn them better because it is stimulating that visual part of their brain. So simple but great!!

 



Langford Farms has a new summer camp art teacher...

And it's me!!!! I'm so excited! Langford Farms is a recreational center in Old Hickory, which is about 10 mins from Hermitage. It's a massive barn that has been rennovated for recreational and summer programs. Their summer camps start the day school lets out so I will immediately be jumping in the day school finishes! I will be teaching 4-5 craft classes a day for grades K-5. It's been forever since I've been around the younger ones so I'm very excited to spend some time with them. I think it will be an overall great experience.

Each camp has a weekly theme and I am wanting to have at least two crafts each week that have to do with that particular theme. The themes include: Sports Central, Game Show Mania, Carnival, Lights Camera Action, COLOR WAR, Wild West, Laugh Out Loud and Wild War of Water.  Fun right?!!!

For the next several days I will be searching and searching art blogs and Pinterest for ideas. I already have several. Some of them would be-

Bubble Painting!

Book Making!

For "Lights, Camera, Action" week, each student will be making their own microphones!

Paper footballs for Sports Mania week.



Mask Making for Carnival week.

Button mosaics.

If anybody has any tips or suggestions I am ALL ears!

Looks like it's going to be an exciting summer!!!

SmArt Card Reward Day with Sonic!

It's at the end of the 9 weeks, which means it's reward time for those students who collected up to 15 SmArt Cards!! We have a Sonic literally next door to the school, it's even on the same lawn. Heck it should be considered part of our campus, it's THAT CLOSE. I'm not sure if the workers there were thrilled me ordering 130+ slushes. I called them 2 days ahead to let them know what I was doing so they would have time to plan out a system. I worked in food service before so I KNOW how absolutely nightmarish a large order like this can be if we don't prepare! I typed up all my kids orders with the times of their class and when I would like to have them done. Since I have Ms. Jessica in class I was able to leave and go pick them each up. THANK GOD FOR HER or else I would either have had to have a sub or get a disgruntled employee in school to watch my classes while I ran back and forth to get these!

I've never done so much running back and forth, I'm just so happy it was nice outside and not pouring down rain. Since I had so many kids get 15 cards, I asked if they would each pay for their own slush, which they were so understanding and willing. I asked them for $3 so it would be enough for their large slush and also have enough left over to give the workers at Sonic a generous tip. Overall, I was SO pleased at Sonic! They did a FANTASTIC job!!! And they were so gracious about their generous tip, always tip them!!!

To anybody wanting to do this in the future, make sure that your kids are aware of the fact that they will NOT be allowed to have these out in all their other classes. I had a few teachers who were upset because the kids brought them in their classes and spilled them. I lectured my class before they left that they better obey their next teacher's wishes and if they tell them they are not allowed to just go put them in their lockers. And if I hear constant complaints about them spilling and making messes everywhere we will not do them again. But then agian, there will *always* be complainers somewhere won't they? hehe...

As much work as it is, I love this system. If you are not finding ways to reward your good students, please, please do yourself and them a favor and find a way too. It gave me so many warm fuzzies inside when they gave me a hug and thanked me for their "slush". I just have to reply saying "No, thank YOU for being a great kid!"