Mary's Art Spot

Tall Tales, Day 3- If You Plant a Seed

2016-06-16T12:45:00.002-07:00

Today was Day 3 of our summer art program.

Our book was If You Plant a Seed by Kadir Nelson.

I originally chose the book because I fell in love with the illustrations. However, once I read the book, I realized that it had a wonderful message of kindness.

Activity 1- Friendship Rocks
We were lucky to have a paint store donate a multitude of pint cans of house paint in beautiful colors. So instead of using acrylic (which was the original plan), we painted our rocks with the more permanent house paint.
Each student was given 1 fairly large river rock. They chose their colors, brushes and design and painted their rocks. Since Sunday is Father's Day, many of the children chose to make gifts for dad.

Activity 2- Inspirational Quote Mini Canvases

The students painted a 4x4 mini canvas with acrylic paint. Then they used paint pens to write an inspirational quote or message. I had printed out a variety of quotes for them to use and many came up with their own.

Activity 3- Hearts to Share

This was a huge hit! The children used Sculpey polymer clay pasta rollers to make mini hearts to share. They were then put into toaster ovens to bake.

Finished products:

Tall Tales 2016- The Girl Who Heard Colors

2016-06-15T12:07:00.001-07:00

I love summer! Summer means it's time for our Tall Tales program at the Altharetta Yeargin Art Museum.

Yesterday was our first day of the program and we started out with the book, The Girl Who Heard Colors by Marie Harris.

After reading the book, we did 3 activities.

Activity 1: Scented Paint
We added a variety of extracts (peppermint, lemon, cherry, etc) to tempera paint and let the children paint with it. Boy! The classroom smelled heavenly!

Activity 2: Texture paintings

The student started out with a piece of cardboard. They used a hot glue gun (with the assistance of our amazing National Honor Society volunteers) to write their names, draw pictures, etc.

Once the glue cooled down, they covered the cardboard with a piece of aluminum foil.

The foil was then decorated with puffy paint and glitter glue.

Activity 3: Music instruments

The students used craft sticks, construction paper and rubber bands to create a harmonica (kazoo) and a small dixie cup, popcorn kernels, construction paper and a rubber band to make a maraca.

Finished products:

December Faculty Art Therapy

2015-12-10T09:03:00.001-08:00

This month was a repeat of last year's jewelry class. It was a big hit last year and this year was no different!

There were teachers making jewelry, as well as magnets (those that missed last month).

November Faculty Art Therapy

2015-11-11T15:32:00.000-08:00

This month's art therapy class was an ornament class. Luckily, Hobby Lobby had their glass ornaments 50% off, so I was able to get enough for each person to make 12 small, plus 2 large ornaments. They turned out beautiful!

Melted crayon

Frosted glass

Glitter and paint pens

Melted crayon in progress

Frosted glass in progress

Glitter and adornments

More melted crayon

Finished frosted glass

Beach theme

Art Therapy, September 2016

2015-09-09T15:41:00.001-07:00

For our first faculty art therapy class, we worked on monogram letters.

Those that finished early, worked on a few pieces for our art auction in the spring.

Tall Tales and Art Summer 2015 (Day 6)

2015-06-18T21:34:00.001-07:00

Last day of class today!

The book for today was The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt.

Activity 1 was an abstract activity using crayon shavings and glue. The children used crayon sharpeners to get crayon shavings in their chosen colors. Some stuck with very specific colors and others went for it and used them all! They placed the crayon shavings into ziplock bags and then added glue to the bag. After zipping the bag closed, they mixed the glue and shavings together. This helped the color from the crayons bleed into the glue.

A corner of the bag was snipped and the glue was piped onto a piece of paper (like an icing bag). Most created a very abstract piece of art, others wrote their names.

Activity 2 was a crayon monogram. Each child received a small canvas (8x10) and all of the crayons that they needed. 2 class packs of crayons were purchased, but we only used 1. The crayons were glued onto the canvas to form their initial.

Activity 3- Melted crayon art. For this one, I purchased small black canvases (8x10) and the students used construction paper crayons. We had the children glue pieces of crayons onto the canvases with tacky glue. Once they had placed the crayons where they wanted them, the parents helped them use a blow dryer to melt the crayons. We glued the crayons first so no little fingers would get burned. We did have an issue with blowing fuses in the museum. I guess the electrical system did not appreciate the fact that we had 10 blow dryers going all at once.

Tall Tales and Art- Summer 2015 (Day 5)

2015-06-17T13:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's class was cancelled due to Tropical Storm Bill. Our district was shut down as a precaution, as they were expecting us to get hit with a lot of rain, wind and flooding here in Houston.

So skip forward to today's class. The turnout was pretty low. There was still a lot of rain in the area, but overall, we weren't hit nearly as bad as we were Memorial Day weekend.

Today's book was Dinosaurs Love Underpants by Claire Freedman.

We had 3 dinosaur activities for the children to do with their parents:

Activity 1: Dinosaur watercolors

The students created a wet-on-wet background using liquid watercolors and water. They used dinosaur templates (not usually my cup of tea, but for a program like this, the parents are much more comfortable with them) to trace the dinosaurs onto black construction paper. These were then cut out and glued onto the watercolor background.

Activity 2: Dinosaur egg bath bombs

The children mixed baking soda and food coloring together in a bowl, until the baking soda had taken on the color they wanted. Once they had the color they wanted, they added about 1-2 tbsp of citric acid to the mixture and stirred it really well. The oil was added at the end to create a paste that could be molded around a small plastic dinosaur. The eggs were placed into ziplock bags to take home, where they can sit for the rest of the day to harden. Once the egg is hard, they can be placed in a tub of water. The eggs will start to foam and dissolve, "hatching" the dinosaur.

Activity 3: Volcanoes/lava lamps

The children were asked to bring an empty water bottle with them. We had pitchers of water on the table and they filled the bottle 1/3 full with plain water. Red food coloring was added (they made the red as bright as they wanted... I had bought a large bottle, so we had plenty) to the water. Then vegetable oil was added to the water (1/3 bottle). The bottles were left to sit for a couple of minutes so that the water and oil could separate. Once it was separated, the parents added broken up pieces of Alka Seltzer to the bottles. This caused the red water to start bubbling into the vegetable oil, creating the effect of the volano.

****Note- Since Alka Seltzer has aspirin in it, I made sure that the children did not handle this. The parents were in charge of adding the Alka Seltzer to the bottles.

Tall Tales and Art- Summer 2015 (Day 3)

2015-06-11T12:31:00.001-07:00

The last book for this week was Octupus' Garden by Ringo Starr.

After reading the book, the children had 3 projects to work on.

Project 1: Jellyfish in a bottle.

The children were asked to bring a water bottle for this project. They filled the water bottles with blue tinted water (blue food coloring) and then made their jellyfish out of clear produce bags. The cut the bottom off of the bag and then cut the bag in half (each bag making 2 jellyfish). An air bubble was made in the middle of the bag (the head) and it was tied loosely with thread. The children used scissors to cut the tentacles for their jellyfish. Before placing the jellyfish into the bottle, they filled the air bubble with water and then placed the bag into the bottle, sealing it with the cap. We noticed that at first, the bags just looked like a clump of plastic. Once they had sat for awhile, though, they started looking more like jellyfish.

Project 2: Tissue paper seahorses.

Each child was given a Seahorse Template. They covered the template with bleeding tissue paper and water. Once it was completely covered, the tissue paper was removed and the pieces were cut out and glued to a piece of black construction paper. For the little ones, parents helped the children cut out the seahorse in its entirety (instead of all of the tiny pieces) and glued this onto the paper.

Project 3: Aluminum foil sea creatures

The children drew the sea creature of their choice onto a piece of tag board (our high school volunteers drew out some templates for those that felt the need to trace the outline of their creature) and then cut the creature out. Each creature was covered with a piece of aluminum foil. I had planned on buying rolls of aluminum, but when I was at Dollar Tree, I found boxes of aluminum sheets. What a great idea! Each child received a precut piece of aluminum, without all of the waste! I love it! And it was so inexpensive!

Once the animal was covered with aluminum, they used Sharpies to color them.

Tall Tales and Art- Summer 2015 (Day 2)

2015-06-10T12:44:00.000-07:00

Day 2 of our summer art program-

The Book With No Pictures by BJ Novack

Many of the children had heard this book during the school year, most of the parents had not. It was still a big hit for everyone!

After reading the book, I pulled up a YouTube video of BJ Novack reading the book to a group of students at an elementary school. My reading of the book did not even come close!!

Our focus today was on onomatopoeia words (i.e.- bang, crash, kaboom, etc). So before the children set off to work on their projects, I showed them another quick video of the old Batman TV series. This did a good job of showing the students onomatopoeia words used in the amazing fight scenes...

We were finally ready for our projects!

Project 1: Making Blurf

Ingredients for this incredibly popular project: Elmer's Glue, liquid starch and tempera paint (we used neon colors). The glue and starch are equal parts.

The children started out by mixing the tempera paint into the glue to get a nice consistent color. Then they added an equal amount of liquid starch and stirred it together, counting to 100 as they stirred. Once they had stirred it to a count of 100, they let it sit for a count of 300, letting the 2 liquids combine. Then they were able to pick the "Blurf" or silly putty, up and play with it. We had children coming back and making 3 and 4 different batches of this. They had blast!

Project 2: Onomatopoeia comic book words

The students ripped pages out of dictionaries that I had found at Dollar Tree and glued them down for the background of their word.

I gave them letter stencils to use for their word, which they traced with pencil.

They added color with tempera paint and scraps of colored paper.

Voila!

Project 3: Word Clouds

Yesterday, we had asked the parents to bring their laptops, iPads, tablets, etc with them today for this project. We had given them websites and apps that we would be using for this project:

Laptops- wordle.com

iPads- CloudArt and ABCYa!

Tablets- Wordsalad

The children typed in their "sound" words and created a very basic word cloud. We didn't do any printing, however, they saved them so they could be printed out at home.

Tall Tales and Art- Summer 2015 (Day 1)

2015-06-09T13:00:00.001-07:00

Today was our first day of our summer Tall Tales and Art program. This is a 6 day, 2 hours a day, summer art program that we have at our district art museum every year.

Today's book was Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin.

As in previous years, the children gather on the floor for the story, while the parents have the chairs in the back. A lot of the students had already heard this story, but they had no problem hearing it again. It was a new experience for many of the parents.

After reading the book, I gave a quick explanation of the 3 projects that would be going on and then the students were off!

One room was handprint dragons being made. The students painted their hands with tempera paint (we started with warm colors, but pulled out other colors as the students requested them) and then created the shape of a dragon, using their handprints. They added teeth with scraps of paper and then glued on googly eyes.

Another room had dragon collages. The students were shown how to fold a piece of paper in half and draw 1/2 of the dragon's head. When this was cut out, they had the entire dragon head (symmetry). They used construction paper scraps, scissors, glue, crayons and oil pastels to decorate their dragons.

The last room had dragon eggs. This was the hit of the day!! Each child received a styrofoam egg and 2 boxes of tacks. The tacks were placed into a piece of corrugated cardboard and then painted with metallic acrylic paint. Due to time constraints, the paint was not completely dry when they started placing the tacks in the eggs. Some students chose to take the tacks home still in the cardboard and place them in the egg when they got home.

April Faculty Art Class

2015-04-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

This month's class was a jewelry making class. The teacher's ordered the shape of ring and pendant that they wanted to make and were then able to choose their color and pattern.

The pattern was rubbed onto a piece of colored foil that had been cut to fit the jewelry blank. Once the pattern was on the metal, they used a burnishing tool to rub the color off of the raised part of the pattern.

The metal was attached to the jewelry blank with a small piece of double sided adhesive.

Resin was added as the final touch.

My faculty is extremely creative and used beads and other trinkets to add to their pieces.

Big Art Day- 2015

2015-03-06T13:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Big Art Day in the state of Texas. Throughout the state, schools, museums and other organizations celebrated the importance of art by organizing a wide variety of activities for students, parents, teachers, etc.

At my school, our specials team (music, library, health fitness and art) planned activities for our K-5 students during their 45 minute specials time. We were lucky enough to have Leann Newton, from the Altharetta Yeargin Art Museum come and volunteer her time with us, too!

Students who went to music yesterday, got to make a musical instrument using a variety of shapes.

Students who went to health fitness, traced their body in an action pose and then decorated it with patterns and colors.

Students who went to library and art, worked on self-portraits (hand drawn and computer generated).

All in all-- a very exhausting day, but at the end of the day, I had students coming up to me and telling me how much fun they had! Even better, was their excitement at seeing all of their artwork hanging in our main hallway this morning!

Here are pictures of the students working during Big Art Day, along with the work that they created:

February Faculty Art Class

2015-02-04T05:07:00.002-08:00

This month, teachers made a set of coasters out of 4 inch ceramic tiles.

Works in progress....

Finished products:

1st Saturdays at the Altharetta Yeargin Museum

2014-12-07T11:32:00.000-08:00

This Saturday's theme was collage.

We worked on a project that I found on Pinterest and adapted for small children: Collage Tree.

I had a surplus of 8x10 canvasses that I had the children (I had enough canvasses that the parents were able to make their own, too) paint with acrylic paint.

We set out a couple of blow dryers for them to dry this layer (the class is only an hour, so sometimes we need to speed up the process).

Then they used another color of acrylic to paint a tree.

They decorated their trees with an assortment of materials: scrapbook paper, feathers, buttons, seashells, magazines (cutting words/pictures out to describe themselves).

We ended up with some amazing end results!

December Faculty Art Class

2014-12-02T15:15:00.001-08:00

Our December faculty art class was a hit!

This month, we painted our own canvasses. I have an abundance of 8 x 10 canvasses, so I pulled these out and let the teachers play!

I set out liquid watercolors, acrylics, tape, pans with marbles, stamps, etc. Here are the end results (beautiful, as usual!!!!):

Stay tuned! Next month, we will be making coaster sets!

1st Grade TAB- Collage Studio

2014-11-23T12:11:00.001-08:00

My students have been experimenting with basic collage techniques. They have been working on cutting different shapes (circles, squares, triangles) and arranging them on their paper. Practicing with the glue has also been a part of this studio.

Here are the directions I have in the studio for the students:

I can't figure out how to make this window bigger, so I am including the link to the document: Collage Studio Menu.

Here are the students' first attempts:

Memorial Hermann Hospital Holiday Art Display

2014-11-06T08:03:00.001-08:00

My school has been asked to do artwork for a holiday display at Memorial Hermann Hospital. Wow! This is very exciting. The students are loving it, because we don't usually do holiday art of any kind.

Since I see my students so infrequently, I began this undertaking in September.

Kindergarten is doing handprint Christmas trees.

First grade is making geometric Christmas trees.

Second grade is making Christmas ornament collages.

Third grade is making oil pastel Christmas lights.

Fourth grade is making overlapping candy canes.

Fifth grade is making pine tree silhouettes.

Here are few samples:

First Grade TAB- Painting Studio

2014-11-06T07:40:00.003-08:00

The 3rd studio to get up and running was painting. This studio has 2 sets of expectations. One is for getting set up and one is for cleaning at the end of class.

Setting up: Painting Studio- Set Up

Clean up: Painting Studio- Clean Up

After going over the expectations for this studio, the students chose which studio they wanted to go to. Now I am starting to limit how many go to each studio. As of this point:

4 students- Painting Studio

1/2 of the rest of the class- Drawing Studio

1/2 of the rest of the class- Architecture Studio

At the painting studio, for now, I am limiting the students to one piece of paper and they are using tempera cakes. I have 2 different sized brushes available to them. Once we get deeper into the studio experience, I will offer them more options on the type of paint and brush that they would like to use. I believe that I will still limit them to 1 piece of paper, only because watercolor paper is so expensive and I am hoping that this will get them thinking about what they are painting on their one piece of paper, instead of rushing through so that they can get another piece of paper.

First Grade TAB- Architecture Studio

2014-11-06T07:30:00.002-08:00

The second studio that I had up and running is the Architecture Studio (I make sure to use the word architecture and not blocks- working to help build the students vocabulary).

We went over the expectations for this studio and then I divided the class into 2 groups. Half went to Drawing and half went to Architecture.

The expectations for the Architecture Studio

I had been thrift shop scavenging over the summer in preparation for this studio, and I had been able to find a couple of sets of Lincoln Logs and large legos. I ordered a couple of sets of regular sets of Legos, so the students have a choice in their building material.

Their favorite part of the entire process is using the digital cameras to take a picture of their buildings. I am still working on a way for the students to take a picture and have their name included in the photo. I am finding that once the picture is taken, I am unable to figure out who it belongs to. As of yet, all of their buildings still look the same. Suggestions???

First Grade TAB (Teaching Artistic Behavior)- Drawing Studio

2014-11-06T07:23:00.001-08:00

My first graders are guinea pigs this year. I spent my summer researching TAB (Teaching Artistic Behavior). I did a lot of reading, web surfing and soul searching and decided to revamp the way I teach my first graders. Originally, I was going to do this with every grade level, but then decided that I valued my sanity. I am started with 1st grade this year and will add a grade each year.

I spent the first couple of class sessions teaching the students the routines that I wanted to see while they were in studio. We started with 1 studio- Drawing Studio. We practiced and practiced so that they would be able to work independently once more studios were open.

I have a table set up where the students can get inspiration for their drawings: toy animals, flowers, food, manikins, books, etc. They can use any combination of these items to help them get an idea for their drawing.

When working on their drawings, they have the choice of using crayons, color sticks or oil pastels. Eventually, I will add more choices, but I wanted to start out simple.

Here are the Drawing Studio Rules

Third Grade Didgeridoos

2014-11-06T07:00:00.001-08:00

Third grade's Australian study began this year with the making of a didgeridoo.

We read the book, Do You Do A Didgeridoo? by Nick Page.

Once we had read the book, we learned about Australian didgeridoos.

The students started out by working on 6 different patterns in their sketchbooks. I had a variety of Zentangle pages handy for them and they were also encouraged to come up with their own ideas.

Once their 6 patterns were completed, each student received a piece of butcher paper. They divided the paper into 6 sections and recreated their patterns with a black marker.

When the patterns were done, they taped paper towel and toilet paper rolls together to make the didgeridoo. The butcher paper was wrapped around the rolls and voila!

Fourth Grade Landscapes

2014-11-06T06:37:00.000-08:00

Fourth grades first project of the year was a lesson on 1 point perspective.

The students created a landscape that had a horizon line, at least 1 landform (working with our 4th grade social studies curriculum), and showed perspective.

A lot of the students chose to show perspective by adding a river to their landscape. Others attempted to create perspective by adding trees (larger in the front, smaller at they moved away).

The students had a choice of medium for coloring: tempera, watercolor or markers.

Fifth Grade Kandinsky Musical Compositions

2014-11-06T06:25:00.001-08:00

The first project that I had 5th grade work on this year was music inspired. The students learned about the artist Wassily Kandinsky and how he was influenced by music. We combined both of these topics and the students chose a musical instrument (I had a LOT of guitars, unfortunately) and drew it on a piece of construction paper. I encouraged them to draw it large enough so that the instrument would go off of the page.

They filled in the background using shapes that were inspired by Kandinsky artworks.

The students were given the choice of using crayons, color sticks, oil pastels or markers to color their composition in 1 color scheme (primary, secondary, complementary- a review from previous years). Some of them chose to use a combination of all of these.

I had old music books handy and the students were able to add ripped up pages of sheet music onto their background.

Every Artist Live

2014-11-06T06:14:00.000-08:00

Our first big event of the year, was participating in Every Artist Live. This year's theme was "My Favorite Story". I enlisted our school librarian for this endeavor and we worked together to have every student in our school create a page that illustrated their favorite book. This worked in to our librarian's theme of "School-Wide Read Aloud", so we knocked out 2 events at once.

We divided up our 40 classes and each of us did a quick brainstorm session with the students, where a list was generated of the students' favorite books. Then each student chose their favorite book and created an illustration to show this book. We made iPads, tablets and Netbooks available, in case the students needed help finding visuals for the books (especially true for the novels that the 4th and 5th graders were reading). They were given the choice of coloring their illustrations with crayons, color sticks, oil pastels or markers.

I won't put up all of the pictures here (we had 800 of them), but here is the link to our gallery on Every Artist Live:

Every Artist Live- Hollibrook Gallery

Added note: since we have over 800 students at our school, logistically, it would have been impossible to get all of this artwork created, photographed and uploaded on the actual Every Artist day of October 23. We began working on this at the beginning of September and got the artwork photographed as it was completed.

A couple of days before the official event, Brendan O'Connell, the founder of Every Artist, was in Houston filming a spot for our morning news at a local school. He was able to come by my school and we had a wonderful visit. I look forward to working with him and his team again next year!

3rd Faculty Art Class

2014-11-05T04:50:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was our November faculty art therapy class. This month we made altered bottles/glass. I had a selection of materials handy for the teachers to add to their glass jars and bottles (tiles, sequins, pennies, etc) along with mosaic adhesive.

I work with some talented teachers!

Here are the results: