Art Shows are around the corner!

It's that time of year again, the time when us art teachers gear up and go crazy for volunteers to help mount, label, and display artwork around your school for the community and WORLD TO SEE!!! Ahhh!

I love this time of year! It's a great time to see what great things YOU did, yes YOU worked so hard to teach these kids and to see the talent, imagination, and creativity you pump into these children's minds. Oh the wonderful life of an art teacher. We have such important jobs to keep these students loving, appreciating and continuing to understand the importance of art. What great ways do you display your students artwork? Here is a recap of my district art show display last year. Can't wait to see the wonderful displays you all put together soon :)

Toodles and Creative Wishes, Ashley

My Artist in Residence Adventure Begins!

Woah, so this snow this past week was a bummer! We had nothing but delays and two days off and an early dismissal which pushed my Artist in Residence program BEHIND! I am so glad the snow is gone and warm temperatures are on the rise! I hope that was the last of it.

This entire month of March I have an amazing artist who is working with my students and I to transform our Greenhouse into a rainforest environment. We are integrating science into art and vice versa big time! The kids are engaged, motivated, and excited and the integrating has been spectacular. 

We are using paper mache' techniques, form, sculpture, and recycled materials to create the creatures, plants, trees, leaves, mammals, amphibians, etc. We have each grade level focusing on a different layer of the Rainforest and thus collaborating and teaming up as a school to create a beautiful space. The Greenhouse is an amazing space but it is lacking color, life, and well educational inspiration. Of coarse, I love to color-fy my world, so my thought was why not the Greenhouse. 

This Thursday, my after school arts club I created last year called The Creative Minds will be making mosaic pottery to decorate the greenhouse as well. All of the mosaic pieces were donated from my staff, parents, families and students. It has been quite an experience to involve everyone in every aspect of this project and to have the students not only build and collaborate but the fact that they brought in their own materials AND sorted them. We have an organized clumping of materials around the room which gives the choice based art feel and allows them to explore, create, problem solve, and imagine. Everyday has been fun, exciting, inspirational and just amazing. The students are so engaged and we are integrating lessons and concepts hopefully into some classroom curriculums. Have any of you every gotten an Artist in Residence? If so, what project did you do, I would LOVE to hear and see some visuals of your wonderful experiences. 

It's been such fun and an interesting environment working in the Science Lab and Greenhouse space this  past week. Great views and for once my art room is clean everyday! hehe

We have been working in the science lab and greenhouse, so art came to visit there this month. No art class in the regular art room, we have transferred ourselves to the Greenhouse space!

Here, Kindergarten is making textured paper using a variety of green hues(Yay! For Tints and Shades!)

Greennnnnnnnn for March...Greeeennnnnnn for plants! GREEN FOR RAINFOREST PLANTS!

I love ART! Thank you for visiting and exploring with me today! 

Exploring The Tropical Rainforest

Because of all of this snow, I have been busy working in my art studio, cleaning the house, and redecorating! What fun! It has been nice catching up on life and "me" time.

Anywho, there has not been much action on my blog lately due to the many snow days AND I have an Artist-In-Residence right now! More pictures will be coming soon within the next week. We are transforming our Greenhouse into a beautiful rainforest using paper mache' and recycled items that the entire school and community has donated. It has been such fun jump starting this program and my artist is awesome to work with! Have any of you had an Artist-In-Residence this year or plan on having one? They are so inspirational and they give a nice boost especially during these yucky winter months!

As for lessons and prep, I created an awesome Rainforest themed Power Point presentation for anyone who is interested in doing a Rainforest theme, wants to do individual integrated science lessons on specific animals, or are interested in integrating some science into art! Check out this 92 page Power Point presentation that you can use to invigorate your classroom with science!

Here is a sneak peak of the presentation and I hope you can utilize some of these slides below for your classroom!

Essential Questions, facts, images, and great information are integrated into this package.

Tropical Rainforest on Teachers Pay Teachers-The Magnificent Paintbrush

Art Star Critique Cards!

Good Afternoon everyone! Many of you have been asking for me to make an Art Star Critique Card Lesson/product on my Teachers Pay Teachers store, and it is finally finished! A few months ago I posted my Art Critique Stars. I wrapped up the details this morning and it is in my store for you to enjoy! I hope it is something you were looking for to spice up your classroom discussions and get students talking about their art work. Below is a Free Print Out and sneak peak of what the bundle will include.  What you are looking at are stars thats are laminated and labeled with comments. 

Students would receive 2-3 and place them around the room on other classmates art work to start discussion. There are a variety of ways these can be utilized and adapted to your classroom setting. You can click the link below for more information on how they work. Enjoy folks!

Art Star Critique Cards

Heart Art: Valentine's Day Wrapped Hearts inspired by Cassie Stephens!

So the wonderful Cassie Stephens (http://cassiestephens.blogspot.com/) posted these cool heart wrapped art pieces her students made in her classroom and I just LOVED THEM! I couldn't resist the inspiration of them. So Thursday we used pipe cleaners, yarn and beads to make our own!

Students then used oil pastels to create an awesome background and border to compliment these one of a kind art pieces. This was a great lesson for students to practice their fine motor skills. 

Enjoy the fabulous results!

SEA TURTLES: Eric Carle Inspired Sea Turtles!

I think Eric Carle might be every Elementary Art Teachers favorite Artist, Illustrator and Author! His work is just so playful, fun, and enjoyable to teach children about. Throughout the years I always try to incorporate Eric Carle into my curriculum. This year I did a lot of lesson's using his work and illustrative style to go with our theme "The Art of the Story Book." This week we started Sea Turtle's inspired by Eric Carle's book Animals, Animals. This book is filled with beautiful illustrations of a variety of Animals and incorporates some wonderful poems to go along with each animal.

This is the image we are using as inspiration for our Art Lesson. 

This is the wonderful book we are using that has a wide variety of Poems and Animals. Students will be creating their own Animal Poem to go along with their Sea Turtle art piece when they are finished.

We also incorporated some printmaking techniques....

And bubble wrap is a great way to add texture to make an ocean background!

We just started to make our ocean paper, can't wait to share the finished results!

2nd Grade Brian Floca Inspired Locomotives

This year Brian Floca the illustrator of Locomotive will be visiting our school this May. The librarian is hosting this amazing illustrator at our school and since this year we fused our curriculums and student learning I just finished up an awesome lesson on illustrative styles and techniques. If you are not familiar with his work, you should check out his books, they are wonderful!

2nd graders viewed and discussed the different perspectives he uses in his illustrations, the realistic colors, and the amazing factual information he added at the end of the book about locomotives and it's working parts!

Hope you enjoy and are inspired by these beautiful drawings they did!

Creative Wishes,

Ashley