.

Did you know that Art teachers have other school jobs besides just teaching art?  One of my responsibilities is the display areas in the main hallway on my campus. I have this huge board outside my classroom door that is usually my first display of the school year.  Last year our District theme was "Be Bold Be Bright"... so I added the Art part.  This summer I added our Statues of Liberty. (but forgot to take a picture of it on the board) Below are some of my favorites from years past.  You might wonder why I would spend this 100 degree Saturday in Texas writing a blog post.  (Yes, it's the first 100 degree day this summer) anyway..... I was motivated when I discovered last night that the I am an Artist board was  listed on BuzzFeed this week! Nothing like a little attention to make my day.  This Kandinsky displayed 1st grade lesson is my most popular post, and displayed on the same wall space that has brough...

4 more days of Summer School. Whoo Hoo!  One of the benefits of teaching in the summer is fun Patriotic art lessons.  Another perk is teaching with fellow art teachers on the same campus.  This summer I am lucky enough to work with one of my best friends, Mari.  This is her super cool firework sculpture lesson that she taught to her  kindergarten student's today.  The directions for this lesson is based on the lesson I do with my students when we make Mother's day flower sculptures which is  here . Instead of using one sheet of 12 x 18 paper,  they used two patriotic colored papers, putting one inside the other after folding and cutting.  (She did the stapling) Mari had a buffet of materials for them to pick from and to bedazzle their firework sculpture.  The little guys twisted, folded, glued and stuck on many sparkling items.  They were super excited to take these home today...

We finished up this monumental lesson today. This lesson took a good three hours to complete. The kids were champions for taking it on and finishing so nicely. We were all happy.  This is another lesson that I grabbed and ran with from  Cassie Stephens . She did this with 1st graders, my student's were a year older.  I did modify the lesson. We used construction paper for the faces and head and neck tracers. We used oil pastels for the face without using pencil first. Yikes. We also did not paint the paper that we wove for the royal tunic. They used  Instant Metallic Playcolor sticks  and Prang Metallic Markers .  These metallic sticks are amazing! I plan to order more for my classroom this fall.  No mess and you can even paint over them with great results too.  I was challenged with my hair color mixing ability, since I am not the hair expert. They loved painting the hair, but I would recommend premixing so...

These super fun statue's were drawn first on 12 x 18 white sulfite paper with sharpie. The student's tissue painted the statue with water and bleeding tissue paper.  The background was 12 x 18 black paper.  The fireworks were drawn with my new favorite tempera sticks. The following day we brushed off the tissue papers and removed the background.  We had a few medical emergencies (her arm or neck got cut off) but just glue it to the background.  We watched this cool video and read a few books too about this wonderful landmark. A wonderful summer lesson! The bulk of my inspiration this summer came from Cassie Stephens.  I am teaching a new class this summer, Art and Artist's Around the World to grade 2/3.  I have the past teacher's  16 lesson plans, but being a creative person, I created a new format.  Thank goodness for Pinterest and the WWW and most of all Cassie Stephens . I discovered many interestin...

I spent two day last week working at my school after the children left. We had to make up two contract days due to the ice event in December. Since I am teaching a Summer art class for my school district in my art classroom this year, I was able to write lesson plans and get materials somewhat started.  I cleaned out the paint cabinet. Yuck! Our district turns off the air conditioning at 4 pm and does not run it on days that we are not in the building. I discovered a few years ago that the large gallons of paint expand and smell awful after being exposed to the Texas heat. I only buy the pints size bottles now. I emptied up all the mostly used up bottles by mixing new colors for my summer school kids.  I recycled these Prang and Crayola bottles too! I poured the almost emptied bottles of colors together in ziplock storage bowls. yellow + white = lemonade yellow + orange = dreamsicle black + brown = blackbrown duh blue + gree...

Woo Woo 1 more week with kids at school.  We are finishing these up tomorrow. I try to save some of the exciting lessons for the end of they year to keep the kiddo's engaged.  Any woo , I got way behind with 1st grade's clay, but it ended up being a win win.  This is one of those lessons that I have done for years and frankly I was bored with painting them realistically. The change this year was in the faux glazing.  I looked around at all the fabulous blogs and came up with a creative twist. The kids start with a slab of clay that that is folded over a straw.  Slipping and scoring is really hard for 1st graders, but some challenged themselves to add feet. I remove the straw when the clay is leatherhard and add their names to the back. This is Trinity's white stoneware clay. It bisque fires to a cream color.  This year due to the shortness of time we used a crayon resist method to faux glaze.  Usin...