Middle of Crazy

For the longest time I have been thinking about how the end of February/first of March was going to be soooo CRAZY.  Well, here we are in the middle of it and I am still standing.  I have my tickets, hotel room, shuttle bus and general plan for hitting New York!  I still have to finish up my sub plans, packing and cheering our home basketball team onto a victory in districts (Go Panthers!) tonight!  Who needs sleep?

Before I head out I feel that I should post something about what my kiddos have been up to...

*5th grade is finishing their clay projects.  Thanks to maps testing and my crazy schedule only one group is done but check out this guy who won a blue ribbon at the all-city show.

*5th grade is also finishing their doodles for google.  This year's theme seemed to be a little harder for them to work with.  Use the word travel and they forget that it is supposed to be "in time."  But still I am having some great entries.  Check out this "travel to hang out with pirates" idea.

 

*5th grade is also working on Zentangle Landscapes.  I am thinking they will need some chalk color when they are done.  It seems to be a great assignment for my sub to teach while I am gone.

 
  I am not usually a fan of such "simple" landscapes but my kiddos are amazing me with quality of their patterning... and with their concentration on this project!

*6th grade is working on their portraits... I promise a post about it sometime.  I have to see if it is a huge success or failure first :)

*Celebrating Creativity Kiddo's just finished a Sandy Skoglund inspired project.  (We used pixlr.com for our photo editing.)  The nuts and bolts of the project was that we photographed around the building and small still life objects.  We then edited the classrooms to be monochromatic.  We also edited the background out from behind the small still life objects.  We then layered them together.    

There you go... next time you hear from me I will be at the National Art Convention in New York City.  YEAH!

Movie Maker

Ever have one of those weeks... so busy you feel like you are juggling 100 different things.  That is my next couple of weeks.  I had a sub last week while I went to Crisis Team Training.  I have a sub on Friday as I am in charge of a huge scrap booking retreat for Relay for Life.  I have a sub next week when I am the National Art Education Convention in New York.  Thankfully Mrs. Couch has agreed to do all the subbing... she is awesome and was my long term sub last year during maternity leave.  It always makes me feel better to know that she is my sub.

So what have we been doing... 5th grade is working on painting how to and color mixing (tints and shades).  I started by making my first movie (well at least since 7th grade history class when we made a "classic").  It has been awesome for me to get paint ready, take attendance, clean brushes, etc... while they listen to me explain some painting basics.  I will put the link here as long you promise not to laugh... Painting 101

(thank you to all the bloggers who posted about using magazine palettes... my hands have never been so grateful)

6th Grade has been working on their portrait projects.  They are still learning the facial rules, working on shading the facial features and praciting using grids to draw.  Next week we start the "BIG ONE."

Tonight is Celebrating Creativity.  We will be doing some Sandy Skoglund inspired work.  I am still working out the kinks so lets hope it works!  Here is a link to a video one of my students did about our Dale Chihuly work.  This will be linked to a QR code during our art show later this year.

Here is a video link to our Keith Haring guys... I am still working on figuring out how to prevent iMovie from cutting off their heads and feet so keep in mind it is a work in progress!  This is one of the projects my Wednesday kids have done.  Here is a link to the movie we did on our circle painting. 

Well I best get back to juggling... please forgive any lack of posting in the next while.  I will be back!

ooops!

I made an oops!

6th period is when I start getting my 6th graders for the day.  Today as they came walking in I had the PowerPoint going, the handouts ready, the lesson ready to rock!  We started discussing portraits and talking about the awesome project I have planned.  They drew their "portrait card" and we got to working on their practice.  They were working so well and I was just sure we we doing great! 

UNTIL...about 20 minutes before the bell one student asked "when will we finish our Ben Heine drawings?"  I said, "remember you were to take them home and finish them.  I expect for them to be turned in at the end of class." 

PANDEMONIUM.... But Mrs. Carlisle, that can't be I'm not done?  Me either!  You said we would have this week to work on them! 

and they were right.  Neatly stored in all there folders were their Ben Heine drawings.  Patiently waiting to be finished.  Darn it!  So goes my perfectly planned day.  I finished the day introducing the portrait lessons (I know they will need some process time for this one) but then I allowed them time to work on Ben Heine. 

I guess that is how it goes some days :)

Saturday Ramblings

I am up at school working away my Saturday morning... hoping that hubby and kiddos are cleaning the house :)  I don't usually do this but yesterday I was home all day with the kiddos for my P-T Conference "comp" day.  I was cleaning up my computer and found a few things I had planned to post so please ignore the rambling nature of this entry.

Worksheets... do you have your kiddos do very many?  I usually like to have them "creating" but sometimes worksheets are super important to learning a concept.  Here are a few of my recent ones... 

facial feature drawings credit goes to www.artfactory.com

I can't wait to post about the portrait lesson we are starting this next week.  The kids are choosing a portrait style from a deck of cards.  They then have to study that style and create their own image that reflects the style... just think I will have 18 different styles/mediums going at one time (I think I might be crazy!)

Student creativity... a student had this cute headband on that she made herself out of a chip bag.  And yes she wore it this way all day!

Other artwork... I am the only art teacher in my building but I love walking around and see what all the other teacher are doing that is fun and creative.  This is just a SMALL sampling of what you can see walking around our building.  I love that the other teachers are afraid to let the kiddos draw and create!

Hope everyone is having a great weekend and staying warm... it is a chilly 10 here in Norfolk and a balmy 64 in my room (they turn all our heat down on the weekends to save money).  Speaking of temperatures, my kiddos are always asking how hot the kiln gets.  Here is a picture of the "red-hot" glow of the kiln as seen through the vent hole... not that exciting but it will help them understand how hot it gets.



1 project - 3 ways

A while back I posted about trying to get more variety in my projects.  Today we are finishing up another "attempt" of mine to do this.  5th grade just finished their cityscape unit.  We started by reading Robert Neubeckers book "Wow! City!"

photo courtesy of Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

  We discussed what Izzy must have seen, smelled, heard and felt when exploring the big city.  We then talked about what we think of when we think of a big city.  For my first classes we created city drawings using sharpies, crayola markers and water.  They drew their "big city" buildings with sharpie and then outlined them with crayola markers.  To finish the images, they added water to the markers and surprise. 

For my second classes they painted a sky on their paper (at sky painting stations) and then "built" buildings out of magazine images.

For my final classes they drew 2 pages of buildings.  One was for faraway buildings that didn't have much detail and would be painted with watercolor.  They other was for close up buildings that were filled with details and colored with markers.  To finish they cut out and layered their images onto their sky.... sky, watercolor buildings and then marker buildings.  We did all this drawing on old newspapers. 

I am sure glad I went to the extra work of doing this... I love that I have 3 different entries for the art show even though I only taught one lesson.  It was also fun to hear the kids "teaching" the other classes about what their class did. 

Ben Heine Rocks!

So I posted a while back about an Ben Heine and his awesome Pencil vs. Camera artwork that was inspiring my 6th graders project.  Well, we are finishing them up and so I posted some of them to Artsonia.  When I finished up posting, I emailed Mr. Heine to let him know that he was inspiring us. 

TODAY I GOT AN EMAIL BACK FROM HIM! 

My kiddos will be SO excited. 

"Hello Jennifer,
Thanks for sharing it's lovely and creative!
I've seen all of them. Say hello and congrats to your students.
Creativity has no limits.
Thank you
Ben"

And here are a few of our finished drawings

 

 

Creativity Rocks...

I love when my kiddos do creative things on their own time. 

Last week one of my students had to share the sweatpants she made over the weekend.  She was super proud of her creative endeavor...and I was proud of her for getting creative.  She ended up with 3 different pairs of pants but I missed getting a picture of the last pair.  Great job Katalina! 

Plus it gets me thinking about doing a unit where they have to design clothing...



More Keith

Today 3rd quarter (is that right?  is is really 3rd quarter already?) finished up their Keith Haring project.  Each team traced one member to create a "Keith Inspired Guy."  Each group then selected a theme for their guy.  They filled their guys with small drawings that matched their theme.  Reflecting on the idea that Keith made his artwork in public places, we finished by hanging our "guys" around the building. 

tracing

filling with drawings... theme was sports

hanging up... watch out you are going to hit the locker!

I wonder what parents will think next week at Parent-Teacher Conferences?  Here are a few more... I hope to get some QR Codes by them before conferences. 

even got a guy "tebowing"