Moving Along and a Creative Challenge...

Hi Everybody!  Hope you all had a creative and productive week! Art classes are up and running and it feels like we never left!

2nd grade is finishing up their Fall Warm/Cool Shape Flowers and have done their first self-reflection. They did a really good job with it! They answered some quick questions, What are the Warm colors? What are the Cool Colors? 2 things about your painting you are proud of and 1 thing about your painting you would change.

When their reflection was finished they moved on to creating a building or castle using only the four shapes, square, rectangle, triangle and semi-circle. Our next project is going to be a Klee inspired shape building in an oil pastel watercolor resist.  I've done a similar lesson several times with different grade levels and the pieces always come out beautiful! Working on how to creatively change it up from past lessons... this will finish up our shape review and we will move to our...

...tissue paper stained Jack-O-Lanterns! Second grade is eagerly waiting to create these! They remember seeing last year's and keep asking when we are going to make them! Hard to believe that when both these projects are complete we will be in November!

If you are a follower of Nic Hahn aka Mini Matisse,  she is going to be running a great creative challenge during the month of October! It's going to ton's of fun! I did several creative challenges on Twitter this summer with the #k12artchallenge  gang and it was awesome! Check this out if you are looking for a little creative spark in your world! It's open to anyone and everyone! There's no obligation to do a certain amount of participation, do what you can when you can, just jump in and give it a try!

I gathered up some old, (and I mean old, I found these old placemats when I cleaned out my paper shelf this summer, I save everything that I think may have a creative purpose one day people, simply I'm a packrat! ) scrap paper from watercolor placemats at school to glue onto some heavier paper for creating some ATC's for the #k12artchallenge ATC's . 

I spent a little time glueing them down and measuring out some cards. This is also great practice for me as I am going to have my 4th grades participate in the student ATC swap this November that Nic is hosting! My students are super excited about it! 

( floating spheres project idea from Fine Lines, Fancy Pants from Shine Brite Zamorano )

This week marked the end of my last chalk board... I loved my chalk board... all the chalk boards in the building were re-surfaced with a white board laminate this past week. Tuesday I was drawing on a chalk board, Wednesday it was white board... even the beautiful, original slate boards in the original part of the building(our school was built in the 1930's) were covered and modernized... do you sense my sadness? If you have never draw/written on a slate board... let me just say they were my favorite! I guess times are a changin'... I have a white board in my other art room and I have never been a white board fan but I will make the best of it... got any ideas for the chalk and masking tape I can no longer use on my white board?  I'm now using low tac painter's tape to hang my examples and papers that I demonstrate on... no harm to the white board surface and it holds my papers well! I also covered the magnets on my "clippy men" so they don't scratch the surface and I can still use them, I can't be with out my "clippy men" magnets! 

... considering that I have neglected my domestic duties since school has started and I have been lesson planning, SGO writing and assessing and in general collapsing after work I need to get off this computer and clean today, desperately, before we become an episode of Hoarders... 

Hope you all enjoy your first weekend of Fall! 

Have a creative and happy week all!

Mrs."C"  :)

Creating and Content ...

                                          .......And we're back!  We finished our first full week of school and it feels like we never left! ( lol )   Projects are in full swing, SGO assessments are happening through preliminary steps for project beginnings...

Fall Shape Flowers using Warm colors, Cool colors will fill in the backgrounds, several classes have begun to finish and they look awesome!

                         I have been super busy keeping everything( paper work) up to date...

... but it's paying off and I am feeling no stress about any of my paper work ( so far...) and I find myself all caught up today and I am taking advantage of it and plan on playing with watercolors while the laundry runs, some baking bakes and we watch The Nightmare Before Christmas... head colds have begun to rear their ugly head and my daughter is feeling under the weather today... so the windows are all open and the wind is gloriously blowing so it feels like the indoors is the outdoors today!

...I'm off to change laundry and play! Hope everyone has a wonderful Sunday and a creative, happy healthy week!
           
                                                   "Mrs."C"  :)

Creative Team Work

I'm sitting here this Saturday morning, sipping my coffee and trying to get a handle on all of the ideas that are spinning around in my head of things I want to do, get accomplished, in my art rooms this year!
So many inspirations from this summer that I just want to do it all... at the same time.... ( I know, not possible...)   I am starting with small baby steps and working towards my final results....

This is one of my first baby steps...  having a task that my students can start as soon as they sit down and work together as a creative team at their group to problem solve it.  This is the creative task I gave 2nd grade on Friday.  I explained to the class before they entered the art room that there was a large piece of paper on their table and oil pastels, they were to work as a team to come up with and draw as many  different types of lines as they could, together, as a team. This activity had a dual purpose because it got them working in creative collaborative teams but it also kept the students engaged while I was telling the kids what tables they would be sitting at this year.

The groups used their ideas for examples to refer to for the creative task we worked on.  This is the beginning of my students taking more ownership for their own learning and not just staring at me drawing examples on the board for them! It was a positive experience for all! I was also able to get a handle on how the classes worked together with each other. Some I had to gently nudge to get started and some started right away without any nudging at all! I also used this activity as a quick Formative Assessment to see where they all were with their knowledge of Line! I think we are off to a strong start!

One of my colleagues shares a "Happy Friday" quote, picture with all of us every week... this was the first one for this school year and it made me laugh out loud when I saw it! I made a copy to hang by my desks! I just had to share it with all of you. The week actually was not that rough but I am sure there will be some that will apply to this picture in the weeks to come!!!

                                                      Happy Back to School!

                                                              Mrs."C"  :)