Lesson Plan: Landscapes (Watercolor and Chalk)

Are you sick of chalk yet? I am! For some reason I went crazy at the end of the year and made all of my grade levels do chalk at the same time. Easy for clean up and distribution...but spraying the fixative was the worst! But you have learned from my mistake and YOU are going to spray after every class finishes, RIGHT?

I am not going into a full lesson plan because I am feeling lazy and these pictures are self explanatory. By now, you get the chalk/glue process, because you read my earlier lesson plans, RIGHT?

4th/5th Grade Van Gogh inspired landscapes:

And now, 6th grade's watercolor landscapes:

For both projects we talked about foreground, middleground, and background. We also looked at van gogh's landscapes and style choices. Other than that, I left this project completely up to them. I told them the rules are "its has to be outside. It has to have a foreground, middleground, and background" and this is what they created!

Lesson Plan: Chalk Self Portrait

This lesson is great because I truly think it can work for any age level. I taught this exact same lesson with 1st grade:

And 6th grade!

Here is the lesson plan:

Procedures:

1) Use powerpoint to teach students about portraits. (I taught them about da Vinci and the Mona Lisa. I also talked about Van Gogh's self portraits)

2)Have students do a quick "pre"test by drawing a self portrait with NO help.

3)After the pretest, I taught the students about symmetry, facial proportions, emotions, and so forth. Then they drew themselves again!

4)After all this practice, students used a regular pencil to draw on black paper. 

5)Students used a glue bottle to trace over their lines.

6)The next class, the glue was dry and students used chalk to color in their self protrait!

Materials:

Black Paper 12x18

Pastels

White Glue Bottles 

Mirrors (from the dollar store!)

Skills Learned:

-Van Gogh and Da Vinci Facts

-How to draw self portraits

-Chalk pastel exploration

Reflection:
As I hinted in the beginning, I taught this lesson several times. In fact I also taught it to Pre-K! Their self portaits are below. Probably didn't work the best with them. But 1st and 6th, it worked really well. Using the chalk was great, because students really had to mix it to get the correct skin color. And there is something so fun about coloring with your fingers! I will use this lesson again and again!

Classroom Management: The Mona Lisa

Classroom management is the hardest thing to teach. Even though (I guess) we talked about it in college, we did it in student teaching, and we read books on it...nothing compares to the horror that is setting up your management plan. I will argue all day that college taught me nothing about this, but at the end of the day....maybe you can't teach this. But if that was true...pinterest wouldn't have been my number #1 thing I turned to for ideas.

Lets start with the basics. How do you want your class to act as they are walking in? Yes, walking in. Day 1 they walk in like angels, but guess what, they aren't walking in like that next month. So, from day one you have to preach, PREACH how you want your class to act when they walk in.

I want my class to walk in quietly, not greet me or scream out "What are we doing today?!!?" just sit down, and stare at me. Perfect, then you need...Mona Lisa.

Yes, Mona Lisa, the most famous painting helps me every day to start my lesson. I'm not sure how it started...I know when I was doing observations as a junior back in college I saw an urban art teacher (my only experience at all in an urban school) let the students choose either Mona Lisa or The Scream as their "pose" for when they were listening. However, I never revisited this idea during student teaching...or subbing...so I am not sure how it resurfaced back into my classroom. Oh yes I know....PINTEREST to the rescue!

Show me the Mona Lisa

The only pic I could find of my Mona Lisa. Arms Crossed. Mouth Closed. Eyes on Me.

When the students walk in, I simply say "show me the Mona Lisa!" I then reward my Mona Lisa (the students doing what I stated above) with a school store ticket. It works like a charm for grades K-5th. 5th its gets a little hairy...but on a good day it works. 6th grade can't be bothered with this silliness, but that's for another blog post. I have heard other teachers call out "MONA!" and the kids respond "LISA!" which also is cute and works.

So I use this when students walk in. I won't start my lesson until everyone is doing it. That's start the lesson right away with high expectations. Yes, sometimes it takes 3 minutes or longer to gather the students into a state of learning. Sometimes they have to put their head down and then we try again. But it works. I use her for transitions....if I just finished a story I will say "show me the mona lisa!" as I get myself ready to demo or pass something out. I used to use her for clean up, but I find it is better if the kids put their head down. 

For clean up: Space/Table is clean, head is down, mouth is closed. I turn off the lights, and we end the day the same way we started it. Calm.

Lesson Plan: Van Gogh Pastel Vases

Well we can cut the procedures in half here, because you already know how I begin this lesson. If you don't, see the blog post right before this one!

Procedures:

 1) Students fill the entire 12 x 18 black paper with a pencil drawing of a flower and vase. We talked about adding patterns to the vase.

2) Students use a white glue bottle to trace the lines of their vase. 

3)Once the glue has dried, students chalk their vase with chalk pastel.

4) Teacher spends hours spraying fixative on the artwork :)

 Materials:

-12 x 18 Black construction paper

-Pencil

-Glue Bottle

-Chalk Pastel

Skills Learned:

-Van Gogh Facts

-How to draw flowers

-Patterns on the vase (should be review by this point)

-Chalk pastel exploration

Reflection:

I used this lesson for 2nd and 3rd grade, both did a great job on it. I was worried the boys wouldn't go for flowers but I had no complaints! I tried this with K, and I did the glue step for them, but the results just were not strong. They couldn't handle the idea of coloring on black paper as well.  If you are wondering about glue, I did this "glue lines" with every grade level from 1-6th and there were no glue wars, explosions, deaths, or anything bad. I guess sometimes if you give a student a big responsibility they CAN rise to the challenge! A big tip #3 for new teachers: Do not procrastinate on fixative. Always spray the same day they complete the project if you can. Just trust me!

Lesson Plan: Van Gogh Vases Collage

To most eyes this is a collage with watercolor and sharpie. I wish I could show you a better close up, but this was much more involved than that. Tip #2 to new teachers: Take lots of pictures!

Procedures (This is a multi-day unit):

1) Teach students about Van Gogh. I actually taught all of my students PK-6 about van gogh, almost around the same time. I used the same powerpoint for all of them, just removing or adding slides when needed.

2) For this project, put a heavy emphasis on Van Gogh's flower vases. Why did he paint flowers so often? 

3)Students get a demo about how to draw simple flowers. Students use sharpie to fill an entire 12 x18 thick paper with sharpie flowers. 

4) Students cut up tissue paper squares into their table group box using scissors.

5) Students place the tissue paper squares on their flowers, and wet the squares using brushes and water.

6) When the squares are dry, remove them and cut out the flowers.

7) Make a vase (crayons, pastel, watercolor...I tried different ones)

8) Glue flowers onto background paper and into vase.

Materials:

-Sharpies

-Tissue Paper (Do not get none-bleeding...it has to bleed!)

-Scissors

-Glue

-Paper

Skills Learned

-Cutting

-Flower Drawing

-Collage procedure

-Van Gogh facts

Reflection:

I loved this lesson! I think it is perfect for 1st or 2nd grade. I mostly love it for the tissue paper. My classroom came full of tissue paper and I love inventing ways to use it. An alternative to this lesson would be to glue the tissue paper to the paper...it gives it a different look for sure! I have found that K is unable to cut paper squares, but they can rip tissue paper. You will be surprised how many students claim they can't draw a flower or a vase!

Links for you:

Make a class collage instead!

Short video about Van Gogh's flowers

 

Views of my Classroom: Making it my own

Here are various images of my classroom while I was setting it up.

 I stapled fabric on my bulletin boards. The fabric doesn't fade or show holes!

 Do you see the sign I made on the wall by the clock?

 Van Gogh on the walls! Thank you Michaels for the cheap prints!

 I say this or a version of this 100 times a day! Also notice I moved the shelves that were in the front of the room, to the back.

 Setting on my desk. (It as never this clean again)

 Fabric on the bulletin boards by my desk. One board has famous art and quotes, the other has my own art I made in high school.

Art room rules, color wheel, Mona Lisa, traffic light. (These will be in a later post)

 On the shelving in the back of the room I have a colored caddy for each table. My tables have a colored tape on the edge of them. Wow where did all those nice sharp colored pencils go??

 By the door: Bathroom passes, and a Who's Out? Sign out

 The completed fabric by the doors. This is where I ended up putting all my "art love notes" from students.

 By the smart board...artopoly! I will talk about this in a later post.

 This was a major change I made to the room. I turned what used to be book cases sideways, and cleared them out. Now I have 4 shelves with 6 spaces for art folders. You can see the piles of folders ready to go on the shelves. I made the folders using recycled poster signs from my local clothing store!

 Art room jobs. Let's reflect on this later, shall we?

Thanks for taking the tour!

Views of My Classroom: Before I settled in

Here are some images of my classroom before I settled in. There was a unique circumstance where the previous art teacher didn't get the chance to pack up her classroom. Here is what it looked like when I first walked in the door last August.

In the last couple of pics you can see where I started taking everything out of the boxes and seeing what I had to work with. When you are walking into a new classroom, make sure you go through every cupboard, every drawer. You need to get all the brushes in once place, and discover that you have 2000 rulers. I found things that looked like it hadn't been touched since the 70's. As an art teacher you want to hold on to everything in case you need it...but you really don't need everything. I threw away old file folder stencils shaped liked snowflakes. I threw away other crafty things that I just couldn't see myself using. I donated a few nicer things a well. Tip #1 to first year teachers. PURGE!

Lesson Ideas: Colorful Book reviews

Looking for more colorful books to read to your students? Here are some ideas:

This book is once again about mixing the primary colors. I found this book to be a lesser version of mouse paint, and it was rather silly. The kids said they enjoyed it though. So it would work well for a post-mouse paint read. Link to this book on slideshare!

Everyone loves Leo Lionni. This simple story would be best for K students, as it concerns mostly color identification. I could see this book leading to a cute chameleon project (Lesson idea on chameleons coming soon!) with pastels, watercolor, or tissue paper.

Another color mixing book! While I admit I haven't read the whole thing, peeking inside on amazon tells me this could be a great post-mouse paint review book! I am already getting ideas on using transparent viewfinders i found in my classroom to demonstrate the effects of layering colors. I think this could lead to a great lesson using layered tissue paper...or even acting out the color dance with a performance art piece!

Lesson Plan: Mouse Paint

How do you teach primary colors? For a month I read Mouse Paint every week to my Pre-k, K, and 1st graders. By the end, they either had the book nearly memorized, or perhaps they actually learned their colors. Here is a sample of the project they completed:

 

The Pre-K didn't really get the idea of mixing colors...or drawing mice. I wish I took more picture of the other grade levels!  The project should loosely resemble these inspirations I found on Pinterest:

http://pinterest.com/pin/279645458083687282/ 

http://pinterest.com/pin/279645458083687289/ 

Procedures:

1) Read Mouse Paint. 

2) Have students "practice" mixing colors by using crayons to fill out a worksheet I created similar to this

3) On "thick" paper students draw (or trace for young learners) three ovals, with sharpies. They then add faces, ears, tails, arms, etc.

4)Students paint the head of the mouse a primary color. For instance, red. Then they paint the bottom another primary color...blue! Then they "mix" the tummy to make a secondary color. PURPLEEEE!

5) Students draw a cat, and mix all the colors together to make a brown cat.

6) On day 2....cut out the mice and cat and glue to background paper. Complete lesson extension or worksheets.

Materials Needed:

I used tempra cakes for this lesson. They make the mouse paint brighter and thicker. Plus, I simply put a red, yellow, and blue tempra cake in the muffin tin holder. This works really well for young learners. You could also use watercolors, and cover up with other colors with masking tape...or if you are filling really gutsy use liquid tempra.

Skills learned: 

-Shape Recognition

-Primary/Secondary Colors (Recognition and mixing)

-Literary Connections

-Cutting

Lesson Extension:

If time allows, students also painted a color wheel worksheet, similar to this.

Reflection;

Whenever I get back into my classroom I will take a picture of my teacher example. 

 As I said, pre-k struggled with this, but it is the perfect fit for K and 1st. I will definitely teach this again to K next year, and I might even bring this out for a review session with 1st grade as well. This is a great lesson.

Links for you:

Mouse Paint Book, on slideshare. USE THIS!

Color Mixing Worksheet

Color Mixing Worksheet (For 1st or 2nd Graders)

Color The Mice!

DIY idea...storytelling

Hello.

Thanks for visiting my blog. It is summer, and I am finally crawling out of the hole that was first year teaching, and emerging as a beautiful frazzled second year art teacher.  Using this blog, I would like to share some musing and pictures from my first year, as well as ideas for this upcoming year. Before we begin, a little about me....Oh! A resume of sorts:

I live in Columbus, Ohio.
I graduated in 2009.
I got my license in 2010. (The job search begins...)
In 2010-2011 I held two long term substitute positions: One in a suburban MS, the other in a rural/suburban Elementary.
In 2011-2012 I spent 9 months as preschool teacher. My job search stretched to the entire state of Ohio...I was ready to move almost anywhere for a job....
Finally, in July 2nd, 2012 as an Elementary Art Teacher in an urban school district. In my hometown! Then the fun began, as a first year teacher!

There are probably a lot of first year teacher blogs out there. How can there not be? Even if you aren't a teacher you know that uttering the words "well this is my first year" basically means "put a diaper on me, I'm a baby"...or at least to some people. I was slightly annoyed at the baby treatment at first...or the fact that on more then one occasion someone said "aw how cute!" when I told them I was new...but I learned to actually appreciate the rookie treatment. After all...

Looking at my resume you can see I have no experience in urban schools. I was a new teacher, in a new job, in a new setting, with people that have all been teaching for decades (seriously, I work with a great staff!). However, none of my student teaching prepared me for the uniquely urban moments.

Yes, I learned to take all praise, compliments, critiques, advice, and pity promises I could get from my fellow teachers. Yes, this is NOT a first year teacher blog because I was treading water next to a ship wreck my first year, trying NOT to drown. I could hardly complete my RE paperwork (more on that later) then complete a blog, a journal, or anything else to document the first year. Consider yourself lucky that you didn't have to read such posts as:

Why is there no blue paint in my entire paint closet? I have 10 red gallons of paint, and no blue.
How do I get mice to stop eating all the artwork?
No one ever reads my lesson plans.
Why did no one ever tell me about....(insert 1000 topics here)

Having a good sense of humor about the whole thing is the only way I survived the dreaded year 1. Well now it is time to share, reflect, and get ready for year 2, and I hope you will stick with me on my journey!