Ode to Deep Space Sparkle - Or How I Modified Her Snowman Lesson

If you're an art teacher anywhere in this world and you have searched the net for ideas you must have stumbled upon Deep Space Sparkle at some point in time.  This website is amazing, Patty Palmer creates fun, easy to follow lessons that still do a great job of teaching the elements and principles of art.  I have dipped into her lesson blog when I needed a new way of teaching an old concept. 

This time, I needed a generic winter lesson that could bridge between one marking period's main focus of texture and the next marking period's main focus of color.  Patty's Snowmen at Night lesson, which you can find here, was perfect.

For the most part, I followed the plan as listed on Patty's site.  We read the book, discussed the illustrations use of the cool color blue to make the illustrations look cold, plus talked about the different tints of blue used.

Now, in Patty's original plan she was using the tissue paper with glue glaze to create houses in the background.  For my classes I simplified it greatly for ease in prep and limited time.  I have a school which is only K-2, so I had six classes of first graders to prep for.  So in keeping with the discussion about tints, we used different blue tissue papers to create sky.  Also, as a time saver as I only see them once a week for 40 minutes we only did the tissue paper about halfway down the paper and left the white of the paper to become the white of the snow on the ground.

After the glue glazing of the tissue paper each table was given a paint tray with white and turquoise.  The snowmen were then painted on top.  I demonstrated how to use the turquoise to shade one side of the snowman and to create a shadow on the ground for it.  Of course, as you can see from the photos below, first graders love to throw directions out the window and just enjoy the process of paint mixing.  There are a lot of frosty blue snowmen in my school right now!

Following the drying of the paint, the kids got to raid my scrap box and start decorating.  For a final touch I had them put glue dots around their snowman and bring them to my "glittering" station.  My glittering station is just an aluminum pan.  I have them put their pictures inside, sprinkle the glitter myself (to avoid over-use) and then tap it out inside the tray.  This way any unused glitter winds up in the tray and I can funnel it back into the container.  This process cuts down on a LOT of waste.  

My very battered and often used Glitter Station.

Here are some of the works in progress:

This one is getting a jacket a few sizes too small.

Faces and arms were done with markers.

This one has a pipe.  I love it!

And here is the finished display!

I just love the sunglasses on this one!  Too cute!

 

Egyptian Masks Part 2

I found the memory card with my finished examples!  Completed Egyptian masks are below.  If you missed the original post you can find it here: Egyptian Mask Making.

They are in various states of completion as you can see.  After the masks are made, we attached them to the cardboard to make the rest of the headdress.  Metallic gold paint as well as pearlized paints were used to create the collars.  It was also a good place to sneak in repeating line and shapes.

Fairy Houses

This project was inspired by the series of books about Fairies and their homes by author/illustrator Tracy Kane.  If you haven't checked out her books, you really should.  They are just magical books. 

This project was completed over several class sessions and was done with Kindergarteners.  Really, though, I could see this easily being modified up for older grades. 

We started with painting sky and grass.  I also reviewed tints with them.  They were given white, green and blue and had to choose which to tint - the sky or the grass.  Most automatically tinted the sky because they wanted "sky blue" in their picture.

Yes, that's carpeting.  My art room had carpet. 

We'd run out of room on the drying rack and had to use the floor of the back closet to dry our paintings.

Day 2 of the project was painting the houses.  I put out trays of red, white and brown for them.  We painted Fly Amanitas (otherwise known as that red mushroom with the white spots which is so popularly used in fantasy art). 

I use Styrofoam lunch trays (5 bucks for 25 at WalMart) for paint trays.  Keeps the paint compartmentalized and when using limited color pallets it gives the kids a place to color mix. 

I let them decide how many "houses" they wanted to paint and how they arrange them.

We used the brown to paint windows and doors.

I freely admit to flaking on the pictures during fairy making days (it took two sessions).  My apologies on that.  We used multicultural papers for the bodies and then used wallpaper sample books for the fairy cloths and wings.  They got to decide how many fairies they wanted as well.  A few kids even added fairy dogs for their fairy families. Here's what the finished display looked like:

Absolutely adorable!

Signage

I am currently working off a cart in one building but am still in a classroom in the other school.  Due to this the signs I make for myself can be posted on a bulletin board, or stuck to the side of my art cart with magnets. 

Since our curriculum is based around the Elements of Art I made these up a while ago:

This is where they were last year when I had a room.

All my signs are laminated for longevity.  Although, they are starting to show their age.  I would love to remake them, but to save budget money the town took away our color printers.  Everything routes through to the copiers now.  All black and white - no more color!

If your system is anything like mine, you have the dreaded Essential Questions.   Our district requires that every single lesson have the Essential Questions posted.  Not so much for ourselves or the kids, but so visiting administrators can know at a glance what we're working on.  Our art department wrote universal ones that tied back to the elements.  We've since had to update those yet again but I thought I would post what we originally came up with.

What types of signs are you required to have in your classroom?  Is there anything curriculum linked you must have on display?