1st Grade Wild Rumpus Photostory

     As I mentioned in my post about the first grade Wild Things, Mrs. Baker (our wonderful media specialist) helped put together a Photostory of the "wild rumpuses" we had in art class.  We spliced our kids with a wonderful clip I found on YouTube.  Check it out (and turn your volume up)!

Thank you Mrs. Baker!

Miss Ryan, Student Teacher

Hi Everyone!

     My name is Marin Ryan and I am a student teacher from Kent State University.  I will teach at Suffield Elementary until March 4th, then move to my second assignment at Field Middle from March 21st to May 6th, and finally graduate in May with a Bachelor's degree in Art Education, with minors in Studio Art and Education.  In my own artwork, I enjoy figure drawing and ceramics most, and I hope to continue taking art classes throughout my teaching career.  Although I'm from Harmony, Pennsylvania, a small town north of Pittsburgh, I recently studied abroad in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and hope to continue to travel in the future.  So far my teaching experience has only been with high school students and preschoolers, so I am very excited to be working with the elementary students here!  They are a great group of kids and I hope I can teach them as much as they're teaching me.

Here are the lessons I've started (or will soon begin!) with some of the grade levels:

1^st Grade: Silent Buddies

            The children will be making simple stuffed animals to donate to patients at Akron Children's Hospital after talking about how nice it is to have a “silent buddy” to comfort them when they are alone.  Although I will do the sewing for the project, the students will get to draw their own animal design, stuff it, and decorate it with marker designs. 

2^nd Grade: Imperfection Self Portraits

            Second graders learned what imperfections are, and how we all have them (even models!).  They are making realistic self portraits including one imperfection, and adding color to them using tissue paper. 

4^th Grade: Press Pause: Zig-Zag Paintings

            In this lesson, students talked about busy activities they did and relaxing activities that help them to “press pause.”  They will be making “zig-zag” paintings that show them doing a busy activity from one angle and a relaxing activity from another angle.  To brainstorm what makes an artwork look busy or calm, they found similarities and differences in two artworks- you can check these out in the hallway!

This is an example of a "PostSecret"

5^th Grade: Secret Box

            The students will look at some of Frank Warren's PostSecret postcards to learn that sometimes people have a secret goal or a secret fear that they aren't ready to share yet.  They will make a box to hold a secret of their own, and decorate it using stamping and collage. 

I am also finishing up two of Mrs. Tannert's lessons right now: Kindergarteners are working on “Ugly Bugs” and Third Graders are finishing up a project on color theory.  I am excited to start my own lessons with these students soon!

Jim Dine Heart Design Challenge for Fourth Grade

     Don't you just love Jim Dine at Valentine's Day?  I sure do, but I'm not always organized enough to get seasonal lessons planned, started, completed, and displayed before the season has passed!  This little design project worked out great as a one-day, in-and-out challenge before my student teacher would be taking over the fourth grade art classes. 

     Before making these beautiful heart artworks, our fourth grade artists learned about Ohio Pop Artist, Jim Dine.  They learned that his numerous heart paintings and prints meant different things to him at different times.  He thought of them as a kind of "landscape", and he used them to show what he was feeling in the moment.  We discussed his work pretty quickly, and then the students had the rest of the class to respond to this challenge:

"Create a design using hearts.  You must use at least two different kinds of art media.  BE CREATIVE!!"

    Each student was given the choice of up to two pieces of drawing and/or craft paper, and I put out a variety of paints, oil pastels, markers, etc.  This also gave me an opportunity to put out my little bag of ribbons and other craft items that we don't get into that often.  The kids really liked this studio and I love the results!

Scratch Art Snowmen with Albrecht Dürer

     Before the 4th grade artists began their snowmen (where we relied completely on lines to create our images), they enjoyed looking at some of the incredible drawings and prints of Albrecht Dürer.  We were all amazed by the depth and value he was able to create with line.  After creating a plan drawing on regular drawing paper, the students began scratching their snowman ideas onto Scratch Art paper.  They were challenged to show at least three different values by creating different kinds of scratches or marks.

      For the paper behind their snowmen, the students mixed lots of cool colored paints and really enjoyed making abstract paintings.  They also had glitter glue, glitter liquid watercolors, and acrylic glitter medium to mix in with their paint if they wanted.  When the paintings were dry, they attached the snowmen with 3D Dots.

     These Scratch Art snowmen were inspired by the wonderful Totem Pumpkins from the Fun Art 4 Kids blog by Lori in Montrose, PA!  Thank you Lori!

The Tooth Fairy...According to Kindergartners!

     As a follow up to the step-by-step self-portraits our kindergartners previously made, they were challenged to use what they learned about drawing the human body, and they drew the mysterious and rarely seen tooth fairy.  I asked the students to draw the tooth fairy the way she (or he) really looks and to also show us where the tooth fairy lives.  I took some dictation from each student about their artworks, and as you can imagine, the students have some fascinating theories about their tooth fairies! 



My tooth fairy is smiling.  At night, she gets all the teeth and she brings them to her little house.  When she gets home she puts them in a pile of shiny teeth.  And then at the morning time, the teeth go in a palace.  That’s it!



She has her wings and she's carrying a tooth with her.  She forgot to go to the other kid's house, but now she's off work.  She's flying to the busy fairy.  It's night time.  Then she went to her house and she slept and woke up and there was all kinds of things in her house that she didn't know.  That's the end of my story.

My tooth fairy is going outside.  She is going to find a tooth.  She puts the teeth in her house.  During the day, she goes outside and finds more teeth.  She finds them on the ground.  She has a family.  She has a sister.  They like to play checkers.

My tooth fairy likes teeth and she likes to pick flowers.  She likes to go to people’s houses and get their teeth.  She likes the stars.  She uses her wand to get to people’s houses.  She sneaks the teeth out from under their pillows.  She likes her family.  She likes to read books to them.

My tooth fairy lives in a school.  There is a bubble coming out of the school.  She takes the teeth into the school and the moon shines on it and the stars.  She likes to collect teeth.  She has a lot of wings so she can fly better.  The flags wave when somebody lost a tooth, and that's how she knows.  She has a mask on just in case the teeth are smelly.  There is a big tooth that she accidentally dropped.

He can fly.  I don't know why I made him a boy.  He has short sleeves and it's night time.  He keeps the teeth in a basket.  Then he puts them in his house.  He keeps them in a drawer.  He doesn't have a family and he doesn't need friends. 

I like my tooth fairy because the sun rises in the morning, like right now.  I like my tooth fairy because the castle is pink and purple.  I like my tooth fairy castle because it has flags on it.  She gets teeth and then she turns them into presents and then gives them to the kids.  I like my tooth fairy because her house has orange windows.

     The kids colored the small shapes in their drawings with glitter crayons, and then they painted with regular and metallic watercolor paints.

Wild Things!

     The Wild Things are one of my absolute favorite art lessons to do.  I've done this project every year and I am always thrilled with the amazing wild things the kids create.  This year is no exception!  We start out by reading Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, and we talk about what a neat job he has as an author illustrator.  We also talk about the wild things and how they are similar and different from other living things.  When the kids created their wild things drawings, they were sure to include the details that living things need (eyes, nose/beak, mouth, tummy, etc.).  They also included at least two patterns on their creatures, and then created environments for them with a background.

      I won a Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio lesson plan contest with this lesson my first year.  You can find the lesson here!

    
     We also had "wild rumpuses" in each 1st grade class!  We chose physical movements and repeated them like patterns to music.  I took some really great photos of the kids, and Mrs. Baker is helping me create a Photostory with them...so check back for that soon!

Expressive Portrait Paintings

     I am so excited about the work our fifth graders did with these expressive portraits!  The kids worked really hard at the new strategy of drawing with a grid, and I couldn't believe how well they did with it.  For these artworks, we looked at the portrait works of Roy Lichtenstein and Norman Rockwell, and particularly looked at how expressive the subjects are in those works.  I then photographed each student making an expression, we gridded them, and the students got to work.  We cropped the photos (like Lichtenstein) so that the viewer would really focus on the great expressions.

     The students used tempera paints to make these artworks so vibrant.  Each student mixed colors and tried to match the colors from their photos.  We also experimented with using water to make colors more translucent.

     When their paintings were finished, the students completed Venn Diagrams comparing and contrasting Roy Lichtenstein and Norman Rockwell in support of our district-wide effort to use Marzano-inspired teaching strategies.