Leadership Day Displays!

We just hosted our first Leadership Day as an official Leader in Me School!  We had over 80 visitors from surrounding schools to see how we've implemented the Leader in Me program at our school, and it was a huge success!  Our students ran the show and represented our Suffield Elementary family in the most wonderful way.  Here are a few photos from my displays that focus on leadership.

Dot Day with First and Second Grade!

Not familiar with Dot Day?  Learn about it here. 

For our Dot Day celebration, the second and first graders worked in groups of 3 or 4 and responded to the prompt: Make an artwork with dots.  They had lots of media choices and we just spent one classtime on this.  It was a really fun and quick project!

Garden Markers

     In my Clay Kids group (students ranging from grades K-5) we just finished these sweet garden markers.  Each student started with a slab that I had rolled with our slab roller.  They then cut out their markers using clay tools and stencils made from manila paper.  Each student made at least 4, and a few of them were even able to get one or two more markers out of their slab.  They wrote the names of plants or herbs that their families plant, and then we decorated them mostly by using larger beads as stamps.  After we made them, I realized I didn't get any photos of the kids using the beads as stamps, but here is a photo of the type of bead we used!

Leadership Group Coil Pots

As I've mentioned before, our school has started focusing on leadership with our students, and we have started leadership clubs this year.  The students have been divided into groups with varying grade levels based on different areas of interest.  My group is called "Clay Kids" (15 kids), and we make functional ceramic artwork.

I am SO excited about these coil pots that the kids made.  We planted marigold seeds in them, and they are growing and doing great!  I've never grown flowers from seeds, and I am definitely enjoying having them in my room!  Hopefully they will continue to do well!

The coil pots were a challenge for the younger kids, but the older ones were wonderful mentors for them, and everyone had made one by the end of our club time!  We started with small balls of clay that the kids squished and worked with their hands to create round little slabs.  I had them use slip (which I don't usually do in a full class of  elementary aged kids) to help the coils adhere.  We still had some issues with construction though, and some of the pots ended up being a little shorter than their artist intended.

I poked holes in the bottoms of the pots with a straw once they had begun to dry a little, and the kids glazed them after they were bisqued.  On the club day that we planted the seeds, the students made the little popsicle stick flowers while they were waiting for their turn to plant their seeds.  I told the kids that I have never grown flowers from seeds before, and we wanted to be sure to have at least one flower in case the seed growing didn't go so well!

  

 

Night Lights

My school is leadership skills, and we've started having leadership groups where multi-grade level students are grouped with teachers to hone in on a topic of interest in which they can become a leader.  I have seventeen 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders in my group called the Clay Kid Leaders.  We are focusing on creating functional ceramic work that can help ourselves or others.


We just made these cool night lights.  They are meant to sit on a bathroom counter or maybe a dresser with an LED tea light underneath.  We made the form by wrapping a thin slab of clay around a school paper towel tube.  We then used another slab to close off one end.  The kids then poked holes in them and added designs.

Back at It!

Last week was my first week back to school after the birth of my beautiful daughter, Clara, in July.

I also loved getting to spend time at home with my two year old, Rex.  But alas, the time quickly came for them to spend some quality days at Grandma's house and for mommy to get back to school and make some art with her other kids! 

I was so incredibly lucky to have the most wonderful long-term substitute teacher EVER.  Mrs. Jen Lonzrick did really great work with the kids and I was able to walk into a happy classroom where kids have already gotten used to working hard at learning about art.  I gave Mrs. Lonzrick various lessons from wonderful elementary art blogs, and here is some of the great work that she did with the students.

The lesson for these awesome fall leaf prints came from Deep Space Sparkle.

The lesson for these pattern pumpkin paintings came from We Heart Art.

This Mondrian lesson came from Deep Space Sparkle.

This lesson, based on the book Sky Color came from Deep Space Sparkle.

I adapted the lesson for these relief sculpture fish (made with Model Magic) from Sax Art lesson plans.

This van Gogh lesson came from Deep Space Sparkle.