Alphabet Ideas

Image courtesy of designspongeonline.com

I found this wonderful blog post on how to make your own flash card at designspongeonline.com
It has a FREE pdf download so you can make your own. You only need 7 sheets of card stock and a creative imagination for words.
I thought a great extension to this might be to draw pictures for each letter. What a wonderful gift set of cards for anyone! A great set of cards for a baby, a child just learning to read, Grandparents, or any adult!
This could be a fun project to help students recognize sounds and letters especially if they are involved in the process of choosing the word and drawing the picture that goes with the letter. Oh the possibilities!

Recycling Jars into Snow Globe Art!

Because we have a collection of little baby food jars in our recycling bin, I thought it might be fun to do something arty with my 3 year old by using them. So we made a snow globe! It's not really in the holiday spirit but fun none the less! I think we may end up with a little snow globe village by the end of the winter break! Here's a "how to" with some other fun suggestions.

Materials needed
a glass jar with a tight fitting lid
shrinky dink material or plastic toy
waterproof glue
distilled water
liquid glycerin (from a craft store- Joann fabric or Michaels)
glitter!

Create your scene on the inside of the lid and glue it down. Let it dry.

Fill the jar with water, a squirt of glycerin (which helps the glitter move around, I didn't have any so we skipped this part) add the glitter. Screw the lid on tightly (I add a bit of glue to the inside of lid to make sure that it stays on and little fingers don't open it to see how it works. It's best to let this dry before you flip and shake it). Next flip it over and watch the glitter fall over your scene. You could glue little people, animals, robots, you name it! I just put a little felt on the bottom of this one to cover the cap.

If you are using shrinky dink material. Follow the shrinky dink instructions by creating your drawing and baking it before you begin.
Another fun idea is to create a family portrait drawing and shrink it to fit into the snow globe.

Snowmen at Night

Snowmen at Night by Caralyn and Mark Buehner is an imaginative winter rhyming book about what snowmen do in the evening when we are all in bed! I began class by reading this book and then we discussed some of the illustrations. We talked about how the illustrator painted the objects that are further away smaller and objects close up bigger. We briefly reviewed complimentary colors again as well as Van Gogh's style of how to create movement or wind in Starry Starry Night. Students used oil pastels to create a large, close up snowman portrait complete with patterned scarves, buttons and hats. Then they worked on the background imagery making objects further away smaller, creating movement in the style of Van Gogh and perhaps adding evening stars and a moon.


I love the movement in the snowman's hair on this one!

Snow Globes

Yahoo! The snow is finally here!
This week we continued our discussion of complimentary colors. We took an up close look at Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte to see how he used complimentary colors to enhance his paintings. Many students thought this scene looked similar to Lake Harriet. Next students drew a snow globe, cut it out and then created a family portrait. Using complimentary colors students decorated the base by creating a pattern. We added a bit of sparkle with glitter glue to enhance the snow falling in their pictures! They took so much time in carefully drawing each family member, sometimes including pets, it was marvelous to hear the stories they told as they described them to me.

The upper level also worked on cutting snowflakes for the hallway. There is something magical that happens after you make the cuts and then open it up to see what you have created. One student just kept folding and opening and refolding in awe over what he made. It was fun to watch. Another student in the upper level was so inspired by our complimentary color conversation he carried it over to the snowflake production. See the picture below. He paired yellow and purple together, blue and orange, and lastly red and green.

3D snowflakes

Bring on the snow! I have been creating snowflakes all over the house in hopes that it would some how bring a blizzard outside!

These snowflakes are a fun and festive 3d project and much easier to do than they look. I think I will try to do these in small groups at school. It will be a great project to work on dexterity and patience. What better way to embrace the season than to take over the halls with snow!

I found this fabulous site that has a very easy tutorial on how to make them. Click here
They look amazing when done with colorful scrap-booking paper. Old wallpaper scraps could work well too!

Think snow!!!

Complimentary Colors

We have been discussing color theory for the past couple of months and this week we continued by looking at complimentary colors. To begin the class we looked at a self portrait of Van Gogh. We discussed the many colors he used in the image of himself as well as the complimentary colors he used in the background. We then looked at some of his other work including Starry Starry Night which many students recognized. Students discussed his style of painting in which he uses many dashes or lines that appear to create movement or enhance lit areas in some of his work.
This week's project was to experiment with drawing by creating wind or movement with oil pastels. The next step was to use complimentary color tissue to illuminate their imagery.
The results were whimsical and colorful creations that will look fabulous framed on any wall!

A delicious treat to read

Apple pie! How much more festive can it be? Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall is a wonderful read for little ones to teach them about the change of seasons. The best part is at the end where there is a recipe for apple pie! It seemed like a perfect book for the holiday week. I read it to my son and then we brought out the bowls and wooden spoons and made multiple apple pies! Big pies, little pies and later some pretend pies out of play dough.
There is something about mixing bowls and a bit of a mess that can not only be fun on rainy cold days but it can also inspire some imaginative thinking. After we made the pies we made play dough (recipe below) and it turned from a floury mess into forms that were tunnels for little cars, food for elephants at the pretend zoo, and space ships to land on the play dough moon.
It was a deliciously messy and fun afternoon!

Colored Play dough

• 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 tablespoon cream of tartar
• Food coloring
• Saucepan
• 1 cup flour

Directions

1. Combine water, oil, salt, cream of tartar, and food coloring in a saucepan and heat until warm.
2. Remove from heat and add flour.
3. Stir, then knead until smooth. The cream of tartar makes this dough last 6 months or longer, so resist the temptation to omit this ingredient if you don't have it on hand.
4. Store this dough in an airtight container or a Ziploc freezer bag.

Winter Wonderland

This week we began a transformation of the hallway to a winter wonderland (secretly wishing for lots of snow). I read the book Feathers for Lunch by Lois Ehlert for a little bird inspiration. Then students worked with scissors, glue and oil pastels to create "snow birds". Some are even fashionably dressed with scarves and hats! Just like snowflakes, each bird is very different from the next. They are charming and very colorful little birds to take note of. Be sure to take a look and ask your child which one they created!

Write on the wall?!

I am always looking for ways to make art supplies more accessible to my oldest child (almost 3) as well as ways to bring bright bold color into the house especially during the winter months. A wise creative friend of mine recently turned me on to this paint site hudsonpaint.com.
They have an amazing color palette of chalkboard paint to choose from (shown above). Gone are the days of plain old black or grungy green! Now there is mystic wisdom, star supernova, superboy blue, sweet tangerine, bon bonbon and more! They have great examples of how to use their product on their site. I think there is a room makeover in my little guys future! He'll be able to draw railroad tracks and rocket ships to his heart's content!

Warm and Cool Colors

This week we began class by looking at two pieces of work to discuss warm and cool colors: Flower Beds in the Dresden Gardens by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner for warm colors and Artist in Greenland by Rockwell Kent for cool colors. We discussed how it might feel and what we would wear if we were in the painting. We also discussed the term horizon line and how some artists use this in their work.

Students were given two long pieces of paper to complete their abstract paintings. They began first by drawing a horizon line with their pencil and then working on one painting at a time. They also completed an abstract warm color painting and a cool color painting. After the paintings dried they were mounted together onto a single black sheet to display the beautiful contrasts of the dual paintings.

Miro and Kandinsky Inspired Monsters

In the spirit of Halloween, this week was all about monsters! I read the book There Was An Old Monster by Rebecca Emberley. Next we looked at and discussed Kandinsky's White Figure and Miro's Figur Gegen Rote Sonne II. Working with black oil pastel, students first drew their monsters. As the students began to draw, we talked about how they could effect the friendly or scary look by changing the monsters' eyebrows, eyes and teeth. We also discussed how to achieve texture in their drawings to show fur or scales. Everyone took their time creating the head, body and limbs. When it came time to add facial features, the room got louder with conversation while they watched their drawings come to life! Students then used watercolors to paint their monsters, and they experimented with brush work and color on their own. I love how each monster has a personality of its own when I look across the table!

Haunted Houses for Loaves and Fishes

This week the upper level class completed haunted house center pieces for the tables at Loaves and Fishes. We're always looking for ways to recycle, so we used cereal boxes and shoe boxes that students brought in. We used newspaper to tear and glue to the boxes covering them up to turn them into the beginnings of haunted houses. Then the Halloween artists made the doors and windows by cutting and tearing scraps of paper and then added texture to the roof with oil pastels. Each house was very unique when it was finished!

Doodle Boards

In the little nook off to the right as you enter the school we have put up "doodle boards." I cut framed doodle paper for students to draw whatever inspires them at the moment. This will be a evolving exhibit. Be sure to frequently check the doodle gallery to see what's on their minds.

The Louvre at the MIA

My husband and I visited the Louvre exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts on Thursday evening. We agreed that this is a wonderful exhibit that Minneapolis is very fortunate to have right here in our backyard. There were a handful of children there that evening enjoying the artwork as well. It was so inspiring to see little ones ranging from 4-7 years old engaged in a dialog about what they were seeing in the imagery or sculpture and overhearing their perspective of the work. It reminded me again to never underestimate the minds of young ones.

The sculpture in the collection is so impressive and breath taking that it caused me to wonder whether work of this magnitude will ever be created again. The passion for the subject and the craft must have been so deep to spend days, weeks and years to complete. This, of course, coupled with the lack of media distractions most likely helped artists focus on the execution of such masterpieces.

After thinking about the amount of time spent on some of the pieces in the exhibit I realized the importance in teaching our children to have patience. It is sometimes a challenge in elementary art to teach children that art is not a race. It can be a exciting process to watch them work on a project over a period of a week or more to see how it evolves for them and how involved they become in thinking about their work.

If you get the chance to see the exhibit at the MIA using the head-sets are a wonderful way to hear more of the explanations and stories about the work. It also allows you to become immersed in the moment of viewing.

Nature Art

I recently ran across Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. This is a fun fall book to inspire nature art. I read it with my almost three year old and then he and my husband went for a nature walk to collect leaves for our own leaf man. He came back with a bag full of leaves and sticks. He wanted to read the book again and then we sat down at the counter with a glue bottle and started to create! Not only is it a great piece of seasonal art to hang up but it has also inspired him to tell his own story about his leaf man or cat as he calls it!

Autumn Inspired Watercolor Mixing

We had so much fun this week experimenting in color mixing with watercolor paints. I read the book The Color Tree by Denise Bennett Minnerly to initiate our conversation about primary and secondary colors again. Next, students drew three trees across their page using black oil pastel. We talked about making branches that look like the letter 'y' and how to create texture on the bark of the tree by using different lines. Students then used primary colors to create leaves in the tree tops. After the primary color leaves were in place they used the wet-on-wet painting technique to create secondary colors by first wetting their paper with just water on their brush then adding two primary colors to the wet area. The result was a beautiful watercolor mix of secondary colors at the bottom of the tree where the painted leaves collided.
This is such a beautiful time of year even when it's a bit rainy (which makes for great rainy day art projects!). I hope you all get to enjoy the colors that nature is offering right now!

The first three weeks of art

To recap the last few weeks of school and what we have been working on I included images and some brief descriptions below.

We began this year by focusing on color. After reading The Color Kittens by Margaret Wise Brown during our first week, we looked at Mondrian's artwork and discussed primary and secondary colors as well as horizontal and vertical lines.




Next I read Warthogs Paint - A Messy Color Book by Pamela Duncan Edwards. This is a fun rhyming book about color mixing. We worked with tempera paint to create color wheels. Starting with primary colors on the palette, students mixed secondary colors to complete the wheel. One class created a large wheel that you can see hanging in the hall!



Following the color wheel we looked at Kandinsky's Squares With Concentric Rings, and students worked with water color to create their own artwork. Each student started by creating one circle on their page with concentric circles within in it. We discussed primary and secondary colors again and focussed on brush work. We discussed how to achieve thinner lines by holding the brush lightly. We discussed how to achieve bright colors by rinsing the brush in between painting colors. Once their circle was completed, they used their imagination to turn it into something else (for example, a beach ball with the ocean in the background, the torso of a person, the wheel of a train, etc.).



There has been a wonderful curiosity with color mixing and the magic of creating secondary colors from just three primary colors. It is this curiosity that leads to thinking critically and learning creative problem solving. We will continue to experiment with color and feeding this curiosity!

First Art Rolls Post

Welcome to Art Rolls!

The purpose of Art Rolls is to provide a view into the art room for parents and to help inspire dialog at home about art and the many creative possibilities that it can provide.

Inspiration for the name Art Rolls came from my rolling cart of art supplies. And so, it seemed appropriate to title this blog Art Rolls. What is wonderful about this way of teaching is its incredibly dynamic nature! It leaves room for change at a moments notice and it meets the fast paced needs of elementary students.

Each class will begin with a look and discussion of a work of art. I will read a storybook to help initiate conversation about the content, and during the bulk of the class, we will explore many mediums through hands-on experiences. Throughout the course of the year I hope to help students develop their own voice through their work, to inspire expression and to encourage critical thinking skills.

I will be posting updates once a week. Follow us throughout the year and see where it takes us!