Quote of the week.

I heard some discussion of flatulence between two of my kindergarteners today. This is how it went down:

Ms. Kristen-Crayon: "Are we discussing things that are appropriate for art class?"

Both students' faces fall flat, concerned that they're in major trouble.

Student: "Z. says that Santa knows when I fart." (He says this in all seriousness.)

I'm so curious about what my "using-all-facial-muscles-to-suppress-emotion-and-hysterical-laughter" face looks like...

Circle trees.

Inspired by a pin that led me to Creative Jewish Mom, my kinders made these collaborative circle trees back in October (yikes! New Year's Resolution Number One: post more often). Those necessary basics get covered in this one-day lesson: how to draw a circle, use the entire piece of paper, color neatly, and the cutting basics. We closed the lesson with a discussion about how art changes when everyone's work is viewed together (I taped the circles to the whiteboard as students finished and discussed how they would morph into a tree a few days post-completion). This first tree was such a hit that my principal asked for any additional trees to "grow" in the upstairs hallway outside the cafeteria, instead of tucked away downstairs in the kindergarten hallway (!). I didn't snap pics of those trees before they got shabby from little hands, but I managed to capture the original (mostly) intact before taking it down recently. Enjoy!

Seen in the kindergarten hallway...

Warms my heart :)

Quintessential Childhood Fun: Shaving Cream as Drawing Medium.

I'll have to admit, I didn't get too creative with this one. Taking a cue from my own first grade teacher so many years ago and my vivid memory of doing exactly this-- smearing foamy, puffy globs of shaving cream all over my desk-- my kinders and firsties let loose with the Barbisol. As a first year teacher I've found myself in the following position a number of times-- I think I have this brilliant, inventive original or borrowed idea-- only to find out that every teacher in the school does the exact same thing. It was so true for my end-of-the-year shaving cream explosion. I learned that some teachers were planning on doing it in their classrooms (our driving force, I'm sure: GET THOSE TABLES/DESKS CLEAN!), but I only found this out after we had already done it. Whoops. At least I beat them to it? :) And I'm positive the kids will not mind Shaving Cream Take II.

To avoid the smear-the-shaving-cream-around-on-the-table-until-it-evaporates phenomenon, I gave the kiddos verbal prompts with ideas for what to draw. Most of the prompts were summer-related, but the only one I managed to capture on film was, "Draw a... robot!"

Snow-free...

...is the way to be.

Ms. Kristen-Crayon: Why is this snowman so sad?

Student: Because even though he's a snowman, he hates snow!

We've had a very mild winter so far, and for that, in this first year of teaching, I am grateful.

My student teaching started last January, and not only did I have a lot of anxiety about just teaching those first units, but wondering whether or not I would be going in at all or having two-hour delays due to weather did not come as a relief. Sure, everyone loves a day off, but as a newbie on a tight schedule, inclement weather presented itself as an additional stressor. Is it showtime or is it not? I live in a different county than I taught in (and that is still the case this year), and never knew if the weather in both counties was going to match up-- would my school be open a few counties away, but would I have terrible weather in my county to drive through in my ill-equipped vehicle? Or best-case scenario: school is closed. But you almost never know 'til 6am, so you don't get to sleep in because you have to wake up and check on the cancellations, and you still have to prep for the next day because you're not sure if school will even be canceled. To top it off-- I'd actually lose sleep wondering about the verdict!

My fear of driving in snow and ice is disproportionate to the actual danger it presents... so I just hope the fluffy stuff (or sleety, icy, perilous stuff) stays in the clouds this year.

But despite all my feelings on snow... my kinders still made some jolly snowmen. 

Thanks to Deep Space Sparkle for lesson inspiration!

"It's been a long December..."

...and now it's January?! And winter break is over and I'm teaching tomorrow? And instead of lesson planning for January I am blogging about the past month? Hm, sounds about right. I will type until the crock pot jambalaya is ready. Blog post starts now, GO!

Frederick

As promised from a few posts ago, here are our Frederick murals! Frederick is a charming little story by Leo Lionni, perfect length and pacing for wiggly kinders. Frederick is a dreamy little mouse who does not appear to help his fellow mice prepare for the winter. But as they're gathering food for the long, cold months ahead, Frederick is gathering words, colors, and imagery. Once the food has run out, his mice brethren turn to him for his contribution to winter prep. At first I was reluctant to teach this unit because I wasn't sure about the "big idea" behind the resulting artwork. While I was doing some research  on the story (one that I am surprised that I didn't read as a kid), I came across pages that tied Frederick to potential age-appropriate philosophical discussions. It was very interesting to hear their take on whether or not Frederick was working as hard as the other mice (we had opinions on both sides of the fence).

We are the unfortunate mice who made the poor decision to live in an active volcano! KABOOM!

Here's the first mural I did with my Tuesday class. Can you tell I was fairly hands-off? So we have exploding mice in a rock storm. The mice live in a stone wall in the story. These mice and stones are anti-gravity. Check out the upside-down mouse in the upper right corner. He's my fave :)

The following murals were a little more teacher-directed...

...with the one immediately above being the most successful. They asked for paper to make a sun, clouds, and flowers!

Here's the description I placed next to each of the murals. It reads:

"In art class we read Frederick, the story of a little mouse that appears to waste the summer away daydreaming, while the other mice gather food and prepare for the harsh winter. When food stores run out, Frederick warms the other mice with his unexpected poetry. Frederick’s words carry them through a difficult time.

After discussing Frederick’s role in mouse society, kindergarteners mixed black, white, and brown paint to make stones for the stone wall the mice live in. Then they created their Fredericks by cutting and gluing construction paper. Look at their hard work! Finally, they worked together to assemble the Frederick mural for your enjoyment!"

Final comments: The kids LOVED working big. They were so proud of this collaborative work, and couldn't wait to show their teachers when they came to pick them up on the day they finished. Their enthusiasm was catching, their teachers seemed to love having their work displayed outside their classrooms, and I'll definitely do this one again next year.

Beautiful Water, Beautiful Boats

In our county we have an integrated curriculum, so when I read that the kindergartners were learning about bodies of water, I decided to do a water-inspired unit (in hopes of utilizing the TONS of donated toilet paper rolls we seem to accumulate). All kinds of discussion resulted from this three-day unit: How many different bodies of water do you know about? Why do you think water looks blue? What does water feel like? What are uses for water? Why is it important to save water? What kinds of boats do you know about? Have you ever been on a boat? What kind of boats are we making? What is the purpose of a sail on a sailboat? And on and on.

The base is a watercolor/crayon resist, and the boats are made from painted cut-up tp rolls. Sails are cut paper triangles, folded along one edge, dipped in glue, and glued down. Lots of opportunities to discuss pattern (we made AB patterns when drawing the waves), 2D vs. 3D, shapes, and painting/gluing 3D surfaces.

A book I came across while teaching this unit is called Atlantic, by G. Brian Karas. Gorgeous, charming illustrations and told from the perspective of the Atlantic Ocean, so if you want to get into narrative voice a little, here's your opportunity. Great find!

Highly recommended.

Spirit Week

School spirit kind of rocks. I spent a lot of energy in high school trying to NOT have school spirit (went to a sports-obsessed school, and future art teachers aren't necessarily known for their sports enthusiasm), but looking back, that was kind of lame. Especially now that I'm a teacher, I definitely support anything (anything) that will make kids excited about attending school, even if it's not related to academics. If that means wearing something ridiculous and potentially uncomfortable for teaching, sign me up! It's my duty!

Spirit week was the week preceding break and it looked like this:

Monday - School Spirit Wear

Tuesday - Twins Day

Wednesday - Wacky Wednesday

Thursday - Crazy Hat Day

Friday - PJ Day

I only documented two days out of five, but hey! For someone who never takes pictures, that's an improvement! These are a little blurry... taken by students, nonetheless!

Why be twins when you can be quadruplets?

Yup, our school is so large and awesome that we have two art teachers and two music teachers, who wore a total of eight flashy Christmas light-up earrings (which the kids were obsessed with). Our closets were not very cohesive, so we weren't too adventurous with black on top, blue on bottom, but we made up the difference with fun, festive jewelry. The students were very impressed with our quadruplet effort, I must say.

Wacky Wednesday or just typical art teacher attire? You be the judge.

And here's my last-minute attempt at "wackiness". I had meant to put something together the night before, but never got around to it. A lot of students actually complimented this look and I honestly couldn't tell if they were complimenting the wackiness or just literally liked the ensemble. My necklace has a weevil in it (purchased from the very cool Evolution in NYC, back when I lived there and strange purchases were good purchases), so I managed to creep out quite a few younger students. Sorry, loves!

A Very Fordley Christmas

"Fordley" is Dudley + Forman = A very good name, indeed.

Nate and I had an excellent Christmas spread throughout Baltimore, Detroit, and Pittsburgh, with just the right mix of presents, food, and both of our families. Am still detoxing and might need a vacation from the vacation, but the return to school is imminent, regardless of how I feel about it, haha.

The tree in our reading nook.

Jonesie is SO tuckered out from wrapping so many presents!

At my first professional hockey game!
We look a little weird. But you get the idea.

In closing...

I leave you with one of those moments that makes your heart swell as a teacher, and as a first year teacher, lets me know that I'm in the right profession. My kindergartners are working on snow scenes with snowmen in them. Day one of the unit is drawing the snowmen and cutting them out. We ran out of time for a thorough clean up, so I told the students to just leave their snowmen at their tables and I would collect them.

We snowmen, we are friends!

Most left them in little piles, or scattered about, but not L., who lined hers up, holding hands. Commence heart swelling... now.

Sick day.

Lo and behold... I did get sick. Head cold, stuffed-up nose, scratchy throat, losing my voice. Seems that my chugging Emergen-C, using the Neti Pot, and constant hand-washing was in vain. Sigh. Trying to just rest and relax, but it's so hard when there's so much to catch up on. I feel like blogging is somewhere between relaxation and productivity, so maybe this post will give me some sense of accomplishment without stressing me out too much, heh.

First Marking Period, Revisited

Can't really believe that we're already in the third week of the second marking period. Progress report grades are already due, Thanksgiving is next week. And I didn't post half of what I did with the kiddos. Consider this a recap, of sorts.

Before...

...and after.

Bulletin boards (not boreds) got a revamp. And now they're due for another revamp. This one probably won't change, considering most of the content is mandatory. I had it all scrunched on my whiteboard before, but now it looks a lot more attractive and neat on the front bulletin board. Students are still discovering that the photo below "Art is..." is me. They'll interrupt my lesson intro with, "Ms. Dudley, who is that? Is that you?!" The traffic light with the clips is our schoolwide PBIS system. Every student is assigned a number (usually based on alphabetical order), and the clips are numbered. It's good to be on green, excellent to be on gold (gold lion, for we are the Lions), yellow is like a warning, and it's bad to be on red. Similarly, I have my green, yellow, red A-R-T to manage classroom behavior, not individual behavior. Behind the A-- "Reminder", behind the R-- "Warning", and behind the T-- "Silent art". The letters come down as need be. This works well when the noise volume reaches an uncomfortable decibel.

Kandinsky in the Elementary Art Classroom

Didn't my kinders do a great job with these paintings? I'll be really sad to take them down. We explored lines by painting them on the sidewalk with water, making lines with our bodies by dancing around to Greg Percy's  songs "Kandinsky" and "I Draw the Line", and pointing out all kinds of lines in Kandinsky paintings, such as this:

Composition VIII, 1923

Painted our black lines one week, then we worked with mixing primary colors to make secondary colors the next week, and filled in the space around the black lines. I described mixing colors as "magical" and the kids really took to that idea! Also used this really cool "music video" by a Spanish band called Labuat, check it: http://herraizsoto.es/labuat/eng/

My first graders also looked to Kandinsky for inspiration, but this time, we looked at his circle paintings.

Squares with Concentric Circles, 1913.

Next time, they'll be able to choose however many circles they want to go into each square. I asked that they paint one circle within a circle, to keep it simple, but because of this they came out kind of cookie cutter. Not my intention.

First grade unit inspiration from Deep Space Sparkle. Thank you!

Brace Yourself... MORE Sugar Skulls!

Sick of them yet? Because I'm not!

See that empty space? A description was supposed to go there... erm.

In total, I explored Dia de los Muertos and sugar skulls with four grades: first, second, third, and fourth. Here are the third grade results:

I just love all the different personalities coming through. And yeah, that's glitter. One of the worst art teacher sins... but it made them so happy! Glitter happy :)

Unit inspiration from Deep Space Sparkle. Thank you!

Layered Urban Landscapes

with Third Grade

But before third graders made their sugar skulls, they made these layered urban landscapes. Took five weeks, which was two weeks longer than expected. I reinforced and talked a lot about artist and architect dispositions with this one... you can be creative and precise at the same time, who knew?! This, like the Luck of the Draw unit mentioned in a previous post, was also a unit I taught this summer at YPS. And like that unit, those art star kids only needed about three hours to achieve the product, whereas my current students needed more like five. By the end I was definitely tired of reminding students to use rulers for every line and make precise measurements, but when I checked in... "are you tired of this unit?" They were still pumped, even for week five. It's always rewarding to see something you've worked so hard on, for so long, come into existence... and I think they were feeling that.

So it's hard to tell from these pics, but these are actually three layers of different types of paper, one on top of the other. The background is a watercolor on white drawing paper:

Then it's another watercolor on tracing paper:

And finally, it's a clear acetate layer with a Sharpie drawing. (Note: didn't buy real acetate. Asked that teachers dig through their closets for old overhead projector copy sheets. They delivered! The kids loved drawing on those clear sheets.) The layers are taped together with clear Scotch tape.

Can you tell that I had just graded the glittery sugar skulls when I was taking those pics?

First Successful Pre-K Unit

So my Pre-K lessons had been bombing. Due to scheduling conflicts, holidays, half-days, etc. I've only seen them five times so far! This has led to a lack of continuity. And because I only have one Pre-K class, one time a week, and I didn't teach Pre-K in student teaching... I've had a very slow learning curve. Needless to say, the first three times I taught them they were either bored, confused, lost, or all three. FINALLY, I read them Oh, the Places You'll Go (which was over their heads and too long... not saying that I've perfected teaching those little guys) and then they created the "place" that they would "go", haha. They dipped tp tubes, random recyclables, etc, in glue and then glued it down to cardstock. Then the next week they painted it (I only have Pre-K for twenty-five minute classes). Results:

Prototype.

Future Post Preview

In closing, I leave you with a snarky Frederick the mouse, made by one of my Kindergarteners. Thanks for reading! Don't be a stranger... follow me!

More on Frederick to come!