Intro to Paper Mache' Animals using Prezi

When I was teaching at Holy Family in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, I used the Milwaukee Beasties as inspiration for a paper mache' project. We created designer teddy bears. For Herrera Elementary in Phoenix I decided that we would create four-legged beasts. I introduced the whole project using this Prezi. Paper Mache' Animals on Prezi (See Prezi below)

Intro to Block Printing via Prezi

I used to use PowerPoint to create all the presentations for my classroom. Then I discovered Prezi and I switched over for some of the concepts I needed to introduce to students. (See Prezi below)

Tessellation Exploration

Using an old demo copy of Tom Snyder's Tessellation Exploration, fourth graders work on slide tessellations. They learned how to use the Window 7's snipping tool to capture their screens and then save them to my 4th grade folder. Many technical skills were involved but in addition, a collaborative environment evolved where the students helped each other using the various software and tools. Here are the screens that were saved. (See video below)

K-2 Students Explore Paper Tape

Students in primary classrooms often come to the art room with no scissor or gluing skills. This is mainly because classroom teachers are discouraged to spend any time on creative projects and encouraged to focus on testing.
Paper tape is a quick and easy first gluing and cutting medium. It frees the kids up from worrying about perfection and gives them a nice way to work together socially through sharing. (See video below)

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Line and Geometric Shape via Piet Mondrian

Today 1st through 4th graders looked at one of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian's compositions which was primarily black vertical and horizontal lines and primary color blocks. These students didn't have that much experience with rulers so this was also a chance for them to practice ruling straight lines. Students were to make a design similar to the one shown on the SMART Board using markers. We also did a compare/contrast activity on the SMART Board using the interactive vortex to sort organic and geometric shapes. We had previously explored a work from Spanish artist Joan Miró whose work used the same color palette but more curved, thin lines and organic shapes. (See video below)

K-2 Play Doh Teddy Bears

Lower budgets required reusable materials for 3D work. It's why I focused on paper mache' as an inexpensive way to create larger 3D pieces. Clay was a limited resource so kids got used to making temporary small items as a way to practice. I bought many of my own supplies just so they could get a chance to work with a larger variety of items. The Play Doh didn't hold up well so I wouldn't buy it again. (See video below)

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Minions and More Minions!

The Minion Challenge required that students create a 3D creature based on the movie "Despicable Me." I had done this with students at Lowell on the Teen Grid and it was a great way to show spatial reasoning and a mastery of building with the prims. (primitive shapes) They learn to move object on an X, Y, and Z axis. (See video below)

Shape and Form: The SMART Way!

Students in Mr. Ortega's 1st and 2nd grade class participated during the demo portion of today's lesson about shape and form which was presented on the SMART Board. After that, each of the students went to laptops in the art room where they used the interactive notebook files to test themselves by sorting the forms from the shapes. It does tend to get a bit noisy when learning is going on! (see noisy video below)

Intro to Tux Paint

Normally this class is too large to use the 18 computers I have in my art room. Today I got to take 1st and 2nd graders separately so all students got to explore the program Tux Paint. It is an open source (Free!!) piece of software and is comparable to the old Kid Pix in many ways. Students should always have at least two class periods for pure exploration before moving towards what most people call projects. This is true of most mediums even software. (See video below)

My New Art Room @ Herrera School

This was the first time I had a proper sink in my art room! I had more storage space than I'd ever had before. Ok, the tables were wobbly, but you can't have everything. It was a pretty great way to start my new job at Herrera Elementary. I begged for laptops and I made sure I got some. It was also the first time I had a SMART Board and it was amazing. I always had an overhead projector and at Holy Family I had a computer projector, so this was really state of the art equipment. (see Animoto below)