Painted Color Wheel Designs

Students showed mastery of color theory by painting color wheel designs. They got the primary colors, white, and black to create all 12 colors in the color wheel plus tints and shades of those colors. They used acrylic paint on heavy hot press watercolor paper. When done with great craftsmanship, these are artworks that make wonderful keepsakes. (See Animoto below)

Jr. High Zentangle Pattern Designs

Repetition, pattern, and texture have been components of artwork for decades and teachers have given various design assignments using them just as long. In the past few years, pattern has evolved into a cottage industry called "Zentangle." What I like about it is the complexity of some of the patterns which fit nicely into problem solving activities for students. They are more challenging and I certainly enjoy raising the bar when it comes to making kids think. I also love that there are so many wonderful online resources providing students with more choices than they could possibly imagine. (See Animoto below)

Artistopoly

Although Artopoly does exist, Artistopoly is geared as a fun way to work on visual recognition of famous masterworks and art styles. This is meant to be used on the Reaction Grid so it only existed virtually. I would give clues and the kids as avatars would run towards the correct section of the board. It was so much fun for everyone and they really showed visual recognition. (See Animotos below)

Salon Des Enfants 2012

Every spring, Phoenix Elementary art students exhibit at the Alwun House. I was lucky enough to teach a middle school elective geared towards creating finished pieces using methods chosen by me but using whatever subject matter they wanted. One of the techniques we all did was stippling. We watched a video called "Hero" on Vimeo which showed an artist stippling a portrait. (See Animoto below)

Finished Teddies

Students did not have very good scissor skills. Test pushing administrators do not understand how many hours of basic life skills they cut because they want classroom teachers to focus on testing. They did their best but some bears had to be fixed before they could be sewn. Some of the kids showed real patience in their stitching and I was very proud of that. Everyone loved the display! (See Animoto below)

3rd & 4th Grade Sewing Unit

Most third and fourth graders worked very hard to master stitching and applique work. Their bears are coming along nicely and even when stitches have to be redone, students have been taking it in stride. This not only teaches them patience, but also resilience. (See Animoto below)

Creative Stick Puppets

Fine motor skills are something we embed into the lessons and if we get a fun little object or drawing afterward, that is just icing on the cake. Skills embedded in this lesson were tracing shapes, cutting out shapes, gluing shapes to a stick, sorting colors and shapes of foam pieces, adding embellishments to the stick puppet, and using the stick puppets to interact with classmates. There were lots of directions to follow along with these basic skills and not all children are developmentally capable of all of the skills to complete the task successfully but adding embellishments usually can cover up for that fact. Everyone was successful in their own way and got a chance to practice skills not always taught in the classroom anymore. (See Animoto below)

Stippled Drawing Work

Students were introduced to the technique of stippling this week. I played the video Hero using the Vimeo website. It shows a teenage boy drawing a picture of his father using this drawing technique. We also looked at a Frayer model of the word and samples of stippled artwork using SMART Notebook & the document camera. Students completed a stippled value scale and worked on an exercise using a teapot as subject matter. After doing the exercise, students chose their own subject matter and drew a light sketch they can follow for their stippled drawing. I will add pictures to this Animoto as the students work. (See Animoto below)

Basic Sewing

Students experienced cooperation during this basic sewing unit because they had to help each other while tracing the bear template onto the felt. We did this because pins would have been difficult to force through the pattern. (See Animoto below)

Digital Color Theory

My color theory class not only had to learn how to mix tints, shades, secondary and intermediate colors using only primary colors, black and white, but they also had to transfer that knowledge to digital media. In the process they learned how to use Gimp layers, save to several formats, colorize using hue, saturation, and lightness sliders, and the rotation tool. (See Animoto below)