Extra Yard for Teachers Summit

In January I was fortunate to be able to attend The College Football Foundation's Extra Yard for Teachers Summit in Dallas. The keynote speaker, Dr. Condolezza Rice, spoke to a packed crowd of teachers about the importance of education and what an important role we play in our community. There were many great speakers, musicians, and artists. Below is a painting that was created on stage in about twenty minutes. Amazing! You can watch videos of all of the speakers here.

 



 

 

 

 

 



Grand Prairie ISD Experience

Our district is an open choice district where families and students can apply for a school of their choice. To showcase different options within our district, they hold Grand Prairie ISD Experience each year. As a part of the experience, each school was able to show one piece of student artwork. Below is work that one of my fifth graders created. He drew the landscape and painted it with colors he mixed himself. He added baking soda to the white tempera paint to add texture and a more realistic look to the snow scene.

Noun Neighborhhood

This is a lesson I always did when I taught first grade. Now that I'm in art, I extended it to a collaborative project for Kinder through Third Grade. Each student drew their favorite restaurant, their favorite store, and their home. They created roads, grass, trees, clouds, and various vehicles. After all classes had a chance to do this, they worked over the next few weeks to create a giant collage mural out of them. Once completed, their art project covered almost half of our back hallway which is pretty long. As they worked, we talked about what nouns were and how each thing they were creating was a noun. We talked about the role of different parts of a community to tie in Social Studies.

Empty Bowls Project

In December, my fourth and fifth graders made various small bowls made out of air-dry clay to sell for our district's Empty Bowls Project. The money raised from the sale of the bowls goes to a local charity that services our community's families. We sold the bowls on our campus and raised a few hundred dollars for the cause. Hopefully next year, we do even more! (Sorry, I don't have any pictures of the finished projects.)

 

Door Decorating Contest

Our school had a holiday door decorating contest during December. This was my contribution to the art room door. I created a giant gingerbread house with various pieces of candy and a friendly gingerbread man.

Kindergarten Thumbprint Holiday Lights

Kindergarten practiced making wavy lines with permanent black markers. After making their lines, they added holiday lights with their thumbprints.

First Grade Overlapping Candy Canes

First Grade needed some practice back in December on how to draw objects in front of others. So, they practiced by drawing overlapping candy canes. They could make them whatever size and add whatever color patterns they wanted.

Fifth Grade Birch Trees

To experiment with color mixing and tape resist, the fifth grade students created birch trees. They first added three strips of painters tape to white construction paper. They then started with blue tempera paint and painted the middle section of the paper horizontally. They then added white to create a tint for the lower third of the paper. They added black to the blue tempera paint to create a darker shade for the top third. They then pulled off the tape to reveal the white. They added small details in blue to the birch trees to show texture.

Catching Snow in Fourth Grade

Fourth Grade students performed "Show Me The Snow" for their music program this year. To go along with this and some previous lessons on viewpoints, they drew various shapes such as half circles, circles, and rectangles and pieced them together to make a person looking up to catch a snowflake. They added details such as hair to make it more like them.

Third Grade Snowmen

We obviously went with a snowman theme in the younger grades during winter. For this lesson, I asked the third graders to take turns laying on the ground while others stood around them. We talked about how the view of their friends is different than if they are sitting or standing next to them. They then pretended that they were laying in snow somewhere and magical snowmen came to life and surrounded them. Using the corners of their square paper as reference starting points, they students created four snowmen with different details to show that perspective. They used oil pastels for their creations.

Second Grade Snowmen

Second Graders also created snowmen but they created them by cutting paper. They traced various sized bowls for the body and head. They cut rectangles shapes for a scarf. They added various stripes and details to the scarves in a pattern. They also drew a triangle shape for a carrot nose. Before gluing it down, they positioned it in various locations to make the snowman appear that he was looking in different directions. We talked about how there was no need for eyes because if you pointed the nose upward, it makes the snowman appear as if its looking up.

First Grade Snowmen

I asked First Graders what a snowman would look like if they tilted their head to the left or to the right to begin a discussion on perspective. After the discussion, the students drew a snowman from one of the corners at an angle to show that perspective. They colored their snowmen with oil pastels and added various details such as scarves, mittens, hats, etc.

Kiindergarten Snowmen

Kindergarten practiced fine motor skills by tracing circles of various sizes, cutting them out, and then arranging them however they chose to make it look like the snowman was looking up at the sky. Some of the kids chose to use four or five circles, some chose three, and some chose to use just two. They all turned out cute!

 

Holiday Collaborative Projects

During December, since we had a short month, my students mostly worked on collaborative projects. These are some Christmas trees that they made out of tomato cages, mesh fabric, and zip ties. Once I modeled for them how to get started, they were able to easily complete these on their own. We decorated the stage with them and in front of the library. 4th Grade also used them for their holiday PTA program. Included is a picture of a sign the students and I made for their show using the school's poster maker, some die-cuts, scissors, and glue.

Catch Up!

I have taken a break from blogging, with the exception of one post, since November. But, I have some unexpected free time today and some ideas I'd like to share. So, you will soon see an influx of posts dating back from the winter months through now.

Lost Marbles Balancing Equations

Although I teach visual arts now, I still create some general education materials by request. I was recently asked to come up with a math station activity for finding balanced equations. So, I came up with the concept of Lost Marbles. This “print and go” set of balanced equation problems for students to solve are a quick, low prep addition to math stations. Students add the two colors of marbles in the first jar to find the sum and use that sum to find the missing addend in the second jar to equal the same sum. Students can use manipulatives such as marbles, two-color counters, or beans to find the missing addend. The set includes sums from 4 to 10 and a blackline master to use for creating additional problems. Two versions of recording sheets are included for accountability. You can download the file from my TpT store.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from Moseley Elementary! Each student from Pre-Kindergarten through Fifth Grade designed a turkey feather using only lines and/or patterns. Their feathers were then assembled as grade level collaborative turkeys. I love how unique each feather is and yet they complement each other.

Moseley House Sign

A few fourth graders helped paint a Moseley sign for our hallway when they completed other projects early. The final product looks really good underneath our House Point posters. Each letter in the sign correlates to a House we have at our school. Each House in our school stands for a certain character trait and we meet regularly in House Meetings to learn more about each other, learn ways to display good character, and more. The students can also earn House Points for a friendly competition based on things like attendance, grades, and behavior.

Collaborative Fall Collage

Fifth Grade painted paper in various fall water colors a while back while working on their Fall Mosaics. There were quite a few pieces left over so all of the grades worked together to create a fall collage. The students worked in partners and small groups to glue the extra pieces on white construction paper. They worked on overlapping the pieces until no white showed. Once their piece was complete, it was joined with another completed piece until they were all connected. The end result is just a little bit smaller than a bulletin board and I love it!

Art and Poetry

I recently attended a training given by my Fine Arts supervisor, Mrs. Judy Nunneley. In the class we cut out various words from magazines and newspapers and then were challenged to come up with an autobiographical poem with the words. This was both challenging and engaging. I plan on using this with my fifth graders during the second semester. Here is my final poem: