Multi-Grade 1-Day Goodbye Project

I just finished 6 1/2 weeks as a long-term substitute art teacher at Fairgrounds Elementary School in Nashua, NH. I had a blast sharing my own art with the children (printmaking, collage, and graphic design and illustration) and creating some winter/spring- and artist-inpired projects that related to the type of art I create. It was a whirlwind, but hopefully I will be able to post more about all of those fun projects soon!

I wanted to share this wonderful goodbye project I did with my kiddos on the last day. I had multiple classes who were done their work and had one class left with me. This project was a nice one since it allowed me to prep once for 5 classes or so and all the students from Kindergarten through grade 5 were able to contribute to it. For the youngins, I read the book "The Dot" by Peter Reynolds afterwards and told them that today (and for the last 6 weeks) they've made their mark all over Fairgrounds (I'm big into collaborative art which is evident in the bulletin board displays I left up all over the school) and in my life as an art teacher.

This project idea came from Jennifer Boral over at The Art of Education (check it out over at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXkqpmGZe88). Loved it and knew I had to try it. While I would have LOVED to do this project with all 500+ students, it just wasn't going to happen due to time constraints, etc. The finished piece is quirky and colorful and adds a bright pop of color as students go to music class and outside to recess.

ENJOY!

Cow Parade at Riddle Brook School!

I just finished my first student teaching placement--I was at Riddle Brook Elementary School in Bedford, NH. My cooperating teacher, Meagan Read, was super-wonderful--very supportive and a wealth of knowledge. Here's a quick one-day project that we were able to do as a finishing touch with the fourth grade classes (the other work will be coming soon, but I wanted to share these now).

Roy Lichtenstein-Inspired Cow
Mrs. Read and I made this cow as our sign for the entire parade
(tempera on paper).

We started off by looking at the book "Cow Parade New York" by Thomas Craughwell and by looking at a couple of mini cow statues I brought in. We then looked at a Powerpoint I had made about six or seven famous artists and a couple examples of their work. I explained that they were going to work together to create a cow inspired by one of the artists. The students were excited to begin and after a quick demo, they could begin working on their portion of the project. Sometimes they could work on their portion of the "Class Cow" at their tables, but other times I called up a table at a time to work on the "Class Cow" at teaching table. They came out so great and the students worked together so well. Prior to class, I had traced a really large cow onto butcher paper--these are about 3'x4' (so calf size). I would have LOVED to make them adult cow-sized, but that will have to be for the future.

When they weren't working on the class cow, they could work on their "personal cows" which were coloring sheets I printed out from the Cow Parade site. I know, you may be saying "coloring pages aren't for me." Yeah, I get it. If you don't want to utilize the resources on the Cow Parade site, that's cool, feel free to make up your own or have students draw their own cows.

This was a fun one day project for the students that inspired LOTS of creativity and discussion about art. I hope you try it! ENJOY!

Andy Warhol-Inspired Cow
(Students colored with markers on a photocopied photo of a cow).

James Rizzi-Inspired Cow
(Students drew symbols and shapes with oil pastels and then
painted them with tempera paint. The black outlines were redone
using the oil pastel once the paint had dried).

Wayne Thiebaud-Inspired Cow
(Each students was given a 6" square of paper and instructed on how to
use oil pastels to shade a sphere (a.k.a. a gumball).

Piet Mondrian-Inspired Cow
(Students took turns placing 1"x 24" strips of yellow horizontally
or vertically onto the cow. Once all of the students had contributed,
students could come back up and glue four 1" squares onto the yellow
strips anywhere they'd like.

Wassily Kandinsky-Inspired Cow
(The cow was divided into a grid. Each student could come up and
paint concentric circles in one of the grid spaces using tempera paint).