Using Google Slides to Create a Distance Learning Routine

Ok, maybe it's time to get back to the blog! I've been away for a while juggling full time art teacherin' and living life with my four kids, husband and myriad of pets.

Working from home has just started for me. I'm teaching Art to grades 6-8 art and monitoring the studies of my four children who range from elementary age to high school. I'm a bit overwhelmed, but keeping a semblance of a schedule is hopefully going to help.

In my art in-school class, students are greeted with a slide projected on the whiteboard telling them what they'll be learning today. I thought doing the same for my personal children would be nice--so out came the computer and Google Slides. I've been waking my children up and we have breakfast together at 8:00. We "meet" and go over the day's slide with the plan for the day.

An example of today's slide.
Google Slides makes it easy to create
a slide with images from the internet or your computer.

For my personal children I also have a second slide. This is more of a schedule to show major meetings and appointments that we all need to be aware of. I set this slide up on an ipad in the kitchen and the kids can walk by and "swipe up" to see the slide and check in. I probably check this far more than they do, but my littlest one has enjoyed it.

Slide 2: This is the slide that is displayed during the day
to keep us on track.

Do my children like this? Well, some are tolerating it (high schoolers), and others are pushing back on having a schedule at all (middle schooler!). But my elementary kiddo and I really like it. I cannot possibly keep track of everyone without some sort of schedule. Also, this isn't vacation--at least in my district. I'm still expected to work and my kids are expected to be doing work. It cannot be a free for all.

Will this work for you? Maybe. Maybe not. But I will tell you that this is a HUGE transition and if I can create a sense of normalcy during this time, I will. Keep it simple. This is what I know. If you know someone who home schools already, reach out--home schoolers, we need you! Or find a trusted friend and ask what they are doing. Stay away from the negative people and the ones who say they aren't having their kiddos do anything--that's not going to help you feel any better or come up with solutions for how to work through this time.

Be kind to yourself.
Your house will get messy.
You will feel overwhelmed.
You may get frustrated at times.
You won't always stick to the schedule (especially if you are in the zone having fun or working on a project).

I hope you find this helpful. Please share how YOU manage work and kiddos at home to keep everyone on track--I'd love to hear from you!

Viewing and Writing About Art: A Language Arts Formative Assessment For All!

I'm so excited to share this neat writing/language arts activity I learned about at a recent conference! I really think it has TONS of great uses! 

I'd like to thank Robin Perringer, art teacher at Nashua High School, for sharing this with me. She uses this with her high school students as a formative assessment--she mentioned she uses this in her ceramics class, but says you can use this with any of your students at any age level or with work they've created themselves or work by someone else (famous or not).

NOTE: Do not tell your students they will be writing poetry! :-) My experience has been that a scant few will be excited, but many will either go pale with shock and start stressing right away or exclaim "no!" and refuse to create a "silly" (or whatever creative adjective they can think of) poem! ;-) Once they are done, the students are always so blown away by the awesome writing they've done.

Georgia O'Keefe, Cow's Skull with Calico Roses, 1931

Here's how it works:

1. Have your students look at a piece of artwork. This can be a piece they've finished (or think they've finished), someone else's work in the class, or a famous work of art.

2. Have your students create the following:

• Line 1: A creative name for the piece
• Line 2: An action phrase based on what you see
• Line 3: A simile or metaphor that describes the place/location/character or object
• Line 4: Another title, but simpler

And there you have it--an awesome "poem" and a sneaky way to check your student's understanding and get them thinking and talking about art!

Here's an example using an image by Georgia O'Keefe...

Smooth Porcelain Petals

Clutching, Hanging, Captured

Cold, like the dessert night.

Bone White.

I'm definitely putting this in my toolbox for future classes! ENJOY!

Positive-ly ME Collage

I'm currently taking a course at Plymouth State University on teaching art to high school students. It's been so awesome! One thing we've need to do was create a curriculum for an Intro to Art course (also called Visual Studies or Art 1). 

Here's an art idea that could be used for a variety of age levels to teach about Positive and Negative Space. It's my spin on a positive/negative space lesson I saw online. With my lesson, students think of a pose, an object, or a symbol that best represent them, sketches it as a silhouette, and fills in the negative space around the silhouette with images and text from magazines or personal photos that are unique to them (i.e. that tell the viewer who they are). It was fun to do and pretty quick. Here's my example:

I originally saw this project on TeacherPayTeachers, designed by Melissa Woodland. She designed it as a negative space social issue collage. What a great idea! I purchased her lesson and it is nicely thought out with great resources and skill-building activities included. Her lesson focuses on the art or Kara Walker, a contemporary silhouette artist who uses silhouettes to address social issues of race, slavery, and sexuality. Melissa Woodland's lesson has students watch a PBS video on Woodland and has a wonderful handout for students about the film. Woodland also includes a rubric for the lesson and three clear images of finished products to get you and your students started. This would be a wonderful project to link with history class and get students checking out the resources that the library offers (to collect newspaper and magazine articles as well as images related to their social issue).

On a personal note, I felt that Walker's art was a bit too edgy for me to be introducing to students, so I substituted local (to me) contemporary silhouette artist Randal Thurston. He is using silhouettes in his work and his work is thought-provoking and technically exquisite. He doesn't have images on his website, but you can google his images and contact him for more info about his work (I did and he sent me TONS of images of his work as well as info about the collections--wonderful!).

Another fabulous resource for silhouettes to get your students thinking can be found online at Art Inspired with a lesson written by Tricia Fuglestad, an art teacher at Dryden Elementary School is Illinois. She has her students create silhouettes of their bodies in front of a green screen and create posters reminiscent of iPad ads from awhile back. She links her lesson to the viral iRaq posters that appeared online and in Los Angeles. Seriously cool (and it links art with technology!).

So many possibilities! I hope you try this with your students--and if you do, email me some picts and I'll post them here. ENJOY!

American Masters Shrink Art Bracelet

I am SO thrilled with this project! I have been trying to think of some ways to create a project where children could create a series of mini masterpieces after famous artists and then put them all together as one project at the end. My take on this: the Mini Masters Shrink Art Bracelet! A great project for a survey of art history! You could focus on whatever type of art history you'd like, or create a series of panels focusing on one artist.

In this project, I took 1 1/2" x 1 3/4" pieces of shrink art film (plastic) and created a series of mini masterpieces patterned after famous American artists. I had originally created WAY too many, but the final bracelet has 8 panels to fit my wrist. This is a lovely way to introduce students to basic jewelry making skills as well.

These are the tiles after shrinking, but before I linked them with the jump rings.
Can you name all of the artists? The first one is tricky since it is so dark,
it's a heart like Jim Dine...

The finished bracelet, all linked together. Some of the panels (above)
didn't make it since I only needed 8 for my wrist.

I'll be making a version of these with my Middle School students after school on February 8th. I'll post detailed instructions and their versions after that.

Enjoy!

It's a DRAG! Abstract Painting

Here's a quick abstract painting that your middle-schooler can do in minutes. It's pretty addicting, so make sure you have a couple canvases on hand and do one yourself!

It's a DRAG! Abstract Painting

Supplies Needed:

• Canvas board (canvas stretched over cardboard--you can get multi-packs at the craft store), we used 9" x 12"
• Acrylic paints in tubes
• Corrugated cardboard scraps

Directions:

1. Squeeze some of the acrylic paint onto one edge of the canvas. you'll need a good blob of a couple of colors.

2. Use the flat edge of a cardboard scrap as a squeegie to drag the paint across the canvas. Once you've dragged the paint one way, add more acrylic paint to another edge of the canvas and repeat, dragging toward the opposite edge. It helps if you don't press too hard while you are dragging the cardboard across the canvas--you'll just scrape all the paint off! Use the squeegie lightly to move the paint like you are frosting a cake. Add more blobs of paint and squeegie away, until you get a composition you like.

3. Let the piece dry. At this point, you can be done OR, once the first layers have dried, you can repeat the process again to make the painting more multi-layered. Ta-da! Modern Art!