WAEA Southwest Student Art Show

It’s that time again! Time for the WAEA Southwest Student Art Show. It is held at the Hilldale mall. Work goes up on February, Saturday 2nd and will stay up until the closing reception on Sunday, February 10th (12pm-2pm). Go check it out during mall hours! (Monday – Saturday 10am-9pm and Sunday 11a-6pm)

The show is special to me because I was chosen for this show in second grade and that is when I decided to be an art teacher. I am so excited to be choosing my own students to be a part of this show!

The following Randall students were chosen:

Annie

Otto

Zola

Carson

Danielle

Sydney

Isaac

James

Ella

Aviva

Lianna

Talia

Dana

Haifan

First Free Choice Open Studio (of the school year)

Perspective with Snowmen

Each of my three classes at Huegel are very different from each other and have very different needs. But, as someone who is only there three hours a week, it is hard to differentiate my lessons to meet all of those needs. This is why I liked this lesson so much, all the same materials but meeting different needs and learning around one subject in many different ways.

Let’s start with what each of these three lessons has in common: snowmen, perspective, oil pastels, sharpie and watercolor with salt.

The first group of snowmen is from a second grade class who is able to listen and learn without much behavior difficulty. This class learned about perspective by learning about the horizon line, foreground and background.

The second group has some difficulty with paying attention for longer periods of time so short lesson on perspective is what was needed. This group drew snowmen from the perspective of laying on the ground.

The third group is a third grade group and learned about perspective as well as overlapping and drawing off the page.

Baskets

Ms. Mincberg came to me and asked if I would create a lesson to enhance her social studies unit about learning about different cultures. I was going to do basket making in the spring but moved it to the fall to enhance this unit. Baskets are so important to so many different cultures for so many different reasons.

First we learned about sweet grass baskets from Sierra Leone and their history from Sierra Leone through slavery and into our current southern culture today. We also learned about the Navajo and how baskets carry stories with them. We looked at the Hmong culture and various European cultures to see how baskets are used in other cultures as well.

As far as techniques for making baskets, there is the coil technique and the weaving technique. There are many variations and styles on both of them but every basket comes down to those two basic techniques. Some students finished their coil baskets (made of yarn and clothesline) early and either made more or tried to make a woven basket with magazines and glue.

When I began this project, I had no idea what I started! So many students loved this project, that I lost over 50 plastic needles in the course of a month because they would take home more materials and ‘borrow’ needles to work at home. I’m pretty sure coil baskets ended up being a popular holiday gift in the Randall community!

There is a huge component to this lesson that I did not plan for and photos can not capture and that is how much persistence and patience Randall fourth graders showed through this lesson. The beginning of the coil baskets is not an easy thing for fourth graders. We discussed, at length, what persistence and patience means not just in basket making but in test taking and school work. It was really amazing to watch my students grow and learn through the creation of baskets. Sometimes, the lesson is better written by my students than me.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Both Huegel second and third graders as well as Randall fourth graders created these beautiful stained glass windows inspired by nature just like Frank Lloyd Wright. We started with observational drawings of items from nature and then abstracted them into geometric shapes to create our symmetrical windows using line symmetry.

Georgia O’Keeffe

This is one of my favorite fourth grade lessons. It is my fourth year teaching this lesson and the results only get better every year. We start with observational drawings and end with watercolors. The best part of this lesson is letting kids get to experiment with so many different watercolor techniques.

Andy

This is what Andy Warhol is famous for. But most of us never learn about what he begin with which is his blotted line drawings. He was a graphic commercial artist who drew shoes for magazines and weather graphics for the news!

Sometimes, he came up with silly sayings for his shoes as well. We began by drawing our shoes using observational drawing skills.

Then we used wax paper to transfer the image to another sheet of paper with india ink.

And each artist chose to leave their image black and white, add watercolor, patterns or add a silly saying.

Wayne Thiebaud: update

This is an update from a previous post. Randall 5th graders finally all glazed their cakes! Well, most of them. I think I have 10 more sitting in the art room waiting to be finished. Most of them don’t have names on them. Many of them are still in the kiln because I started in the kiln the Wednesday before break. Then we had our two snow days so they are now just sitting there, finished, with no one to take them home until January. But they are beautiful and Randall 5th graders spent a lot of time thinking about details like texture and color and how to represent a flavor through clay.

 

Mandalas: Rotational Symmetry

I saw this lesson many places around the web but I first saw it at the art ed blog Splish Splash Splatter. Huegel third graders were learning about line symmetry in math class. Rotational symmetry comes up next and the second graders were just getting a head of the curve. I always hope that when I teach a concept earlier than their classroom teachers teach it, that when they see it in the classroom it makes more sense to them. We are all a team to support our students’ success! (Sometimes the art teachers are a forgotten part of that team).

Anyway, this was a lesson where every kid felt successful AND a lesson where their math concepts were being reinforced. I call that a win-win!

Some students choose to create one mandala and glue that on their background paper. Some students finished early and decided to create a second, larger mandala to attach to the back of their first smaller mandala with a brad. Their mandalas are now moveable art, they spin!

So many new things..

I am so behind. I’ll just start with that. My last post was November 12th. The art rooms at Randall and Huegel has been so busy since then! First of all, as a reminder, I am not an art teacher at Gompers anymore. I now teach art 10% at Huegel Elementary to three second and third grade classes in addition to the 15 classes at Randall to third, fourth and fifth graders and the 20% Positive Behavior Support position at Randall. Yikes! It’s a busy year! It’s about to get busier.

But before it gets busier, it was nice to take a few snow days to be silly and have fun. I made snowmen, climbed huge snow piles on the square and went sledding down the Capitol steps. Yep, Madison got so much snow that it covered the steps at the Capitol enough to make some really great sledding hills. I bet I wasn’t alone. How did you enjoy your snow days?

Randall was accepted in the Arts Education Initiative program through the Kennedy Center and Overture. Three of our classrooms will be learning their classroom curriculum through the arts! This is very exciting. Here is a video of what it looks like to integrate art with the classroom curriculum so our students are learning in a richer and deeper more genuine way. The teachers involved and our artist will be going through a training the beginning of January and more information about this amazing experience will follow! (This will be happening around April).

The second awesome thing going on at Randall is Ms. B and I, the new Randall music teacher, have gotten together with my friend Kevin who has been in my classroom before. We have looked at the common core math and literacy standards along with our own art and music standards to create a jazz unit for our third, fourth and fifth graders. This will be happening through out the end of January into February!

Outside school, things are about to get busier as well. We have THREE school board seats open this year. Elections are April but the work on the campaigns will start very soon. Three out of seven of our school board seats will be new people. This is a huge deal and will have a HUGE affect on our Madison education community. Keep your eyes and ears open!

Personally, I just found out I was accepted in the the Emerge Wisconsin program. Emerge is a program which trains Democratic women to run for office. I will have an entire weekend a month for the next seven months to dedicate to the Emerge trainings. It’s exciting!

So there it is, the update. Next, I will get caught up on telling you all about the wonderful lessons that have been going on in the art rooms!