Creating with the Kids

The art room has been a busy place this summer. I've been doing some tutoring and various kids have been in and out for lessons in reading and painting.

I have a few photos to share about the paintings.

These 3 girls were here on some of the days together and were able to paint in the mornings until lunchtime. It has been a great incentive to get the reading lessons done first so that we have time for painting too!

Here are some, but not all of the canvases that have been worked on by my students in the last 7 or 8 weeks.    We will finish up the week after next and I'll have to start getting the room ready again for regular classes to start again at the end of August.  It has been a joy having so many kids come in and design their own compositions.  Most often we used canvases that were 16 x 20.  It has been an ideal size to finish in 2 to 3 sessions.  They love painting in the changeable background colors.  Then I encourage them to do drawings on plain white paper to be collaged onto the canvas.  Often they also work back into the collage pieces using oil crayons and it blends right into the painted background.  The acrylic medium we were using was the mod podge in a matte finish.  It worked super well for the gluing and the final varnish. 

The twins with their paintings about the Amazon River

I hope to add another post about our summer painting sessions in a couple of weeks.  I need to have the camera along at the right time!

Anna with her nature painting

We'll have about a week or two to continue playing around and then I will need to give the art room a thorough cleaning in time for school to start in the last week of August.  I believe we have an open house somewhere around August 25th.  I've got a couple of canvases started too, and there is always more to add to my classroom door.  It's an ongoing project and it would be nice to call it finished. 

4 Seasons

I may use these seasonal pieces of work in some collages that I plan on doing. I'd like to incorporate them as part of the background with a series of portraits that I'd like to paint.

Originally these were trading card sized pieces of art, so they were very small at 2 1/2 inches x 3 1/2 inches. At one time I did have the summer piece printed into some notecards.

Four Seasons

Here's a fun photo effect I found on the website Photofunia. I entered a photo of a drawing that I had on my desk from this school year and this is how it looks on the pastel easel.

My Summer Plans at School

During the school year it has been very rewarding to work with so many different sections for art instruction. Our largest homerooms were even divided into half sized groups. It became necessary to do this for the children to have computer class. There wouldn't have been enough computers to seat the entire class in the lab. It was just as easy to have them in smaller groups for art too. I was able to give so much more individual attention to my 5th and 6th graders.



Each year I've also had the responsibility of teaching reading and language arts, and spelling to special needs students. Over the years I have had several students come to me for these special lessons. This last year I worked with 2 autistic boys. Most of the time they received separate instruction as one would come in for 40 minutes and the other would follow for the next 40 minutes. Usually on Wednesdays we had our lesson together and it worked out very well. Much to the surprise of myself and other staff members, I think it was beneficial to the boys to help them with social skills and interaction. They developed some skills at asking and answering questions when we played some question games. They had a good time swatting spelling word cards for learning their weekly lists. It was just awesome to see them take turns with reading from leveled readers and they actually followed along and were ready to take over when it was their turn to read. I was so pleased with how the year went.



Now that summer is here I look forward to seeing my very special friend for her reading and language lessons. Anna is such a delightful young girl. She cracks me up most of the time and keeps me very happy. Her challenge is that she is a young girl with Down Syndrome. She was a student at our school for grades 1 - 6. Last year was her final year of being enrolled with us. She has had 1 year of homeschooling for her 7th grade year. I will meet with her and her mom this coming Monday. So I've been gathering up some books and a journal for our first lesson. Her mother clued me into the fact that she had a hard time motivating her to do reading orally, so I am expecting some resistance. I hope I will be able to offer drawing and art activities as a reward for getting back to her doing the reading and writing in a journal. Last year she had so much fun making little quilts so perhaps we can do more of that this summer.


I am anticipating a good start with a brand new student this summer as well. Her first day with me will be on Wednesday. I understand that she is a talented artist and reads 2 grade levels beyond her classmates. She is a 3rd grader and has been challenged with Aspergers syndrome. I hope to get her involved with making collages of her very interesting drawings. I think we will be sealing them onto a hand painted canvas. I hope to hit it off well with her for our first meeting. I think we'll be concentrating on the art with a little work on the reading. I plan to get some of my materials at the website called Reading A- Z.

Assembly of our Butterfly Mural

I wanted to share with you more details about our mural process with Kathy Barbro's butterfly mural.

The children arrived in homeroom groups and I had a total of 6 groups. I estimate that there were about 125 children. Adding the color went very well. We used Crayola oil crayons this time. They worked fine and blended into the card stock just fine. I do prefer the Portfolio oil crayons for their ease of use. They are so much softer and creamier. However, being the end of the year our gold wrapped ones were in short supply.

Because the children were at the mural station for only 25 minutes the time went by rapidly. I gave each group a little run down of what we were doing and had specific goals in mind on which each group could focus. For example, the first group worked with just warm colors and did spots of the butterfly. The second group also did warm colors for the spots on the panels that hadn't been started yet. By the time the third group got there, we were ready for the introduction of the areas between the spots. For that we tried to blend in just cool colors. At this time we talked about doing the outline and the segmented body with a blend of the cool colors and touches of black to create a shade. By the fifth and sixth group, we were ready to do the fingerprinting and small swirls or spiral shapes in the background. I tried to encourage the children to use the hues of the color wheel, rather than neutrals for the background. I had to say "Avoid black brown and gray!!!" a few times.

Organizing was important to do between the groups. We put away the oil crayons before the next group entered and to stack all the like pieces of the butterfly into 3 piles. We collected the panels that were completely wings, partial backgrounds with wings, and only background. That worked well so that I could hand out the sheets for more oil crayon or marker work.

I wish I had thought to take photos of us while we were involved. Sadly, I was much too into the process and only thought of it after we were all done for the day. Next time a mural is on schedule, I will have the camera in my hand! I really liked the switch to the softer print from coloring fingertips with marker ink and stamping them on the white negative space. The band instructor commented that it already was starting to look like Seurat's work! I don't know how I really feel about the swirls though. That may get a little out of control when everyone's idea of a swirl is a bit different and more importantly the size is a bit harder to regulate.

Children in the last group helped lay out the panels in the correct numerical order. We all were delighted to see the image come together.

After the children were gone I trimmed up two edges with the rotary paper cutter. I was careful to align it with the dotted marks. Next I used Tacky Glue to assemble a row at a time, then lastly I joined the rows.

I guess I prefer the glue to masking tape so that it stays together for more than one display. I also thought that it might be easier to line up the design with the art facing right side up.

Lastly, as a museum touch, I painted the outer border with a gold acrylic. Voila, a beautiful garden butterfly!

Butterfly Mural

My students recently worked on our own version of this butterfly mural. Shown above is Kathy Barbro's sample butterfly for her mural. This is the second mural we have ordered from her wonderful blog. For just 5 dollars and some oil crayons and a bit of marker ink, our school was able to create a lovely and quite large masterpiece. I will be proud to hang it up in the hall for the start of next school year.

I have been wanting the chance to do another mural with my students anyway and this was the perfect opportunity. I ordered up one of Kathy Barbro's murals. I opted to have us work on the large butterfly. I realize that earlier I wrote that we'd do Seurat's Sunday Afternoon, but I think we need a bit more practice before we attempt it in the way I have planned. I saw the open background in the butterfly and right away I knew it would be the perfect place to practice enlarged pointillism.

I was able to use the help of everyone in grade 3 - 5 this time. Our 6th graders were already dismissed for the summer, so they were not involved in our last day of school activities.

With rain in the forecast for our last day of school the teachers voted to have our field day of games indoors this year. It worked out well. No one had to get wet walking over to a neighboring school and we didn't have to dash indoors if we were out on the playground or the grass and a downpour occurred. Additionally, we saved the money on hiring buses.

Various different stations of games and activities were set up in classrooms and throughout other areas of the school. A schedule of rotation for the groups was quickly drafted up and we were having a very smooth and fun 3 hours. The children were excused before lunch and their vacation began.

Tomorrow I will write more about our methods and have some photos as I piece the mural together.

Developing a Personal Art Series for a Portfolio

The basic idea of this ongoing series of art is to show growth and development in drawing and composition skills over a period of several years in elementary school.

My colleague and I have been involved in collecting a piece of art work from each child and compiling it until the end of 6th grade. Each student should include the following subjects in his or her art: plants, animals, buildings, vehicles, and people. They may find it more exciting to set the scene either indoors, or out. It can take place in a specific place or an imaginary place. The young artists start out drawing in #2 pencils.

We keep the drawings simple in 1st and 2nd grades by not coloring them. It is easier to see the forms and the students have more time to add details, without the complications of color.

By 3rd grade some students have time and patience to add the color and they really get finished as a full piece of art. We work in pencil first, go over the lines in permanent black marker and then use various colored material to finish the entire composition.

In 4th grade and above, I require each student to complete the personal art with more thought and planning about the subjects, to overlap the images, and to fully color or shade the images.

By the time we do this assignment in 5th and 6th grade the children often have a topic or idea in mind for the subject and are prepared to create. They can concentrate on the art skills needed to compose a full piece of art.