Shapes: Geometric or Organic

I have been catching up on my blog reading this morning. I have been reading Kids Artists for a long time because they have great ideas! As Jacquelien says in her blog header, she has "school tested lessons" in her posts and they are wonderful!

This morning she has a lesson about Geometric and Organic shapes. I really liked the way she defines these shapes so that her kids can understand. Heck, I understand them even better after reading her post. I always wondered about those cloud shapes . . . . Thank You Jacquelien for all of the art lessons you post. I always enjoy them!

Fun Friday

Last Friday my kids didn't have school since conferences were Tue/Thur, so my daughter asked to come with me to work. I still had kids because my district started much later and our conferences are in October.
So we planned a couple fun things to do together with my students.
Our favorite was an idea I saw at Bluemoon Palette for practicing drawing shapes.
So the class before we practiced drawing shapes, counting sides and corners for all types of designs. I was pleasantly surprised how many names of shapes these 1st graders knew! We made everything squares, rectangles, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, trapezoid, rhombus, diamond, triangle, circles and ellipse. I drew them on the ELMO and they drew them on their papers, counting corners and sides as we go.

Finally on Friday my daughter and I handed out about 10 toothpicks, and a small handful of mini marshmallows so they can make the shapes with them this time. Of course they loved it. I just let them experiment this time and make what ever shape they could with the toothpicks they had. They came up with all kinds. I was so happy with how well they did, I will definitely do this again.
Some kids went 3D and made cubes and pyramids check out my photos.

School Opening

Well I thought September 7th would never get here. But it finally came and we have been in school 10 days now. There are lots of great things about our refurbished building, an-n-nd there are not so great things. But no matter how small the cabinets and counters are, or the lack of book shelves storage, or no bulletin boards and tack strips that don't work. . . . I am just glad to not be unpacking boxes!

I like to start with some kind of name or initial project so I can start learning who's who. Everyone from Kinder to 4th grade do some line, shape and pattern design on their particular assignment. Here are two kindergarten examples. I make the letters by hand or this time on the computer and have them copied and ready for line designs.

Third grade made the name pennants with all of their own lettering. This was a challenge to make all of the letters fill the space vertically and still have room across horizontally. But they really worked hard and we had some great results!

Fourth grade made initials inside a circle about 8.5 inches in diameter. Pictures to come soon.

Next we start our Native American inspired art. I have been making short PowerPoint's of Native American homes, blanket designs, George Catlin, and more to inspire us. My classes are only 35 minutes, but I have them every other day. So I will be able to discuss and set the stage for a project one day and the next class start in on the "creating" after a quick demo. I think it will work great, I just have to keep an eye on the clock since I used to have 45-60 minutes for a class. ;)

Well that's it for now I promise to post more now that we are up and running. I have to show you my sad storage and boring walls of the art room. :P Sounds like fun huh?