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Author: larasmith (Page 5 of 7)

Grade Five

April 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Throughout the semester, in my art class, we used pastels quite frequently. We often had to find a way to blend them as well or else we would get harsh streaks over our pictures. I had heard about people using this technique, but I had never tried it for myself. It makes sense that oil would blend out our pastels, but I always tried to press harder with the pastels rather than getting the extra ingredient.

Check out the art here!

Here are the materials:

  • Oil pastels of assorted colours
  • Watercolour or thicker paper
  • Q-Tips
  • Vegetable Oil

Before trying out this activity, I saw this sample on the website and decided that I would try to recreate it with more colours.

 

Their example.

I started off by drawing in the circle and then sprouting lines from it; almost like a sun.

I then used oil to blend out the lines like in the example above.

Blending out the green.
The final result!

Pros:

  • Really fun to do and teaches blending to students in a fun way. When I try to draw, I still do not know how to blend or shade. This is a really fun activity to learn since it lets you know how much pressure to put on the Q-Tip and it blends out easier than a pencil would.
  • Creates a new medium for people to work with. Instead of just pastels, or just paint, students can use pastels and colour like paint. This will make it easier to draw figures since you can draw with the crayon but shade and colour with the oil.

Cons:

  • You need to make sure there is enough oil on the Q-Tip, but not too much. If there wasn’t enough oil on the Q-Tip, the pastel wouldn’t blend and it was really hard to move the colours around. However, if you add too much oil onto the Q-Tip, then the oil seeps through the paper and you are left with stains that take away from the art.
  • If oil spills, it is really hard to clean up. If this were to be done in a younger class and the students’ spill, it would be really hard to clean since oil is really greasy. Although, this is also a risk teachers take when using pastels in a classroom.

In the end, I think I would use this activity in a classroom. It is simple enough to do and gives a whole new meaning to pastel art. In fact, I wish I knew this hack earlier in the semester so I would not have to ruin my pastels while I was blending.

Grade Four

April 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

This project is such a cute idea and can be used in many different ways! It can be used for stickers, of course, but when I was in grade 12, we made these for collages. In our collages we would add paper down first, and then we would put these stickers ontop since they were translucent. My art teacher at the time also had an assortment of magazines to choose from, so we could use whatever design we wanted.

@artteacherkim

How to make stickers using printed images! #stickers #artproject #artroom #teachersoftiktok #middleschool #artidea #howto #craft #tryit

♬ original sound – kartclass8823

Materials:

  • Black and white photo
  • Packing tape
  • Scissors
  • Container
  • Water

This activity is fun since it can be used in multiple different ways, it is also super fast. All you need to do is find photos you like, this works really well with magazines but printed photos work just as well. Once you have selected the photo, cover it in packing tape and smooth it down so there are no bubbles (this will create gaps in your sticker). Then cut out your paper so you are just left with the design.

Afterwards, fill up your container with water and place your taped design inside. This will make it easier for the paper to come off later.

My design sitting in the water.

When the paper starts to peel off the back, use your fingers to feel it off gently.

Once you’ve pealed the sticker your done!

Pros:

  • Really easy activity if you need something extra to do in an art class. Have all the students taking turns picking photos from magazines and off the internet to make a sticker from.

Cons

  • Doesn’t work well with coloured ink from the printer. I tried making a blue butterfly before I made the sticker in the pictures. The blue peeled off with the paper.
  • After you have peeled off the paper, there are still litte fibers stuck to it. This would not be too much of a problem if the sticker wasn’t see through. It makes the sticker look dusty.

In the end, I would make this project with a class. The stickers are really cool and the kids will all be amazed when the activity works out, I know I was when I first saw it. This activity is quick and simple and elevates an art piece to the next level. This activity would be good to teach line and movement since you do not need colour and you can print off a good example piece.

Grade Three

April 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

This grades activity is really exciting, but I am a little dissapointed in how it turned out. Since it was recently Easter, I decided to take on an Easter craft and make these wax resist eggs. Here’s the TikTok that inspired me:

@artteacherkim

Easter Activity and goodbye cart! #easter #eastercraft #easteregg #artteacher #artroom

♬ original sound – kartclass8823

To make the wax resist eggs, I used:

  • Watercolour paper
  • Watercolour paint
  • White and black crayon
  • Paintbrush
  • Optional: a white or black pastel

All of the drawing in this project is done in crayon. Since the crayon is made of wax, the watercolour avoids is leaving white in the space it was drawn on. I started off by drawing the outline of the egg in black crayon and then added in some details with the white crayon. The white details are considered “invsible”, and should show up when the paint is on it!

My egg outline with invisible details.

Afterwards, I took my watercolour paints and drew stripes all over the surface. This helped expose the white lines!

Me revealing the secret designs on my egg!
The end product!

Pros of the activity:

  • Easy enough to do with very little clean-up. Crayons are easy for children to use and watercolour paints come out of tables with more water.
  • Really cool to see the design appear out of no where!
  • Allows students to learn shapes, colours, line, movement, etc.

Cons:

  • I’m a little disappointed in my final piece. you can see the design, but it looks muted compared to the version in the video. Maybe my paints weren’t diluted enough so they topped the crayon.
  • I used pastels instead of crayons. When the art was not turning out as I had hoped, I tried to use oil pastels and see if they worked. They worked better but I had used them with other colours in the past and you could see it in the white making them no longer invisible.

I don’t know whether I would use this project in my classroom. At the moment, I would say no. If I could not get the white vibrant enough, I doubt a child in grade three could. It it a fun idea and concept but until I can get it to work, I do not want to use it in my classroom.

Grade Two

April 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

As an art project for grade two, I have decided to make scratch art! This is super exciting since I used to play with scratch art paper all the time when I was younger. What makes this more exciting than then, is that it is 100% made by me. For this assignment, I was inspired by this TikTok video:

@m_lowe_artroom

DIY Scratch Art (and more Keith Haring inspired art)! #art #artteacher #moodboost #happyathome #fyp #foryou #teachersoftiktok

♬ Lisztomania – Classixx Version – Phoenix

For this project, I used the following materials:

  • Watercolour paper
  • Black Paint (I used acrylic)
  • Dish soap
  • Multi-coloured Crayons
  • A paintbrush
  • A toothpick or skewer

As I’ve mentioned before, this activity was a lot of fun to do. I was able to choose the colours of the background and create a fun design.

My design before I painted the black on top!

I was really worried when I was painting over all of the crayons with black paint, I thought it would stick onto the crayon. But it didn’t and I managed to scratch it off. The scratching was smooth, although sometimes chunks wouldn’t come off, I just retraced the lines and the line turned out sharp and smooth.

My final result!

Some pros of this activity are:

  • Lots of fun to complete! Students will have a fun time designing the background colour and have just as much fun scraping off the black paint. It was so satisfying I almost found it hard to stop!
  • Easy to complete and not much mess. Of course with paint, there is some mess to be expected. However, with this activity, I didn’t find the paint getting everywhere. I am also not in grade two, so it might depend on the students in the class.
  • Smells better than regular paint. Since you need to mix the dish soap with the black paint, my room did not have the strong paint smell it typically gets when I paint. Instead, it smelled like dish soap!

 

Cons:

  • Instructions were unclear as to whether I should add multiple coats of black. I did not end up using more than one coat since I did not want to make the top layer too thick. However, if you look closely at my picture, you can see some of the colour peeking through.
  • While colouring with the crayons, I needed to press hard on the paper to ensure all of the holes were covered and there were no white spots. This ended up using the entire head of my crayons. If you have 30 students completing this activity, prepare for some used and broken crayons.

In the end, I would use this project in my classroom! It is a lot of fun to complete and can be used to teach colour, line, movement, and different artists easily within the classroom. There are not too many cons when it comes to this activity and it did not take a lot of energy to set-up!

Grade One

April 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

This piece was a lot of fun to create! I enjoyed using the watercolour paints and it was simple enough to do. This assignment also breaks down line and movement really well for a student in grade one. When I first heard of movement, I thought it was when the art looked like it was moving. However, movement is when lines or something draw your eye to a certain part of the picture. In this demonstration, the five different lines are drawing my eye to the star!

For this project, I used the following materials:

  • Watercolour paper
  • Watercolours
  • Paintbrush
  • Pencil
  • Eraser

I loved creating this art and think it would be great for a grade one class. The steps are all easy to follow and fun to complete. I started off by sketching the entire piece in pencil. Afterwards, I outlined it in sharpie. As you can see in the photo below, I did not trace over the pencil perfectly. This is when I deviated from the video and decided to take out my eraser and remove the lines; I think it looks much better!

Before and after the sharpie. As you can see on the right, you can still see the pencil marks.

I then traced over all of the lines with watercolour paint and I was left with this:

The final product!

Pros:

  • As I mentioned before, this is a great way to start teaching line and movement to a younger class. You can explain that the lines guide the eye over the the butterfly in the corner.
  • There is still lots of experimentation within the project. Although most of the art is going to end up looking the same, everyone in the class can have a different object in the corner, different lines, or different colours.
  • When picking colours, you could bring in emotion and colour and have the students use colours that they believe represent the emotion of the line.

Cons

  • The activity may be too simple. Since the students are drawing an object in the corner and lines from it, it may be too simple of an activity to engage them.

I would definitely use this activity in a class. It teaches movement and line really well and the pros definitely outweigh the cons. It is also an easy enough activity that will introduce students to the topic but will not take all day to complete.

Kindergarten

April 8, 2021 / / 0 Comments

This activity was interesting. When I was in elementary school, my mom used to make playdoh for us all the time. She would add essential oils to make it smell nice and we would get to choose our own colours, it was a really fun craft to make. However, her recipe needed to be made over the stove, which is when I first started questioning the version from this TikTok.

@m_lowe_artroom

DIY homemade playdoh! Enjoy! #art #fun #artteacher #moodboost #happyathome #TheSongOfUs #fyp

♬ Feel It Still – Portugal. The Man

Of course it could just be a different recipe; however, this version did not turn out as well as the versions I had made in the past.

The materials I used are:

  • Oil
  • Flour
  • Water
  • Food colouring (optional, I didn’t use any)
  • Spoon
  • Bowl
  • Measuring Utensils

Now your probably thinking, that sounds a lot like the ingredients for dough, like food dough. And you wouldn’t be wrong. If I added some yeast to this recipe I’m sure I could make some type of bun. I still tried out the recipe anyways.

Firstly, I added all the ingredients into the bowl. I added the oil and flour and then added in the water. I didn’t have any food colouring at my house, so I decided to skip this step.

Afterwards, I mixed the dough together with a spoon and then kneaded after all the flour had been mixed in. When I kneaded the dough, there were a couple of hard bits in it. The dough could have found a couple of crumbs from my counter, but I believe it was flour, water, and oil that mixed weirdly. When kneading the dough, I noticed something was wrong. The dough was still really sticky and when I touched it, there was oil residue on my hands. Also when I stretched it, the playdoh looked like this:

It looked like pizza dough, except stickier.

For this activity, I think it is safe to say I do not need a pros and cons list. The end product is not like the video entailed and it left my hands oily and the counter sticky. I think the students would love this activity if we did it as a class, however, there would be a lot of cleanup involved. If done correctly, this activity could still teach texture, but you would knead a recipe that works.

My Teaching Philosophy

April 7, 2021 / / 0 Comments

To be honest, I don’t really have a teaching philosophy yet. I have only worked with children for four years and most of the experience was within summer or after school camps. However throughout the last year, I have learned a lot about classroom management. Here are a couple ideas I would like to bring into my future classroom.

Social Emotional Learning

CASSEL’S SEL Principles

As a teacher, I am looking forward to bringing Social Emotional Learning (SELs) and self-regulation into my classroom. By teaching children SELs, we are teaching children to be empathetic and compassionate (which is something people are not born knowing). While children are young, we need to teach them how to properly feel their emotions and communicate with people. When children’s needs are not being met, they shut down. By teaching self-regulation, we are giving students the resources on what to do when they feel a certain way. Children that learn SELs may still throw an occasional tantrum, but they are more likely to know what is making them upset and try and fix the problem.

Gradual Release of Responsibility

I am so excited to use the Gradual Release of Responsibility (GRR) model in my classroom. Tying in closely with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), the GRR model shows how lessons and units should be taught with the responsibility starting with the teacher and ending with the student independently. This system works since you are not throwing the students into the deep end but you are also not holding their hand the entire way through the lesson. By using the GRR model, the teacher creates independent learners that are responsible for their own learning. This also ties in with Inquiry, since students should not be expected to know how to think like an inquiry learner until the teacher shows them how.

Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is really important in a classroom since it impacts whether a student is going to be motivated to learn about the topic. If students are constantly anxious due to challenges and criticism, they will not feel safe to learn in my classroom. To increase a growth mindset, I will correct students when they say something like a fixed mindset. For example, if a student says ‘I can’t do this’ I will teach them to say ‘I can do this with some help.’ If students grow up with a growth mindset, their lives will constantly be filled with adventure since they are moving up to new challenges. Having a growth mindset will also improve anxiety within students since they will not back down from challenges and be confident in their actions.

Most importantly, I want to be the teacher that I would want when I was younger. Looking back, there are so many different activities and experiences I wish I had as a kid. For example, Outdoor Education was not as prominant when I was in elementary school. I am going to make sure I am always trying my best and creating activities that I am passionate about!

Why I’m Switching Topics…

April 5, 2021 / / 0 Comments

As you have probably noticed, using French as an inquiry project was not working out. I was no longer engaged or excited to come up with new blog topics each week and this project became something I was dreading to do. To help with that, I decided to change my topic! My new topic is now elementary art projects!

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

I decided to choose this topic instead since I was having so much fun in my weekly art class. In art, we would get to complete a weekly art assignment for our art portolios. I have not completed an art assignment since I was in Grade eleven, so I am excited at the opportunity to start again.

In this inquiry, each week I am going to try and make a new art piece. I have found a whole bunch of artists and art teachers on different platforms that I will be able to take inspiration from. I have found different, websites, tiktoks, instagram posts, and youtube videos that show how to create different pieces of art.

Since I am making these all myself, I am also going to decide whether I would actually use them within my classroom and give some pros and cons to the different activities. This will just be from my experiences in classrooms and around students. I have never been on a practicum before, so I may decide that these activities are perfect in the future, when I get into a classroom.

I am so excited to share my journey with you and hope you are excited to follow along!

“And when things start to happen, don’t worry, don’t stew. Just go right along, you’ll start happening too!”

Dr. Suess

 

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About Me!

Hi there! My name is Lara and I am a second-year elementary education student at the University of Victoria! Come join me as I follow my passion for learning and developing new skills.

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