Alternative Word Wall - Vocab Word Cloud!

I don't have enough space in my classroom for a Word Wall, since I share with music. This always bummed me out, but I just found this as an alternative!!! Since our PTC was so generous to give me a SMARTboard, why not make a Vocab Word Cloud and display it during down time on the SMARTboard?

I made this very easily with a word cloud generator online. Check out: http://www.abcya.com/! It's super easy to use and you can save your words in a word document and just add to it as you go. Then, copy and paste into the text field on the website and "TA-DA!", your word cloud is created. Click save to download it to your computer.

Enjoy!!!

No More Incomplete Choice Draws!

Last year I was horrified at the amount of paper we wasted on "free draw", which is what the kids do when they are done with projects. This year, I set a goal to prevent this from happening. The first thing I did is I stopped letting the kids use blank paper. We started using Doodle Books.

This is an example of one and can be found at: Oodles of Doodles

Inside are partially started drawings to give the kids inspiration. I only use drawings that are mostly incomplete. I want the artwork to be mostly the kids. I also started some similar types of drawings and started reproducing them for the kids. Some started with only a squiggle on the paper!

But I was still finding that the kids were wasting these papers. So, when I found a student work I thought was the standard for "finished" we had a class discussion and decided what characteristics made it finished. Then we did the same thing for an unfinished work. I hung it on the wall and Ta-Da! Now we no longer have unfinished Choice Draws!

Draw a Picture of a Person. Beginning of the Year Project

I start the year with an assessment based on Viktor Lownfeld's research known as the Drawing Development in Children. For more on this visit: http://www.learningdesign.com/Portfolio/DrawDev/kiddrawing.html and http://www.d.umn.edu/~jbrutger/Lowenf.html or the Amazon Store for some books on his research. Each student draws a picture of a person. They are encouraged to brainstorm details one might include on a person and details that would make a picture not of a person (such as an alien, as many suggested.) Then students get only one paper and their challenge is to draw a picture of a person. I tell them if they make a mistake to be creative and incorporate it into the drawing. For example, one first grade student drew a circle for a head and realized it was much too large for what he wanted. He decided to turn this into the sun behind him.

This year, I was looking for a different way to do this. I found smART class's blog about colorwheel self portraits and knew it was perfect!

http://elementaryartfun.blogspot.com/2009/11/color-wheel-self-portrait-mural.html

Each grade was assigned different color of the spectrum. Students used crayons, oil pastel, or marker to create their drawing and their color choices were limited based on their class color. The results were great!!! What I didn't expect that worked well was a visual timeline of student drawing development!

Sorry so dark! The work order is in for lights.

Red-K Orange-1 Yellow-2 Green-3 Blue-4 Violet-5 Pink-6

Signage in my room

I am the first to admit that I love to find good ideas from other teachers. Especially when it comes to signs in my room. I have a lot more ideas on my pinterest: http://m.pinterest.com/meganesteinlage/ follow me!

Here are some that I finished today:

Art camps for grown ups? Yes!

While I long to learn more over the summers, many times (this year inluded), it's just not in the budget. But angirl can dream, right? I was flipping through the September copy of the Better Homes and Gardens magazine and found an article about adult learning adventures. Naturally, I stopped to read since I can't reist an article on education and I stumbled on Angela Ritchie's Ace Camps. They offer exotic destination sites where you can learn anything from photography editing to multi-media. I may just have to start a vacation change jar for this one!  Check it out!

Paper Curling Relief Shapes

 It's was the end of the school year and I am OUT of EVERYTHING! So, what's Ms. Meggles to? Paper curling of course! I knew that I was saving all those paper scraps for something! Our Missouri GLE says, "Create an original low relief paper artwork by manipulating paper. (EG curling, folding, tearing, and cutting)", so I am on target too. Students really worked on motor skills to create the curls around pencils, markers, fingers, paper clips, or by pulling them across CLOSED scissors. The results were really cool, very colorful, and the kids were super proud of them!

We looked at some amazing examples of 3-D and 2-D paper art to give us inspiration. Start here: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/05/100-extraordinary-examples-of-paper-art/ for ideas!

Doodle Box!!

Fifth grade students had SO much fun with this project. I got the idea from The Doodle Box Project. Artist David Hofmann uses any old box he can find, deconstructs it so that the flaps become wings, mouths, arms, legs, or anything else!
We went through the website first and I let the kids decide which doodle boxes were stronger artworks than the others. They decided that the boxes with color, lots of pattern, creative features like big eyes, expressive mouths, etc were most appealing. AND they determined that the more it didn't look like a box anymore, the better. So, we used these requirements for their projects.
Students were asked to provide their own box. I suggest cereal boxes, shoe boxes, etc. Anything but a boring corrugated shipping box. Kids also brought in 12 pack soda boxes, and other interesting packaging. I did a demonstration on how to locate the glued flap that closes the box, slide my closed scissors into the flap and gently pry it open. I made a caterpillar for my doodle box example (but didn't keep it). So, students saw me working on mine while they worked on theirs.
This was planned as a fun end of the year project where the kids could strut their stuff, so to speak, and demonstrate all the skills they had learned throughout the year. So, I let them use pretty much whatever supplies they wanted. Many chose paint, crayons, markers, yarn, glitter (ugh-that is the part I hate, but they love!), and other add ons like soda bottle tops.

Overall, the results speak for themselves!