what can you do with an old map?

Like a lot of people, I scout around on Pinterest for ideas. When I find an art activity that looks interesting, I post it to my own "Art Things To Try" Pinterest board. So the other day when I was getting ready to substitute in a friend's second grade classroom, I went looking on that board for something new to do. I landed on two different ideas that intrigued me. One was using bleeding tissue paper with just water to create colored paper; the other was creating a cityscape collage using the classified pages from a newspaper. Jumping off those two ideas, I came up with this cityscape idea.

To create the colorful background, the students used bleeding tissue paper, applied to wet paper. I happened to have an overabundance of blue and pink tissue paper, so I encouraged them to mix the blues and add a little pink to suggest a morning or evening sky. They just needed to brush on a little water, apply a torn piece of tissue paper, and continue applying sections of tissue until about half the paper was covered. We let it sit for about a half hour, then peeled off the tissue paper.

Since I had recently discovered about thirty old maps in my filing cabinet, we used those for the buildings. I cut up several, handed them out, and showed the students how to draw rectangles in between the folds with black marker or crayon, draw windows, and then cut them out. I suggested that they make eight or nine buildings of different sizes, and encouraged them to draw some interesting rooflines. I demonstrated putting the taller ones in the back with a little space between them, and then the shorter ones in front, to create a feeling of depth.

I love the colors of the buildings drawn on maps, and it was interesting to watch kids actually choose sections of maps to use. One student even flipped her map over and drew a building on the list of cities. The skies are particularly beautiful. We had talked about leaving white space to represent clouds, and many did, but the best part of this was that no glue was involved at all... just water! The colors are brilliant and the blending is actually more interesting than with a tissue paper (with glue) collage because the water helped bleed the tissue color more fluidly than glue.

This lesson will definitely go into my file for future use... and I still have a ton of maps!

The full lesson, available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, has easy, step-by-step directions and includes an art reflection worksheet for students, designed to help them think about their own art work and their creating process. Enjoy!

coloring

Sometimes I work backward, like with this little color theory activity. One day on Facebook I came upon a free turkey-coloring page that was filled with pattern. Normally I avoid coloring pages like the plague, preferring students to be creating their own drawings. But there was just something about this one. I thought maybe I could give some color instructions, like use all warm colors or all cool colors.

But then I had another idea: use analogous colors.

Rather than just tell students what analogous colors were, we would make a color wheel!

I thought all this through on the drive to school (40 minutes, mountains to valley, a view to die for... but I digress....)

I started by having students draw a large, equilateral triangle on the top half of their paper. It had to be large, so I checked for size right away. If it seemed small, I had them turn it over and make it bigger. That triangle was superimposed by another triangle the same size, but "upside down" (which, of course, is a misnomer, since a triangle is a triangle no matter what direction it sits in, but I digress again....)

At the very top, I asked them to make a yellow circle and color it in, then do a red and blue on the other vertices of the first triangle. They knew what happened when red and yellow, blue and yellow, and red and blue are combined, so we drew and colored in circles of those colors in their appropriate vertices.

Under these triangles, I had them note "primary colors" and "secondary colors" and then we went on to the tertiaries. (I love that a box of crayons has all the colors one needs for this, but again, I digress...)

Finally, we were able to talk about those analogous colors... the ones next to each other. Once I felt confident that most of the students could identify three analogous colors using the color wheel (I had made a large one, along with them, as a model), I showed them the turkey page and gave directions to choose four analogous colors for coloring. The key was to have them show me their color choices before I gave them the coloring page. If they had an outlier, I asked them to look again.

As they finished coloring their turkeys, I had them write "This turkey is analogous." on their paper and then write on the back of the paper what analogous colors are.

They had a great color lesson, a relaxing coloring session, and got a little writing in to boot. I found something interesting to do with a plain old coloring sheet. Win-win for everybody!

The coloring sheet was found at http://doodle-art-alley.com.

make time for art

Another school year starts, and I look ahead to creating art with kids when substituting in my friends' classrooms. It's great fun to watch students be creative, to help them see that there is more than one right answer to an art-making challenge and to see them learn that creativity means letting go a bit and taking some risks.

I also love just giving them some time to use their imaginations and express themselves.

Sadly, I hear more and more teachers say they don't have time for art.
And I can help!

Making Time For Art is a free download in my store at TeachersPayTeachers. This resource offers suggestions and ideas for finding and making time for art. It includes:

• ideas for integrating art into other subject matter
• a basic list of art materials to have on hand
• ideas for teaching students to think and act like artists.

Making art is important for all students, and it's especially important for those who learn best with hands-on experiences and those who learn visually. Art experience is instrumental when students need to illustrate a story or poem, create a graph or chart, or use pictures or other graphics to supplement or support their writings.

Need a place to start

Start With Art includes five comprehensive, open-ended art lessons that introduce young students to the elements of design and allow them to work with a variety of simple, common materials. Each lesson takes about an hour, including an introduction and a "talking about art" session where students analyze the success of their own art work.

These art lessons are written with "non-art-oriented" teachers in mind, with detailed directions, photos of students art work for reference, and ideas for integrating across curriculum. Start With Art is also available in my store on TeachersPayTeachers,

I know that there IS time for art in every classroom, if a teacher uses time creatively and understands that visual literacy is just as important as other kinds of literacy.

Creating art with kids ..... enjoy it!

flowers and landscapes inspired by georgia o'keefe

Last week of school.... subbing in a friend's third grade classroom... I want to do some art but not a real formal lesson.... so I decide to show some flowers and landscapes by American artist Georgia O'Keefe and then basically let the students choose which they want to do.

They were pretty intrigued by O'Keefe's work, which precipitated several comments. I followed up the O'Keefe examples with several close-up photos of flowers and several photos of various landscapes, then did a quick demonstration of drawing a quick, light pencil sketch of a landscape and another of a close-up flower. For the landscape, I pointed out how there were several "layers" of mountains, and that trees in the foreground would be larger than trees in the background. That was pretty much it for the lesson. I then transferred one of the sketches to *real* watercolor paper, traced over the pencil lines with crayon, then used a wet-on-wet watercolor technique, focusing on letting colors blend.

I asked students to do two preliminary sketches, one a flower and one a landscape. For these I gave them each one 12x18 sheet of drawing paper. Folded in half, it gave them two "real size" clean surfaces on which to draw the sketches. I gave each student some feedback on each drawing, then asked them to choose which one they wanted to do. Once that was decided, they got a sheet of 9x12 watercolor paper and went to work.

As they worked, I made some suggestions here and there, occasionally spraying their papers with a spritzer water bottle to make them wetter if they were not using enough water (typical for some). Since it was a very hot day (101 in the shade!) a few got spritzed on the head, too.

The whole lesson, from showing the art and photos to finished student products took about two hours. There were no behavior issues during this time, as all students were pretty much engaged right from the beginning.

The results are generally pretty good, although I learned some things which I should know by now. For one, I really need to make a hard and fast rule not to mix orange and violet, since my subtle suggestions ("You really might want to not mix the orange and the violet together") often go largely ignored. Thus, there are a few muddy results, but overall I think they would make a good display. I was happy that landscapes to flower ratio was pretty much 1:1. What was a little disconcerting was that *most* of the flowers were shaped exactly like my example sketch. Note to myself:  Do several models, not just one.

.

mixing colors

The whole point of this activity is to let my second grade students mess around with primary colors to make secondary colors. I also throw in a little mini-lesson on using the brush appropriately and encourage students to not only use equal amounts of two primary colors, but also to use UNequal amounts to create different shades.

Rather than have all students use all three colors, I set up each of three large tables with two primary colors of tempera paint in small containers: one table with red and yellow, one table with blue and yellow, and one table with blue and red. Students choose which table at which to paint. Each student gets a small paper plate on which to mix paint, and a medium-sized round watercolor brush.

My directions are pretty basic: I suggest that they use the paper plates to mix colors, and make sure they understand that they don't need to paint a picture of something but that they can just play around with lines, shapes, and patterns. I also ask that their finished painting have at least three different colors. This confuses some students, but I try not to say more than that.

The first time I did this activity I figured that, at the very least, students would use both primary colors and one mixed color. I found that some students used only mixed colors and figured out on their own that adding more of one of the primary colors would alter the color. Others needed a little creative questioning: "How much red did you use?" "What would happen if you used more yellow?" and the like.

For some students, color mixing is not new. For others, and a surprising number of them, they are surprised to get green or orange or purple. I find that kind of sad. Some students like to paint a picture of something, others are happy to play with lines, shapes, or patterns. I was surprised and curious to find some students spending an inordinate amount of time painting the paper plate itself and avoiding the paper altogether.

Discussion is pretty basic, relating to which primary colors create which secondary colors. It is during the discussion that I introduce the words primary and secondary, and show a color wheel.