Food Chain Fish, 1st Grade

I guess I have had fish on my mind recently, since I have had several grades create them lately. This got me thinking about a fish project I did last year. This one was really about Food Chains though. I taught students how to draw fish by drawing a circle and putting a triangle in for a mouth. They were suppose to draw three fish in a row looking as if they were going to eat each other. The first fish was big, the second medium size, and the third small. Sea weed, bubbles, and other ocean animals were drawn. A boarder was drawn around the entire thing and students drew patterns in the boarder. Everything was colored with oil pastels and a light watercolor wash was used for the water.

Birds, 4th grade

This is a really fun project that I did last year. Basically, students draw birds and I bring in lots of photos of birds for them to look out. This isn't the fun part though. The fun comes in when I have them draw it on a clear transparency using gel markers (or permanent markers). We then put them in black mats and I hang them in the windows around the school.

These look a million times better in person than in a photo.

Aztec Suns, 1st Grade

To begin this lesson, I showed students the Aztec Calendar (which is in the shape of the sun). We talked about how important the sun was to the Aztecs. My first graders loved looking at this and noticing how different it was from the typical suns they draw. We then created our own suns on black paper.

Basic Directions:

1. Have them draw a small circle in the middle of the page. Then draw a second circle around the small circle. Keep drawing circles around each other until they have four circles drawn. Each circle should be a little bigger than the one before. (do this in a step by step instruction format, otherwise they won't understand).

2. In each row, they will draw a simple pattern. (could be squares, triangles, stars...)

3. In the center they may draw a face for the sun (happy, sad, scary, it doesn't matter)

4. Color everything in with oil pastels.

Sunflowers, 3rd and 4th Grade

This is a wonderful time of year for sunflowers. If you can bring real sunflowers into the classroom, that is even better. Many of my students haven't ever seen a real sunflower, since I teach in the suburb of D.C. I taught the students basically how to draw the sunflower and then had students color with oil pastels. I encouraged students to use analogous colors and blend them together with their fingers. (They always love doing this). If they do it right, it looks almost like paint. The backgrounds were painted in watercolor.

Art on a Cart

Alright, so teaching without a classroom and without a place to store your supplies can be frustrating. However, I have made it work for myself. Here are some hints that I wish I would have known before taking this job.

1. Just because a classroom has a projector, smartboard, or visualizer, doesn't mean it actually works or that the teacher has it set up. I always come to a class prepared for anything. Always have an actual hard copy of visuals, and not just digital images. (if I can't get the technology to work in about 2 minutes, I move on with plan B)

2. Not all classrooms have a sink. Always have a bucket of water just in case!

3. Having students all wash their hands at the end of class is a waste of time. (Don't waste 15 minutes of class doing this) Always have wipes. Baby wipes are the greatest invention. I have my students first wipe their hands and then their table. One wipe per child.

4. Egg Cartons!!! I love them. I use the Styrofoam ones for tempera or acrylic paints. Once the paints are in there, they will last for about 3 days without drying out. If you need it to last longer, put a wet paper towel in before closing the lid. This will give you an extra day or two.

5. Cleaning paint brushes. With the older kids, I assign one or two children to wash them for me. Most elementary kids will want to help you with this. With the younger kids (like pre-K and kindergarten), I bring a bucket of soapy water with me and we put all the dirty brushes in it. I leave them there until I have time to wash them out later. Usually by the time I get to cleaning them, they are already half way clean from the soapy water.

6. Multi Task!! Do more than one thing at a time. For example, after I give students a step, I know I have a minute or two to get something done while they are working. I will use this time to fill up water cups, pass out supplies, or collect anything not being used anymore. Yes, at the end of the day you will be exhausted. (but it's a good kind of exhausted because you know the student's got as much as they could out of the art lesson).

7. My Cart. The cart changes sizes depending on which school I am at. I switch things on or off my cart depending on what lessons I am doing that day. Think through every aspect of a project. Always have pencils, glue and scissors on your cart. Just because students are suppose to have these things, doesn't mean they actually do.

8. I do not have drying racks. This is just a fact I have to live with. This doesn't stop me from painting with the kids. Anything that needs to be dried, I will usually find any open space in the classroom to put them. (Most teachers are okay with this). If for some reason you can't have them in the room, I will even sometimes put them on the floor in a hallway or under a stairwell. Just be creative and don't forget they are there.

9. Moving art supplies from one school to another is a crazy task. I load everything into boxes and label the contents. That way I can just leave anything I am not using in my car. I am not going to haul things all the way into the school if I don't need to that day.

10. The hot glue gun is your friend. If you need to hang up artwork in a school without bulletin boards, I hang up large sheets of paper with hot glue instead of tape. (Tape will fall in about a week or so). You do need to get permission from the principal to do this. As long as the walls are the bumpy stone walls, hot glue will peel right off without peeling the paint. Just use a paint scraper.

11. Expect the Unexpected!!! Being a nomadic art teacher just means you have to be flexible. Don't sweat the small things. Also, expect that life will be chaos. Nothing will ever feel organized, so learn to just have organized chaos. Go with the flow! In many ways, I like the fact that my days change drastically from one to another. Good thing I am not OCD. :)

Tornado, 4th Grade

My students seem to really love this project. They seem to love creating artwork about disasters. These are collages. The tornado is made of cotton batting and I show them how to form it into a tornado. Houses, cars, trees, flowers etc. are made completely out of paper. I ask the students to have at least one house, one tree, and one vehicle in their finished picture. The rest is up to them. In the last 15 minutes of class, I let them use oil pastels to add final details.

I found this lesson on one of my favorite websites, http://techyteacher.net/artlessons/fourth/tornado.html

Silhouettes, 3rd and 4th Grade

I did these last year. A few of my students have told me that this was their favorite project from last year. Fourth graders did a theme of the American Civil War. To create these, students used old photos of people and traced them onto black paper to make a Silhouette. It is extremely important that students cut neatly (some students will find this hard)

Third graders did the same project, but with a Fairy Tale theme. This project was on the verge of being to0 hard for third grade. They turned out cool, but many of them struggle with the cutting. This project definitely works better with older kids.


I love these. They turned out awesome. They would also make wonderful stories if you wanted to tie it into language arts.