Thursday - Spring Arts Showcase

Love this image from Kansas City Young Audiences

Today's art feature for the Spring Arts Showcase is community service! Artists help their communities by sharing messages and solving problems in interesting and creative ways.

We like to tie in a service project to our Fine Arts Night celebration - in recent years it has been #petpARTners and #FreeArtFriday. Today, you can think of a way to brighten the day of someone in your community through art. If you have a favorite community service activity, how can you add your artistry to that? I will give you a few suggestions below, but make sure you choose something that is meaningful to you - it does not have to be from my list. Make sure you share your creation with me and on social media with your parents' help. Ideas:

#petpARTners - a community service art program we created at Dolvin to raise awareness of the homeless pet population

Make some art about a shelter pet and share it online, along with the shelter information. At Dolvin, we use the FurKids Atlanta website - there are several other local shelters if you have a favorite. Search my blog for tons of ideas about #petpARTners.

#FreeArtFriday - a feel good art movement where artists share their art in the community for free, often in a scavenger hunt format using social media

Make a small work of art with a positive message, and leave it to be found - maybe on a neighbor's doorstep.  Search my blog for Free Art Friday ideas.

ATC's - Artist Trading Cards are small 2.5 x 3.5” works of art that are traded and collected

ATC's are perfect for spreading a positive message or idea, and for Free Art Friday as well. Draw a positive message and share with someone - mail is a great way to share an ATC. Search my blog for ATC ideas.

Next topic - Fan Letter! I hope you guys are logging on to our school's Artsonia gallery and leaving comments (Fan Mail) for students - see this post for more info on how to do that. Today's fan letter from our Artsonia gallery ...

Dear Leah from 2nd grade, 

Your clay pet portrait of a dog from FurKids is an excellent example of creating a 3-D form from clay. You modeled the ears just so and joined pieces of clay to make the face and snout, and you painted it to look realistic. Thank you for sharing this so that people in our community will get to know the pets in our local shelter and hopefully adopt these pets and make donations for their care. It makes me smile! 

Your fan, Mrs. Knight

Finally, here are some pics from the community service events we have done in the past at our Fine Arts Night - I hope they inspire you!

Highlights from our art show - Fine Arts Night 2016

Our chorus concert and art show - also known as Fine Arts Night - is always a fun end of year event at Dolvin. We had another fantastic turnout, with lots of proud faces and families. Take a look! 

 We started working on the chorus concert backdrop a couple of weeks in advance - luckily art and music classes are neighboring so kids could take turns working on it in the hall during their specials time. 100 Years of Broadway was their show title and they had some amazing performances.

We continued our tradition of promoting the Free Art Movement! Some of my 4th and 5th grade students made Free Art to share in the form of coloring books and free art flyers - these went fast! The idea for these came from some awesome teachers in the Facebook art teacher group - Mrs. Abreu's art class and http://pretendstudio.weebly.com/free-coloring-book.html - thanks for sharing!

The art show itself is made of a variety of pieces made throughout the year - each student selects a favorite piece from their portfolio, after discussing what makes a good choice: craftsmanship, completion, pride, appealing to the audience of parents : ) . The Artome company does a great job of framing and displaying our show, and offering parents the convenience of purchasing a frame with some profits benefitting our art program. The art belongs to the students and is then returned after the show.

Many parents and students wrote FAN letters to the artists, which were collected and will be delivered next week. I offer this letter template for free on my Teachers Pay Teachers site,

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mrs-Knights-Smartest-Artists

It's a fun way to give and receive feedback!

This friend got hers the very next day!

We also had a hand painted backdrop for photos, made by some of my 1-2 kiddos.

Thank you so much to all the volunteers on our Fine Arts Night committee- your help made everything work out so well!

We have lots of techies at our school and they made it possible to live stream the chorus concert, which was happening on the opposite end of the building, down at our end in the Commons. Before and after the concert, we showed a slideshow of our Artsonia gallery - no preparation, just a click of the mouse, thanks to Artsonia!

Now it's time to send everything home - my closet is overflowing! I hope all the families enjoy seeing the work the students bring home in the next weeks! Let's do it all over again next year!

End of Unit 1: what have I learned so far?

Keeping track of what we have learned so far, and assessing ourselves and peers - it can be a time consuming task. I've been working on ways to make these activities not only engaging but also quick and easy. Here are some of the methods we have used and are beginning to use now that we are starting up our second 9 weeks unit - already!

First graders are using a rubric created by Artful Artsy Amy to review their favorite piece from Unit 1, then they are commenting on each other's work using symbols we created in class. Kindergarteners are also learning the Art Walk, when we check out each other's art and offer compliments.

Our first grade portfolios show our word wall progress and our media usage so far.

Second and third graders are tracking artistic behaviors and accomplishments on a chart which we will return to each 9 weeks. We also use The Art Stack critique for ourselves and a peer. 

Here are some shots of my 4th and 5th grade portfolios and rubrics, including self-portraits that show off our new facial proportions knowledge.

Each of these activities only take between 3-10 minutes at the beginning or end of a project or unit - it is not something we do every week, but it does play a big part in student ownership of learning. Keeping portfolios has created a whole new level of respect of our artwork from the students.

On a fun note, here are some pics from Reading Extravaganza, when art students were treated to a reading of "The Day the Crayons Quit" and a letter writing activity.

What's to come in unit 2, you ask? Printmaking, lots of landscapes, K-2 clay projects... and Artsonia, our digital art gallery - Stay tuned!

If any of these teaching tools interest you, please check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mrs-Knights-Smartest-Artists .

Treasure, on the cheap

I am a bargain shopper. I think of it as my version of sport.

I thought I'd share a few new things from my classroom that were free, upcycled, or super cheap.

The end of the year can be a real smorgasbord for art teachers, if you don't mind a little trash-can-diving. I found entire boxes of transparencies and overhead projector cardboard frames, since our overhead projectors have been collecting dust the past few years. I thought these would be great for some new display frames for my six hallway bulletin boards around the school, one for each grade level. I display examples of every project we do all year, so there's always a show going on. These have become new signage frames for my art displays - now I can just slide a new sheet in every time I change the board, listing our new objectives, vocab, artist of inspiration, etc. The little wooden glasses and circles were part of a massive clearance I found at Michaels, where I basically backed my car up and loaded as much as I could :). Pennies on the dollar, seriously - 80% off plus coupon - and Liquitex spray paint, too! A match made in heaven.

Here's more of my clearance loot - you can see more of these in action, like my Following Wall, in my earlier post: http://dolvinartknight.blogspot.com/2014/08/welcome-back-see-what-new.html

I made some Free Art Friday cases from old cassette boxes that were being thrown out as well. They are the perfect size to hold some cool handmade woven bracelets that my friend Claire made. We are having fun with our collaboration of sharing art in the world!

Kellen was one of the lucky Free Art Finders this week and the kids are excited that this will continue most Fridays this year - I am encouraging them to participate as sharers as well.

I have lots of art learning and production to share with you next week - here's a sneak peek of my 4th graders getting into their observational still life drawing! They are gonna be SO good.

My Free Art Summer

        

It has been the fastest summer ever, hasn't it? One fun thing I did was make tiny art to give away on Free Art Fridays. After participating in a few community and school art hunts over the last couple of years with my students, I started thinking about the kind of art I wanted to give away. Many artists who participate in the FAF movement have nicknames and recognizable logos or street art inspired characters. I decided that my favorite part was the surprise of finding treasure and I added the exciting element of opening a gift, so I decided to go with the project name "Check the Box." This way I can experiment with different kinds of art inside the box, and even collaborations with other artists, while keeping it uniform with the recycled, stenciled boxes - mostly matchboxes, gum/candy boxes and CD cases. 

Here are a few pieces I dropped at the Free Art Decatur art hunt in June, and a few finds, too. I also ran into a teacher from Chattanooga that I have been collaborating with - it was great to meet her in person! She had drops of her own and from her students to share from Tennessee.

Artists and hunters use social networking like Twitter and Instagram to leave clues about the drop spots and also to thank the artists when the piece is found.

The next pieces you see will be dropped in New York City by a lifelong friend of mine who visits NYC regularly because she's the smartest person I know with a super cool job there. I've never been there, but I've always had a feeling it would be my favorite place! I have also sent a few pieces to teacher friends in a few other places around the US, and even in my neighborhood's own Little Free Library :)

I am really happy to have learned about the Free Art Movement and I am loving being a part of it. My students have gotten a real kick out of it too. It really gets to the heart of what it's all about for me.