Art Room Open House: New MSCR West Location

 I had to privilege of creating art activities for families during the new MSCR West Open House last week! The new building is beautiful, and I was honored to be a part of the grand opening. 

We were not sure how many people would attend the event, so in coming up with the Art Room activities, I had to make sure they were engaging, but easy enough to do with a large crowd. We ended up having around 320 attend, and this set-up worked great!

I was inspired by Nic Hahn and her post about her classroom Open House to create centers. This way, participants could select an activity they were interested in, and they were easily differentiated to variying abilities.

I created signs for each center by folding a piece of cardboard in half and painting it, and I glued ribbons to the bottom to keep them from unfolding and falling flat. 

Come Paint!

This station was by far the crowd favorite. It thrilled my little Art Teacher heart to see so many people of variying ages and abilities pick up a brush and add their mark to the poster. We even had an oil painting instructor who taught decades ago with MSCR sit down and leave us some beautiful art work, right next to toddlers that had never painted before! This station, although simple, was inviting to people and they couldn’t help but pick up the brush and paint. We are still thinking of what we can do with these colorful banners that are a visual representation of the diverse participants in our program.

Supplies: I used rolled paper and india ink in a Bingo Dauber  to make the giant coloring pages. Tempera cakes  worked great for this project. They were low mess, and easy-to-use. 

On each sign I also added a creative challenge, this one encouraged participants to try mixing colors to see what happens. 

Come Weave!

I love finding ways to sneak fiber arts into everything I do. The medium is very hands on, and kids are just drawn to working their hands. I love the opportunity to show students that art is more than their drawing skills, and fiber arts activities, like sewing, felting, and crocheting can lead to life-long hobbies and creative pursuits. Louie the Loom made his appearance with recycled t-shirt yarn, and I had these snow fences left over from a previous course set out with ribbons to weave into it. 

The Creative Challenge here was to make your own t-shirt yarn at home by taking home a little flyer with instructions.

Come Sculpt

At the scuplting station, I found this neat project of making pipe cleaner people out of two pipe cleaners and cut-up straws for beads. I was thinking about what we had on hand that was similar and decided to use perler or melty beads instead, and they worked perfectly!  You can view the tutorial for thes on my blog here.

As I was making the examples, I thought that these would be a fun tool to use in figure drawing. So my art challage was to take your figure home, put it in a fun pose, and see if you could draw it. You could add eyes and other details to your drawing too. Then, see how fast you can draw it, or if you can draw without looking! 

This station was probably the second most popular, with participants of all ages making their own pipe cleaner person. Some of the younger participants were able to get in on the fun too making their own beaded pipe cleaner bracelet.

Come Collage

Next to fiber arts, I love a good mixed media and collage project!  Made entirely from recycled materials and scrap paper, this one was easy to put together. We invited participants to make their own collage rainbow. As an added bonus, I printed out small affirmations to attach to the rainbows (yay Social Emotional Learning!), or encouraged people to write a note on the back and surprise someone with it.  

 

There you have it! Our four open house stations. Overall, the night was a great success and I am so excited to begin teaching at MSCR West this fall! 

Week One of Hand Sewing (Grades 3-8): String Art

In week one we worked on the basic skills of threading a needle and getting down the sewing motion. When you sew a basic running stitch, you always poke up from the bottom, and dive back down through the surface, like a dolphin swimming in the water. We then used yarn to create our own string art. These students made some really cool radiating and repeating designs, check them out!

 

We then looked at how artists use string to create art examining the colorful and awe-inspiring work of artist Nike Savvas:

And Artist Gabriel Dawe, and their incredible rainbow thread installation: 

How to Run a Recess Indoor Art Club

This past school year, I worked with the principal at my two youngest kids’ school to create an indoor recess option with third and fourth grade students. I thought I would share my set-up and what I found to be successful. 

There were a few constraints when considering the set-up of Art Club, they were: only 25 minutes of work time, we met in the library with carpeted floors, there was no space to store projects to work on another time, and supplies were limited to what was on hand at school (mostly reams/rolls of paper). I also wanted students to be able to move around freely, choosing their activity and something that interests them. 

I ended up creating two zones in the library, one was “Free Choice” and the other was the “Weekly Challenge”. I told students they could pick each time they came whether they wanted to attempt that week’s art challenge or they could do some thing from the free choice area. 

Here were the options for the free choice area:

The free choice area set-up. I also covered the table with a table cloth for easy clean-up.

• Drawing: I had a magazine holder with Anime drawing reference guides (super popular), and other drawing books I had (Ed Emberly, Kawaii drawing, comic strip drawing, etc). I had a stack of white copy paper, pencils, erasers, and fine line Sharpies as well. 
• Card Making: (far left bin in photo) this station was surprising to me, the students LOVED making cards for people that they knew.  I had a bin set up with blank cards purchased from the thrift store (they often have them in large bags with a few hundred for a few bucks), stamps, stamp pads, makers, hole punchers, and stickers. Besides the Anime drawing, this station was the most popular by far, and really engaged students who were not as into art as some of the others. 
• Coloring: I had a magazine holder with assorted coloring books and sticker by number sheets. I tried a collaborative coloring bulletin board as well, but it didn’t take off. 
• Yarn: (bin on far right) I was also surprised how excited students were by just a plain old box of yarn. They were teaching each other to finger knit, braid, make bracelets, etc. I included some plastic canvas squares, plastic needles, and scissors as well. 
• Weaving: I occasionally brought my large loom with recycled t-shirt strips for weaving. 

Set-up of the Card Making Box

For our weekly challenges, I chose the following projects:

• Rice Maps: this one was a little messy, but essentially, you pour rice onto a piece of paper, trace the shape and make it into a map. We colored ours in with watercolor. The kids had some great ideas of what their maps were of. 

• Paper Infinity Cards: the kids loved this project, I mean who doesn’t like to make your own paper fidget? The origami aspect was a little tricky, but I kept some backup cards made in case theirs did not turn out because we simply did not have time to try again.  Here is a great tutorial to learn how to make your own paper fidgets.

• Teacher Appreciation Lounge Decorations: I had the kids help me decorate the Teacher’s Lounge for Teacher Appreciation week by creating these large “Heart Walls” inspired by artist J.Goldcrown. This activity is one I thought the kids would be excited about, but in the end were luke warm about. However, the heart walls turned out cool, and added a fun pop of color to the staff lounge. I used bulletin board paper and bingo daubers to draw with. Students also made smaller signs with declarations of their thankfulness to Teachers and Staff. 

• Drawing Telephone: To switch things up, we played a game of Drawing Telephone (known commercially as Telestrations). I made my own from these free printables. Basically, it is like the game of telephone, where you start with one word or phrase and whisper it to each other and see what it turns into at the end. Except, you draw a word and see how it comes out at the end. We had a lot of fun playing this together!
• Button Making: I have a button machine and brought supplies along for students to design their own buttons. Students loved making their own buttons, and quite a few made buttons for others as gifts. 

These were the all of the activities we had time for in a semester, as we had so many students interested that they had to come once every three weeks in order to fit into the library space. One thing I really enjoyed about setting up Art Club this way is that it was inherently differentiated. I had many students of different abilities attend, and everyone was able to find a way to participate at their level. I am going to continue Art Club this school year and hope to include even more students. 

When surveyed, here is what the kids had to say about Art Club:

Art Experiences: The Govenor’s Residence

 Did you know you can tour the Govenor’s Residence right here in Madsion? This free tour takes place on Thursday afternoons, just off the east shore of Lake Mendota in Maple Bluff. The Govenor’s Residence is owned by the people of Wisconsin and the friendly staff loves sharing it with visitors!

Not only is the architecture and design beautiful, there also is a large collection of art chosen by the current Govenor. It was interesting to see art from a diverse range of Wisconsin artists, and who the Evers chose to include to display inside the residence. There was a wide variety of art from artists who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), LGBTQia+, have disabilities, dimentia, are refugees, gifts from other countries, even art from local Madison kids. Representation matters, and it was inspiring to see so many diverse artists at the residence to celebrate the rich diversity of our state. 

Here were two of my favorite pieces of art: 

This piece below was purposefully displayed at the entrance of the residence to ensure everyone knows they are welcome:

I would highly recommend taking the time to go on this informative (and art filled!) tour!  More information can be found here at: https://www.wisconsinexecutiveresidence.com/

Class Recap: Hand Sewing (K-2)

 We had a great time learning how to hand sew in my three part summer course.  Here is what we did each week:

Week One: String Art

Learning Goals:

• How to thread the needle
• Sewing motion: jumping up from the surface and diving back down like a dolphin
• Creating a front and back of our sewing piece
• Using these skills to create string art

This project is a great introduction to hand sewing as it does not use knots (which as a knot tying adult with many years of experience, forget how tricky they are!), rather we tape the ends of the yarn to the back side of the project. This allows us to focus on threading the needle and practice our sewing motion. 

View a video of students sewing their string art on my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CvFAP-Utm5P/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Week Two: Embroidered Wall Tapestries 

Learning Goals

• Continue to practice threading the needle and our sewing motion
• Learn how to tie a knot at the end of our thread
• Learn how to sew on beads to our tapestries
• Use yarn to create a picture on our Monk’s cloth

Week two was the time to learn the trickiest part of sewing, knot tying!  We then created our own embroidered wall tapestries on Monk’s Cloth. I chose Monk’s cloth because it is a loose, woven fabric and can easily be sewn with plastic yarn needles.  This fabric easily unravels, so to prepare it for use, I zipped around the edges on the sewing machine, and when they were done sewing, attached a paint stir stick and string for hanging. Students really enjoyed adding beads and made some wonderful creations! 

This is a “T” for the artist’s first inital

Week Three: Stretchy Glove Stuffies

Learning Goals:

• Continue to practice our skills of threading the needle, knot tying, and sewing motion
• Learn how to sew on a button 
• Sew on a 3-D form

In our third class, we put all of our learning together to make an adorable Stretchy Glove Stuffy. I chose this project because most of the stuffy was already sewn for us. I wanted students to feel accomplished, not overwhelmed at the prospect of sewing a stuffy, and the stitching the face on, and the top of the glove shut was the perfect ammount of sewing. This project was tight in our 1 hour class together, but they did it! 

We started by learning how to sew on buttons (a great life skill), and how to sew on pieces of felt.  After we had our faces ready to go, we stuffed them with polyfil and sewed the opening shut.  These turned out adorable, and the students were very proud of their work. 

Overall, this was a great group, ready to try anything!  I love teaching sewing because it shows students that there is more to art than just drawing. Artists use all sorts of mediums to express themselves creatively. As an added bonus, when teaching sewing, students learn a vital life skill that they can use forever!  It’s a win-win in my book! 

Felting Fun! Grades K-2 Recap

 We had so much fun in our K-2 Felting Fun Class!

Week One

Learning Targets:

• What is Wool Roving and where does it come from?
• What is wet felting?
• Make a flat picture using wet felting 

We read the book Farmer Brown Shears His Sheep which is a story about how the sheep have their wool sheered, made into wool roving (which we will be using!), the roving turned into yarn, and the yarn knitted into sweaters for the sheep.  I enjoy reading this book because it does a great job a teaching the different stages of wool and yarn. 

To wet felt, we made many criss-cross layers of roving, put it in a zip top bag with soap and water (felting is a good clean fun 😉), and then agitated it with our hands. Here is one example of a student’s wool roving before felting.

Week Two:

Learning Targets:

• What is needlefelting?
• Learn how to safely work with felting needles
• Looked at the needle felting work of Madison, Wisconsin artist Tamara Tsurkan    

Students used needle felting tools to create their own “wool painting” from a planning sketch.  These turned out great and were so unique to each artist!

                                 

Week Three

In week three, we continued to use needle felting to make a teeny tiny meal.

Learning Targets:

• Continue to refine needle felting skills and safety
• Generate an idea of their favorite meal and turn it into a felting creation

Are you ready to get hungry?  I really wanted to pick up a pizza on the way home from this class for some reason 🤔