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: