DoDo Bird lesson

In a recent post on Facebook, some art teachers were looking for a DoDo bird lesson that was done by many of the elementary art teachers in my district. I actually taught the lesson my first year teaching when I taught elementary. I typed up a basic lesson plan in an effort to help the art teachers who were requesting it and started emailing it. The emailing has gotten out of control so in an effort to save myself some time, I am posting the lesson here for others to access. Please let me know if you have any questions!
Enjoy!!

Art Club: Stop Motion Videos

This year, art club received a grant from the Olentangy Education Foundation and received 10 iPad mini's. This was the third year that I submitted a grant application and was waiting for the rejection letter to arrive in the mail. I followed the directions for submitting the application perfectly this year and requested less than what I had in the past and it FINALLY paid off. I was so excited to receive the congratulations letter and quickly started planning for art club. 

7th Grade 3D- Henry Moore Sculpture

So last year, I tried this project with my class and it was a disaster. A few kids got it but most of the projects were a hot mess. I told the kids to just start carving and to think about the overall shape they were leaving behind. They had to focus on the positive space, not the negative space that they were removing, even though those holes were going to be important. What I ended up with was lines and smiley faces carved into the foam...not exactly what I was looking for and not exactly focusing on the positive space.

After a lot of thought, I came up with a solution to the problem of freely carving. This is going to sound nuts but we scribbled! We took a sheet of paper that was long enough to wrap around the block of foam and scribbled...big loopy scribbles like this:

7th Grade 3-D: Sugar Skulls

My 7th grade 3-D class completed this project just before Dia de los Muertos. Every 6 weeks, I do one clay project with them and one project that is another material, usually plaster. I had been waning to do a Sugar Skull project for a few years and it just happened to work out well this time. We started by reading this article and this article about Sugar Skulls and Day of the Dead.
Next, the kids looked at examples of sugar skulls and used 
some designs to create 4 different symmetrical designs.

What's Happening in the Art Room?

Well I was trying to think of something new and cool to post about today but everything that we are doing in my classes right now are things I have done before. So I thought I would fill you in on what we are doing and share a few things that I have done earlier this year.
My 7th grade 3-D class is currently working on the Rodin Hands project that you can read about here.

ALICE drill

It makes me sad thinking about our lockdown drills. What has this world come to that we must practice what to do in the event of an active shooter? I was in middle school when Columbine happened and since then, more and more incidents have happened. I feel like there is always something in the news about people going into schools/colleges/movie theaters and shooting innocent, unarmed victims. I won't get into my stance on guns because that has nothing to do with my blog. So back to ALICE. In the past, we have always been taught to lock our doors, turn off the lights, hide in the corner and WAIT. Wait for what? Wait for the shooter to go away? Wait for the shooter to kill other innocent students in another room? Wait for the shooter to come in to my room and find us all there like sitting ducks. That's exactly what you are in that situation...sitting ducks. Helpless. You have no control, no opportunity to protect yourself, NOTHING! Last school year, our district adopted the ALICE system of lockdown. ALICE stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate. Evidence shows that when you make an effort to deter the shooter by either throwing things at them, barricading the door so it's harder to get in (this happened at Virginia Tech and the rooms that the shooter couldn't easily get into were passed up for easier rooms) and getting OUT! My classroom is very fortunate to have a door to the outside so if something were to ever happen, my students and I would be out that door if the situation was safe for us to do so.

screen printing-100 Ms. Lloyd-2

I am giving myself one point for finally figuring out how to make the screens and making 7 today and one point for making myself a pretty awesome t-shirt that I am pumped to wear to school tomorrow.