Day of the Dead Calaveras

Day of the Dead Calaveras

It's no secret that I LOVE Day of the Dead and all of the amazing artwork and stylings that come with it!  So I'm always playing around with new lessons to give the kids a variety of materials while still honoring the traditions of Day of the Dead.  

This year, I did some foil calaveras with my fourth graders.  After talking with the kids about the traditions and history of DoD (this is mostly recap for the kiddos at this point) we started off with a sheet of paper and drew out our plans for a highly decorated calavera (aka skull).  After they showed me that they had come up with a plan for their calavera that used space well and honored the DoD styles, I gave them a sheet of tooling foil and a magazine.  They taped their drawing to the sheet of foil and placed it on a magazine (for some give).  We have wood tools for this, but I just had the 4th graders use their pencils to trace their design on their paper again, which pressed it into the foil as it rested on the magazine.  Once they had transfered the design onto the foil, they removed the paper and drew/pressed directly into the tooling foil for a more defined look.  I let them decide if they liked the raised side or recessed side and added some color using permanent markers.  I'm always a little worried about the fragility of the foil and its sharp edges with the kids, so this time around, I precut some large construction paper squares and had the kids create a border for their calavera.  After they were done with that, I hot glued their foil right onto the paper for them.  They all came out so unique and colorful, I was in love!!!!  I just wish I had taken more photos (I could have swore I took more, but these were all I could find on my iPad--maybe if I blogged more regularly, I would still have the artwork to rephotograph.  Whoops)!  And the photos I did take, don't do them justice.  They were very bright and festive!

PBIS Display

Positive Behavior Interventions and Support

Our school uses the PBIS system, which is essentially a system which focuses on the positive behaviors in students and rewarding those who are doing right (think "Caught you being good" type of thing).  At the beginning of the year we decided we needed to really reiterate our PBIS expectations among our students.  Yes, I said "at the beginning of the year."  I'm extremely behind on my blogging and updating of lesson plans on this thing...sorry!  

As the art teacher I wanted to create some nice visual reminders.  Also, I wanted to fill our beautiful but empty display case.  The PBIS principles that we focus on at our school revolve around the words "responsible, respectful, faithful and safe."  Personally, I associate those words with social justice causes, so I used one of my favorite social justice artists, Keith Haring to inspire the artwork I made for our display.  I made four large posters (one for each category), a handful of paper arrows, and a few foam core Keith Haring-esque figures.  I painted the posters to look like some famous Haring works.  I asked all of our teachers to write on the arrows various examples of what positive behaviors look like (I hung the arrows in the case and they spun, so I had them write on both sides) and I asked some students who were utilizing our before/after school care program to write examples on the foam core people.  And WAA-LA a beautiful display!  A beautiful display which I forgot to photograph, mind you.  I did manage to photograph all of the pieces after I took them down (once I realized that I didn't get a pic of the whole shabang).  So please try to imagine  all of these lovely little items hanging and standing in a lovely display case...

            

        

                                      

Saints Art Contest

Iowa Catholic Radio's 'Our Catholic Schools Rock!' Art Contest--2015 Theme: Saints

So I've been extremely behind on my blogging and I have zero (good) excuses for that.  But I figured I might as well pick up where I'm at in the classroom and share what the kiddos have been up to!  When school started back up, I found an invitation for my students to participate in a Catholic art contest, my kids LOVE art contests and this was no exception.  

The contest is for K-8 students and is divided into various age categories.  I shared all of this info with my students and let them know that the contest's theme was "Saints."  I collected as many books on saints as I could get my hands on--I teach in a Catholic school, so this wasn't too tricky.  I just had to hit up a religion teacher, the library and our religious education library. I let the kids choose their saints that they wanted to depict and I encouraged them to put their own spin on their saint's portrait.  Some of the kids opted for emulating what they saw in the picture books and others played around with adding their own borders and backgrounds (which I especially loved).   They got to choose what medium they wanted to finish their artwork in, so I got to see a nice variety in styles too! This trimester I only have 8th graders in the middle school, so I taught this lesson to 4th, 5th and 8th grade.  I couldn't have been more proud of all of their hard work and effort that went into these drawings!  Enough said, not check out their finished work for yourself (warning, I'm about to flood this blog post with photos):

8th Grade Examples:

And I couldn't resist posting a few closeups:

         

 

     

     

5th Grade Examples:

And...More closeups:

  

  

4th Grade Examples:

And, finally, the last of the closeups: