Art Makes Me Happy

I am home from work today with no voice. I guess I was talking too much during parent-teacher interviews last night. Well since I have been so busy lately and haven’t posted in a while, I thought this would be a great time to catch up.

I love finding new art ideas online so I thought I would share this one
that I do with my class at the beginning of every year (it is great for
teacher on call work as well).  

MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT SHOW STUDENTS AN EXAMPLE OF A FINISHED PRODUCT. It is important that they do not have any idea what they will be making. The main point is to see how they adjust to a challenge. 

Here is how it works:

1.) Give students half a piece of 8 1/2×11 white card stock and 7 different coloured happy face stickers.

2.) Tell students to put the stickers anywhere on their paper.

3.)
Once all the stickers are on the paper tell students that they have to
create a scene without moving any of the stickers (I have an example for
them). The stickers can be people, animals, or bugs. Really they can be
anything with a face. I have had students turn them into suns or
flowers.  It is interesting to see their faces when they realize where
they put the stickers. Some of them are even upside down 🙂 I tell them
the whole page has to be part of the scene and that I want colours (no
black and white). To add some humour I also tell them they cannot tell
me that their picture is 7 people in a snow storm.

4.) When students are finished I give them some tape and let them hang their masterpieces anywhere on the door. 

Here
are some pictures of what this years crew did. There are not very many
because some students moved to another classroom and a couple are not
finished.

This activity helps me assess students persistence with work, especially when they put stickers upside down. It is great for seeing who can adapt to unforeseen circumstances. 

Every year a couple of students cannot handle it and ask to start over because they don’t want their stickers where they put them. I always let them start over but I put the stickers on the page for them (none upside down). 

From this year’s crew I could quickly see that I needed to focus art lessons on adding details and colouring neatly in one direction. I don’t think they were lacking in the creativity department so this is great.

In terms of coloring neatly, they are in grade 4/5 and in my opinion should have neater colouring skills. We just completed a new art project this week that focused specifically on colouring neatly in small areas. I will post this soon. 

Whenever we complete an art project I have students reflect on their work. Actually we are doing a lot of reflecting on all our work this year since I have a group of students who are deep thinkers and have risen to the challenge of wanting to reflect on their progress. Really they are a dream class but I digress. 

Anyways here is a link to the art reflection sheets I have my students complete. 

Cheers,