Pop Art Park Bench Project

This was one of the projects that I had the most fun with in art with my grade 5 to 8 students. I was asked to paint some park benches near the playground. The community bought paint. I had freedom to design what I wanted. So I chose the Orange Crush can as a bright orange bench to paint. From a distance you can see the orange slice on the back of the bench. We are a nutrition positive school so I was worried about using pop as a theme but no one seemed to care. People from the community liked them and said so as we were painting them. The students did the backgrounds and I did the fine details to perfect the letters and droplets and shadows. I did Sprite and 7Up on either side of the Crush bench mainly because that was the pop sold in our machine at school. Also they were blue and green.
The next fall I painted a Coke and Pepsi bench because they were near the ball diamonds and the pepsi can had a girl on it with a baseball cap. Coke and Pepsi are rivals and these benches faces opposite ball diamonds. The Pepsi bench was much more creative than the Coke bench. Kids loved them. The idea was to avoid graffitti. But they still spray painted red on the white Coke letters and blue on the white Pepsi letters.
This past year the community asked me to paint the park bench on the top of the hill. I plan to do Mountain Dew on it. The other school had painted red and white stripes on it and green and yellow stripes.
I've written an article on murals and how to paint them at Bright Hub. The article is called Pop Art Park Bench. It talks about the materials, method and mural websites to check out. This has been one of the lasting art projects I have done at this school and one of the most rewarding.

Fun in the Sun Art Project - Rice Paper

This project is easy to do with little shells and feathers you collect from the beach. I have done this project in the fall with collected leaves and flower petals. I have also tried it with glitter and flat chinese napkins with gold leaf on them. It is very easy to do. The hardest material to have on hand is wax paper. It can be made as long as you like. I made a long wall hanging with it for my bedroom. Looks nice with light shining through. This project I describe is for kids in the summer at a beach who want to do a craft. You can use it on a nice lantern or hang it in a window. See an article I wrote called: Fun in the Sun Summer Art Project.
I have made paper in art class but this project has turned out to be one of my favorites. I use it usually with grade 4's and 5's. Its messy with the white glue and kleenex but I would recommend it. Have the students collect the materials and bring them. Make sure they are flat. I tried to bring in flat fossilized leaves which were very pretty but rather expensive and not needed. Kids like adding glitter or sequins but you can't see them through the paper very well. Colored leaves, petals and flat cedar boughs work well. Anything you recommend would be welcome.

Pop Can Pop Art Project

To end off the school year, I had students learn the pop art genre of art. Instead of Andy Warhol's famous tomato soup can, I had grade 8 students choose from among several pop cans to sketch and then paint in bright colors. I explained about contrasting colors, how pop art should pop out at you and how it deals with unexpected colors such as bright blue on a typically red and white coke can.
The students created great sketches and were in the middle of painting when year end activities cut short this project. At bright hub, I wrote an article on the materials, preparation, and procedure for this project. See this article write up at: Pop Art Pop Can Project - An Elementary Art Lesson.
I was able to use some current examples of pop art in this lesson and received permission from the artist, Van Taylor Monroe, to show his pop art of Obama painted onto shoes. There is also some interesting pop art now being created for designs on flash drives. Where have you noticed pop art in today's culture?

Father's Day Art Projects

With Father's Day approaching, teachers might find it hard to come up with a quick and easy art project for Father's Day. Some teachers make birdhouses with their children. This requires planning, materials and help from parents. So, I wrote an article to create some simple art projects in grade 2 to 8 for Father's Day. They mostly involves sketching, cutting and pasting collages from magazines and posters, or painting. Try some of them.
The first 4 of 10 projects are found in this article at Bright Hub: Top 10 Father's Day Art Projects

The next 6 projects are found in part 2 of the article at:
Top 10 Father's Day Art Projects - Part 2

I suggest making a Father's Day card as a separate project. At the grade 4 level we are creating bowls from magazines. This project has taken several classes. The magazine bowl project procedures and lessons can be found at: Recycled Art - magazine Bowl Project
The gift to their father is to put some Hersheys hugs and kisses in the bowl, or golf tees, fish hooks or other small items. We also spray painted the bowls in sivler, black or red. The students liked this effect but did not hold the bowl in place too well.

May is Math Month

I find this month to be the crunch time at school since lots of curriculum is yet to be covered and students are ready to go play outside. The activities at night make homework hard to accomplish. Teachers have a lot to get through and the track and field days, band concerts and outdoor cleanups are taking more and more time out of a typical spring day. So, I wrote 2 articles suggesting how parents might help teach their child at home the concept of fractions. This can be reinforced many times and will help give the child hands on opportunities to understand fractions. The article is about using an egg carton to teach parts of a whole. Then the child goes on to use measuring cups in a chocolate chip cookie recipe to help measure fractional amounts and then double a recipe. Doubling or tripling a recipe helps to make the child want to understand the concept of multiplying fractions so they don't ruin the cookies! Try these with your child.
Fraction Fun at Home: Modeling Fractions and Multiplying Fractions

Recycled Art Projects - Shoe Sculptures

The Conservation In a Shoebox art show prompted me to assign redesigning shoes to Mr. Shewchuck's class. Don't chuck shoes, reuse! was a message written to the students. I asked them what "footprint" they would leave on the earth. How would they mount the shoes? Would they walk on water, walk the walk, walk on a thin line, walk on a path, follow someone?? Did their shoe shine? Did it shine a light on conservation? Did they "toe" the line? Did they make a stand and stand up for what is right? By posing these questions on the board, the students came up with some pretty creative shoes.
An article written about the project is found at: Recycled Art Project: Shoe Sculptures
The top shoe was called "Flower to Empower" and was made of paper mache with flowers glued all over it. The "Bee Free From Pollution" shoe mounted on a flower was my second pick. Creative and fun project that I took many pictures of and will do again.

Recycled Art Projects - Conservation in a Shoebox

Recently, a student art show prompted me to do conservation based art projects. The projects were for grade 6 - 8 students. They brainstormed what they would like to see in their future in a perfect green world. Then they designed projects to fit in a 12 by 12 by 24 inch high space. The title was "Conservation in a Shoebox". One class had to design shoes. The medium could be clay, paper mache, pop cans, old shoes, cardboard, wire, etc. They had to give a title to the piece, medium used and name. On another index card they had to explain what they were trying to teach the world about conservation.
The project was very creative. Especially because they knew that a few pieces would be chosen for a student art show. Some items the students designed were: pop can shoes, bowls from magazines, recycled worlds (dioramas), pop bottle hats, magazine shopping bags, pop can tops jewellry, wind energy farms, parks, biomes, birds made of seeds, and a hot air balloon as alternate transportation.
The shoes were painted with buttons glued on, paper mached with flowers glued on, molded out of wire, cut out of foam, redesigned by gluing on pop cans, newspapers, and sand.
I wrote 4 articles about the projects. They can be found at Bright Hub. The procedures and pictures are explained in the articles with hints and tips.
How to make robots out of old nuts and bolts: Recycled Robot Project
How to make bowls out of magazines: Recycled Magazine Bowl Project
How to make sculptures from pop cans: Recycled Pop Can Project