End of the Year One Day Lesson - Battle for the Board

Continuing our End of the Year One Day Activities is a game we played that I call Battle for the Board.  Battle for the Board is basically Pictionary that I tweaked for a larger scale.  Sometimes we'll play Pictionary as a class for short period of time, and it's difficult to manage 25 kids screaming out answers at the same time.  So for this game, the kids broke off into groups of 3 or 4.  Two groups play at a time, while the others wait in line for their turn.  One of the playing groups is the champions, the other is the challengers.  The champions pick an artist to draw the clue that I give them, and like Pictionary, the two participating groups have to guess what the artist is drawing.  If the champions win, they remain in control of the board and face a new challenger group.  If the challengers win, they take over the board as champions, and the next group up will challenge them.

I shared the clues with the non playing groups so that they could help judge who guessed the right clue first.  It was a huge hit, and a lot of fun to watch as well.

End of the Year One Day Lesson - Origami Bears

This post would be better if I had taken pictures, but my cartoon will have to suffice.  Simply, I demonstrated how to make the origami bear I found on this website in front of my first and second graders.  I also posted each individual step up on the board so kids could follow along as they worked at their own pace.  Then they folded their bear on their own while I circulated and helped table by table.  Anyone who finished quickly helped classmates fold theirs, then we used markers to finish.

End of the Year One Day Activity - Last Class Jeopardy

If you're like me, you love trivia games.  To round out the end of the year, I put together a list of trivia questions to play with my 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders.  The initial set up was Jeopardy-ish, with categories including movies, music, sports, games, and of course art.  Each featured 5 levels of questions (100-500 points).  I wrote the categories and the levels on the board in front of the class, and the teams (tables) took turns picking a question by erasing a number. I read the question, and teams wrote their answers down on a small white board until I told them to show.  Any team that the question right, won the points.  I also found this handy scorekeeper online that I projected up on the wall that was very helpful.

End of the Year One Day Lesson - Sidewalk Chalk

The end of the school year is hectic for everyone.  In the art room, we have to worry about finishing projects for the art show, getting everything graded, and passing the artwork back for the kids to take home, all while juggling changes in schedule for assemblies, incentives, and the multitude of random events that seem to pop up and take away from special time.

So this year, I decided to wrap up our major projects within the first few weeks of May, and filled the last class time or two with one-day activities to get ready for summer and end the year in a fun way. I thought I'd post some of the cool things we did in Art the last few weeks of school.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures with my camera of the games, so I drew pictures of our activities instead.

We were fortunate enough in southwest Ohio to have some beautiful days to close out the year, so on the last day, we went outside and decided to plaster the playground blacktop with sidewalk chalk.  We started by drawing pictures of summer plans - activities or vacations, whatever - and pretty much ended by drawing whatever came to mind.  Lots of kids going to King's Island this summer.  Maybe I'll see you there!

End of Year Art Show

Wilmington's Fine Arts Fair has come and gone.  The artwork on display at all levels is really spectacular, and it was really awesome to see so many parents and community members in attendance.  I managed to snap a few pictures of our artwork from Holmes and East End, as well as the Model Wilmington we made in East End's Art Club.  Check them out!

5th Grade - Books

I've been managing to get a lot of mileage out of my cup of sticks.  For this project, fifth graders pulled 3 sticks out of the cup with random words on them, and then were challenged to write a short story involving the random objects.  First, the stories were planned in their sketchbooks.  Then, the fifth graders wrote them out and illustrated them on small booklets that I had made for everyone.  This project makes me wish we had a few more weeks of school so we could finish these books up nice and tightly; as it stands now the books are mostly pencil, with only a few finishing in time to add some color to it.

Anyway, the result is a ton of very strange and extremely unique stories about evil pickles, possessed hula hoops, or skateboard superheroes.  Here are a few pages for a little peek.

2nd Grade - Cartooning Cliff

I've sort of made it an unofficial goal to include some more of my own artistic interests into my lessons this year (I wrote and illustrated this book, and we did a different cartooning project with fourth grade earlier).  Our final second grade project of the school year introduced students to a cartoon character I've invented named Cliff.  Cliff likes to do all sorts of different things, but he doesn't really like to do the same thing twice.  So we worked hard to think of something unique for Cliff to do.  For the lesson, I gave the second graders a step-by-step on how to draw his head, then it was up to them to give him an activity and fill in the background.

Before you take a look at all the new and cool ideas for Cliff from the second graders, make sure you follow him on Instagram.