NAEA Adventures!

It is so amazing to be here in sunny SanDeigo, California with all of these INSPIRING and INCREDIBLE Art Educators for National Art Education Association Conference. I'm learning so much and also having a great time as I get to share these days with one of my best friends from college who is a middle school Art Teacher. 

Here is a recap in pictures of my time so far! With a full day to go!

Matching Shirts Day 1. Yes. We are those people. These babies came from TeeSpring and not sure if you can still get them :(

Adventures in the Exhibit Hall brought us to this Mr Brush fun :) Suprisingly enough, more people were not taking advantage of this guy!

Finished up the day in Seaport Village for dinner (with a beautiful view) and  Buskerfest (street performer fest). Wish I had a picture of the fire breather and sword swallower but I did catch one of the guy that went inside a giant balloon!

Day 2 Matching Shirts! Keep Calm and Teach Art brought to you by the Art of Ed Apparel! 

Speaking of...At the Art of Ed booth!

Me totally fan girl-ing about Cassie Stephens! (She is an AMAZING blogger and fashionista!)

More Exhibit Hall fun visiting the Micheals Booth, this project has totally inspired me to make some of my own personal work with stamps and Inktense pencils! Stay tuned for that!

Finished up the day with Coronado. Incredible town across from the San Deigo Bay. Had to take a ferry  and then took a tandem bike. Yes you read that correctly. We took the bike a few miles across the town to one of the most incredible beaches I have seen. We couldn't resist going in the water so we wore our swimsuit bottoms and kept our shirts and cardigans on because it wasn't quite warm enough. The funny looks were so worth it and the picture of me jumping sums up my emotions at that moment perfectly. 

Day 3 Matching Color Wheel Shirts!

Stay tuned for the rest of Day 3 adventures!

FIRST DAY OF SPRING!

A very happy first day of spring indeed! 40 degrees and plenty of sunshine! AND Another set of hand flowers this time from my Kinderbeaners at Kennedy!

Meanwhile...

It's the last week before spring break so I've been busier than ever! New displays are going up and the week has been spent having "Ketchup" days! Catch up days mean classes that are ahead of others do some small, independent, take home that day, project so I can work with individual students so they can complete unfished work and we can all relax a little... lets face it...the week before any long break is tough because they can see the light! And trust me...SO DO TEACHERS! So stay tuned for awesome art history project displays and enjoy these adorable hand flowers my first graders did today!

ALMOST FORGOT! It's spirit week at one of my buildings and it was superhero day today! Obviously I participated! My assistant was my sidekick! Color Girl and sidekick Super Splat!

YAM!

For those of you who don't know...YAM is Youth Art Month (which is nationally celebrated!!!) Here is a link to the National Art Education Association website for more info about this awesome month! Stevens Point and other schools in Portage County work together with the Portage County Public Library to display work throughout the children's department. Somehow, I lucked out and got all 3 of my buildings next to each other which made hanging REALLY easy (I also had the help of a certain awesome 1st grade teacher). Congrats to my kiddos whose work got chosen for such an important show!

Jefferson Elementary

Kennedy Elementary

McDill Elementary

(Left to Right) McDill, Kennedy, Jefferson Elementary 

4th Grade Radial Printed Snowflakes

When I saw this post on pinterest I knew I had to do this project but jazz it up a bit! It inspired me to do printing across multiple grades, especially the printed trees we did with marker caps for snowflakes!

This project ended up being a 1 day project. I think next time I could add a few more steps. Maybe printing a boarder on another color to attach it to? Not sure. Any suggestions would be great!

To start the class, I put the words "Radial Symmetry" and "Printing" up on the board and asked them to tell me what they knew or take guess about what those words meant. After a great discussion I showed them a PDF that I put together about radial symmetry that had the definition and examples. Then I told them our subject matter was going to be snowflakes! A few days before I decided to do this project I stumbled upon an article about this amazing photographer who invented a new way to take MACRO shots of snowflakes. I put together another PDF with his photographs to show. The kiddos were really inspired by them. Before they got to work I did a quick demo about printing neatly with objects and how to create the radial symmetry. When they finished printing one we added glitter and they could do a second or have free art. Many choose to do a second :)

Jefferson Elementary...

 McDill Elementary...

 Kennedy Elementary...