Fabulous Freebies: Superhero Style Lesson

For this week's freebies I'm showcasing a fun free lesson idea I got from a former art teaching colleague. She used this Superhero Registration in a fun lesson plan that is perfect for a cross curricular lesson!

The Superhero Registration form would be a fun start to a fictional story or interview for a literacy project. My former colleague combined it with a lego person template as the base of their superhero and had them draw their own hero by adding key details onto the example. The finished examples looked great and I think her students had a lot of fun with it!

If you wanted to add a science element to it you could always do a science experiment to test out super powers like making invisible ink!

Wednesday Website: Artsonia

This week I'm highlighting Artsonia. I've used this site multiple times for various schools I've taught at for all grade levels with success. Artsonia is an online art museum that is completely free to use. You register and assign each student a name. At most schools I've just used their first name but I've also used a private anonymous name for extra privacy as well. Each student is assigned to one of your classes.

After this initial set up you are ready to start uploading artwork! You upload a digital image of each work of art. Since I've joined they have improved their upload process so it's a lot easier than it used to be since you can upload a large amount at a time. If you want you can also add in extra information about the work like a title. You can also group it by assignment as well.

My students enjoyed the viewer count on each work since they loved seeing how many people view their work. Viewers can comment but all comments must be approved by a parent first if one chooses to register as well.

You can buy all sorts of items with your child's artwork on it at the site which my students also loved and some students at each school took advantage of that. I loved that you got 15% of the proceeds which helped me buy more supplies!

Artsonia has always been a success at every school I've taught at so I highly recommend it!

Wednesday Website: Origami Instructions

For this week's website I'm featuring Origami Instructions. First I must admit I love origami as a classroom activity since most students seem to love it and enjoy making it so it's a great high interest lesson. You can use origami for several subjects including history, math and art so it can be a nice cross curricular lesson. Also, if you have a low budget origami is wonderful since you just need a sheet of paper (usually square). I have used copy paper sometimes in simple origami and it works okay as well.

Since I love origami I'm always looking for new shapes and new ways to make it so after browsing many different websites and books Origami Instructions is my favorite. It has both written and visual images of each step that make it very clear what you need to do so you don't get lost. Most of their instructions have examples at the bottom that visitors to the site have made so you can feel confident making them. Also, there is so much variety there! You can find just about anything you want to make on the site.

If you are looking to try origami, check them out first for a successful lesson!

Fabulous Freebies: Thanksgiving Packet for Fast Finishers

This week's fabulous freebies are perfect for the fast and early finishers in your classroom. On my site is my Thanksgiving Art Activities Pack which includes 10 pages of drawing activities for your fast and early finishers. All they need to complete the work is a pencil and a color medium such as markers or crayons.

My students have always enjoyed these and I hope your students do as well! If you enjoy this freebie, please leave feedback for others.

Fun Art Project for Day of the Dead

One of my favorite art lessons that was always a hit was my Day of the Dead skull design. Students loved it since it incorporated Hispanic heritage of some students and others loved it because drawing skulls was encouraged! I have had a lot of success with this lesson with a wide variety of age groups as well from late elementary to early high school with minor modifications.

This lesson incorporates history since students learn about the Day of the Dead from information packets included in the lesson and math since their skull is symmetrically balanced.

The lesson includes written and illustrated directions and gives alternatives for different materials so it can have a wide degree of difficulty. I've also found that students who have a lot of experience with art spend time making complicated skull designs while students that are just starting still have success with basic skull shapes.

Check it out in my shop if you're interested!

Fun Fall Art Activities for Fast Finishers!

If you have creative fast finishers in your classroom, this Fall Fast Finishers Art Activity pack might fit the bill! The pages in this drawing pack are intended to help your students think creatively and problem solve. There are a variety of pages that draw a variety of artistic skills from your students.

I have used these in my classroom regularly for my fast finishers and they worked well! Check out more reviews of these pages here.

Fun Art Sub Lesson!

If you are looking for a fun art project that is ready to use for a sub, this lesson is perfect! Students will have fun designing and promoting a t-shirt during this lesson that is designed with a real world purpose.

Everything you need is included such as:
- Teacher/sub tip sheet
- T-Shirt design instruction sheet for students
- Brainstorming and thumbnail sketch sheet for students
- Final t-shirt design drawing page
- Promotion writing page

This is a lesson I have left for a sub before in my own classroom and had success with so I hope this means it will work for you as well! If you're interested in this lesson, check it out on my TPT store.

Fun & Free Elementary Art Lesson for the End of the Year

If you are looking for some fun elementary art lessons or projects to keep your kiddos busy and have a great time at the end of the year, here is a fun project idea.

For a fun and free art project for the end of the year, check out this FREE Andy Warhol hand print lesson. Andy Warhol was a Pop Artist that is famous for his prints of popular and common objects. This lesson gives some examples of Warhol's work and helps your students create a memory with their hands that they can use to compare from year to year as they grow. I also think that it would be fun to do a hand print project at the beginning and end of each year to compare how their hands grew!

Another idea is to do prints of other objects such as apples or oranges cut in half if you don't want to get their hands quite as messy! You can also alternate in different colors or objects to practice making patterns.

What do you do for the end of the school year? Share it with us below!

My Favorite Websites for Teaching Art

A few weeks ago Etc shared her favorite websites for teaching English. This week I'm sharing some of my favorite websites for teaching art.

Pinterest has become my favorite website for teaching art! I love searching for lesson plans since it is so easy to see what the final product looks like and sometimes the description is enough to understand the lesson. I have done many lessons from Pinterest with ease and have had a lot of success with them. I pin all the lessons I do (and plenty I haven't had time for!) on my Pinterest pages divided by grades K-5 and 6-12 fun art lessons.

I like the Blick art materials website for getting ideas on art lessons because they are very thorough and many times include short videos with tutorials that make it easy to see how to complete the project. Now since they sell art materials sometimes they can use some fancy materials that are not for schools with small budgets but I have still found many relevant and easy lessons on the site.

Origami Instructions is a great website for using origami in your classroom. They have instructions in a variety of ways so if you get to a tricky step (most instructions are quite easy, however!) it is easy to understand what to do.

Origami is also a great thing for fast finishers and sometimes I print out the instructions for fast finishers in my classroom. Some prior practice with origami is helpful, however, if you decide to go this route.

The Incredible Art Department has a wealth of information on art lessons and makes it easy to find what you are looking for. I like that I can search by material, age group, or type of lesson and all the contributers are other teachers so the lesson plans are practical and realistic. Often times photos from their classroom are in the lesson as well.

Do you have a great website for teaching art that I didn't mention? Please let me know about it so I can check it out!

Fabulous Freebies: Free Online Art Museum

This week for our Fabulous Freebies I thought I would give a shout out to the website Artsonia. It is a website I have used at multiple schools that I have taught at to display student artwork and create sort of an online art museum for your school.

Students loved seeing their artwork online and that it could even be bought as a t-shirt or other item and parents enjoyed being able to comment on the artwork and get gifts for grandparents. I liked it because it was easy to use, made it easy to be private for students and earned money towards my budget when something was bought off the site.

Artsonia has everything you need to get started on the site like permission letters to send home for parents. Each student that signs up gets a user name that usually coincides with their first name like Jane1234. One school that I have worked at that was particularly private asked students to choose user names instead of first names so it was very anonymous like laserstar1. Then you simply upload digital images of artwork to the site.

You can make it as detailed as you want by either providing just the assignment name with all the photos of the artwork or give each work of art a title.

Parents can log in and register as a parent and write and okay comments for each work of art. This makes sure the artwork does not have any negative comments posted by it.

What the best part about it to me was getting 15% of the proceeds to help with my budget. I even had students come in a few times wearing t-shirts with their artwork so I know they loved it too.

I highly recommend this for displaying the artwork of your students!

Fun spring lessons for math, literacy and art!

If you are in the mood for fun spring lessons you may want to check out these packets that feature math, literacy and/or art. They all have a variety of fun and colorful graphics that will make you and your students in the mood for spring and are good for late elementary students.

If all of these packets interest you you can purchase my Spring Math, Literacy and Art Bundle that combines all subject areas for a discount. 

My Spring Literacy Centers focus on writing, synonyms/antonyms and suffixes/prefixes. Individual centers are also sold separately if you plan on focusing one skill in particular.

My Spring Math Centers include 10 spring centers that focus on multiplication, division, rounding, simple decimals, money, addition, subtraction, and place value skills. See more by downloading my preview.

  

For a fun art activity for the fast finishers in your classroom or for a quick sub activity check out my Fast Finishers Art for Spring. Included are a pack of drawing pages that encourage creative thinking that are based on spring and my best selling Fast Finishers Art Pack.

Have fun and enjoy spring in your classroom!

Art Criticism for Kids Pack

If you enjoyed last week's post about my Art Writing Prompts packet, you might also enjoy my Art Criticism for Kids pack. This pack contains materials that can help your students write and talk about artwork using appropriate terms.

The packet gives helpful terms that are divided into the four steps of art criticism and suggests four different activities you can do with this pack including playing a game, writing about art and discussing artwork.

I know that sometimes art criticism can feel like pulling teeth to your students and sometimes they just want to make art without discussing it. This packet should make it easy and entertaining so you can easily incorporate it into your classroom.

 Artwork is also included in case you choose to use it with your classroom.

This packet is a great introduction to art criticism and makes it easy for your students to learn about it. To see more and download a preview, check it out here.

10 Fabulous Freebies By the Authors of One Less Headache

                    

#1: Lesson Lady's ACT Test Taking Skills Grammar will help your students learn and practice basic grammar tested on the ACT with this worksheet.  Grammar tested on this sheet include commas, semicolons, colons, and dashes. An answer key is also included.


#2: ETC has a handout for analyzing sources that students complete when they are researching. They must submit one for every source they find. It requires them to put the source's information in MLA format, review the reliability of the source, analyze the type of information, take notes and compare that source to others on the same topic.


#3: In Lesson Lady's Andy Warhol Style Hand Prints Lesson students will create prints using their hands in the style of Andy Warhol.

Students will learn about patterns and printmaking while creating prints of their hands in this fun lesson. Included in this lesson are:
- Step by step directions with a completed example.
- Andy Warhol sheet with simulated Warhol examples and a self portrait of Andy Warhol.
- Pattern practice worksheet.

#4:  Check out this free one page handout for brainstorming ideas to write about and a brief outline for how to format a formal letter.


#5: Lesson Lady has a free Zoo Animal Math Game! You choose if students use multiplication, addition, or subtraction to play this fun game.  Students will add animals to their zoo as they use addition, multiplication, or subtraction to calculate the answers on a pair of dice. The student with the most animals in his or her zoo wins!  All you will need to play this game is a pair of dice. 


#6: Any foreign language teachers out there like to play games?  Check out this game that turns dialoguing in a foreign language into a game of king of the hill.


#7: The Lesson Lady has a FREE how to PowerPoint to help your students learn how to draw basic boxes in two point perspective. This lesson is perfect for introducing your students to two point perspective and helping them learn the basics of drawing this way.

#8: Here is a simple crossword puzzle with Spanish numbers. The clues are riddles and use Spanish numbers.


#9: The Lesson Lady presents Art Bucks! Art Bucks are dollars you can use in your classroom to reward positive behavior and attitudes.

#10:  ETC's most popular product is a bundle of three easy, bakeless cookie recipes to make with students for the holidays or just because chocolate tastes so good. :)

Writing Across the Curriclum: Art Writing Prompts

Writing across the curriculum has something that has always been popular in every school I have taught at and it makes complete sense since writing is such a crucial part of everyday life and a necessary skill for our students.

Sometimes it can be tricky to make writing interesting in every subject. This is especially true of art since sometimes students can tend to think art is all about creating or getting messy when it is really also about learning.

To help combine writing and art I put together a packet of art focused prompts. The prompts are divided into three categories - easy, medium and hard so you can pick and choose the level you want for your class.

Check out the preview if you want to read some example prompts for each level.

These writing prompts are also great discussion starters and can be used in many other ways including materials for sub folders, exit tickets, bell ringers and more.

It's an easy to go packet with little to no prep work, just depends on if you want to make the prompts on transparencies or just read them out loud to your class!

If you're interested in this pack, check it out at my TPT store.

New Fall Art Packet for Early Finishers Available!

I recently added a new fall packet to my store, a Fall Fast/Early Finishers Art Activities Pack! This pack contains 25 printable fall drawing activities for the fast or early finishers in your classroom.

If you have students that enjoy drawing in your classroom, this might be the ideal fit. Each page can be printed in black and white or color and contain a fall related drawing activity. Information about artists and art terms is also included as well as all information such as fall holidays from around the world.

This packet is based off of my best seller, my pack of 50 year round Fast Finishers Art Activities.

 

To see more of this pack, please download my preview. All of the pages are easy to print and only require a pencil and something to add color with, such as colored pencils or markers.

I gave all Facebook fans a special deal on this product when it was first published. To get more special deals like my page!

Fun packet for end of the year downtime!

It is easy to find yourself with more downtime in your classroom at the end of the year. Sometimes grades have to be closed out and turned in early and the end of the year usually marks a more relaxed atmosphere for students not taking final exams. To help keep students that have finished early or have free time on task and using their brain, I have created art packets that rely on using each student's creativity. 

This Fast Finishers Art Activities packet contains 50 printable creative drawing pages. You don't have to worry about messing up the classroom or getting out a bunch of supplies since students only need a pencil and something to color with for the activities in this drawing packet.

It has been rated 4/4 stars by more than 50 teachers so check it out!