I’ve often thought if there were just 4 or 5 of me I could get everything done in the world that I am interested in doing.  If only!!

I am so many things. On jennyknappenberger.com I share all of these things  in one place and here, hopefully, you will get some idea of my artistic side(s).

First and foremost I am an artist and have been since I was a young child. I love hearing my mom tell me that when I was young I would rather draw and color then watch T.V. –that hasn’t changed! On my website you’ll see paintings, drawings and other fine art that I’ve either done in the past or am working on now.

I am also an art teacher going on my 8th year. I spent two happy and productive years at a middle school in Virginia where I won Super Teacher of the Year award in 2008 (that was super cool!).  I have been published in School Arts and in Arts and Activities. Now I work at an elementary school in Arizona. I’ve embraced being an elementary art teacher…and I love it more and more all the time!  I started selling product on Teachers Pay Teachers about a year ago because I feel passionate about integrating art into the general education classroom. A few years ago I presented one of my published lessons at a NCTE conference in Florida. The lesson has to do with using altered books and integrating the techniques into a language arts classroom. The teachers were so eager to learn about how they could use art in their rooms (they were also intimidated). I know art can be scary to people who don’t feel like they are “creative” or “artistic” –and that is where I come in! www.artwithjennyk.com makes it EASY and is designed to save teachers time. Even if you are artistic or creative you still probably like being able to save time!

I, too, am a ballroom dancer. I love teaching ballroom dance and did so for 7  years in Charlottesville, Virginia. On my website you’ll see pictures, videos, etc. showcasing my life as a dancer. I started dancing ballet in 7th grade when I saw my little sister perform at her recital and one of the numbers was to a Paula Abdul song…I was hooked every since! I have a small dance studio in my home where I teach from sometimes (mostly wedding couples). Just recently I had a dance performance. Here are some pictures (video  link below)!

And I am a seamstress…haha…well not really! I just love sewing. I make aprons mostly and for fun (and since I have nothing else to do (yeah right)  I sometimes re-cover perfectly fine chairs in my home, make curtains that would be cheaper to just buy…you get the point…I love making stuff!!! I LOVE making aprons to wear in my classroom. I’ve made so many.

Most importantly I am a mom and wife. I have an incredibly supportive husband and a sweet little 2 year old!

I’m joining in with the fun everyone is having over at Falling into First so here are the answers to my Q&A posed over there:

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS…My daughter, my daughter, my daughter…OH you want other things?  I love my mac computer, pickles, peanut m&m’s, any and all art materials and my dance shoes!

IF YOU WEREN’T A TEACHER, WHAT WOULD YOU WANT TO BE?
If I weren’t a school teacher I would go back to being a professional ballroom dance teacher.

THREE LITTLE WORDS THAT DESCRIBE YOU.

VERY HARD WORKING!

 

FINISH THE SENTENCE, “________,  SAID NO (ART) TEACHER EVER!!”

“Why, yes, I do see that you are “done” even though you’ve only been working for an entire 5 seconds.”

Q: IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY AND YOU CAN INVITE ANYONE {DEAD OR ALIVE} TO THE PARTY. WHO ARE YOU INVITING?

Oh NO brainer there—Elvis Presley! (my daugther’s name is Presley) I’m a BIG FAN!

 Q:YOU GET TO PICK ONE SUPERPOWER. WHAT IS IT?

 Also an easy question! This goes back to the first sentance of this post–I’d make 4 or 5 of me so I could do everything I want to do!

Q: WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE OR SAYING?

“Be the change you want to see in the world” 

Q: IF YOU HAD TO SING ONE SONG ON AMERICAN IDOL, WHAT WOULD IT BE? 

NOPE! I would not be caught dead singing! But here is a video (click on the picture) of me dancing…mabye JLo would let me do that?

 

 

Q: ARE YOU A MORNING PERSON OR A NIGHT OWL?

I’m a little bit of both really. I stay up WAY too late working on TPT because that is the best time I have to do so.  

Q: WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE RESOURCE THAT YOU’VE CREATED IN YOUR TPT SHOP?

My favorite resource is my Interactive Coloring Book. I’m very proud of these and they are helping teachers easily integrate art into the classroom.  I created over 80 images (mostly holiday based), no two will ever be alike and I’ve recently added a lot of writing prompts to make it even MORE effective in the classroom!

Thanks for reading!

Jenny

Fine Art Friday: Jasper Johns  & Robert Indiana

“I am ____ years old” Art Integration Lesson  

(pre-k to 1st grade)

Many artist have used the common shapes of numbers to create art. Artists like Jasper Johns and Robert Indiana are two very famous artists you might recognize. You know Robert Indiana for this piece of work:

If you like his “LOVE” image  you might like this free blog tutorial on how to create your own with your students. This “LOVE” image has become extremely famous recently and can be seen on just about everything. However, he was also very famous for making art using numbers, like this..

Jasper Johns was an artist that loved to work with wax and used a technique called encasustic painting–here you can see an example of how he made art with numbers. Using numbers to make art is so fun that even these two very famous artists liked to do it!

Kindergarten is a fun age for integrating art into the curriculum. All kids think they are artists and are eager to try just about anything that involves art materials. This lesson is a simple, easy way to review, teach, or talk about numbers with your pre-k, kindergarten or 1st grade students. First start by reviewing numbers 0-9 with your students. Have them take turns coming up to the board to write their numbers. If you are just starting the school year this is an easy way to assess who already knows their numbers (or who THINKS they do!).  Then, using large paper (I like to use 12″ x 18″) and a marker (so they don’t get caught up in erasing with a pencil) have students write their numbers on their paper. I like to do one number at a time. First I draw the number and then they draw the number. We repeat this process for all 10 numbers. This way any kid who doesn’t know their numbers yet will just copy the “shape” of what you draw. My Smart Board looks like this when I am done.

What do you notice?

First off you might notice that I drew my numbers overlapped. You might also notice that I drew my numbers as “shapes” that can be colored in. I talk about all of these things to my students. What a great way to see if they will draw on top of other numbers and “overlap” each number. This is tricky for little kids and is great practice.

Here are some pictures of kids working on their numbers…

Their are so many variations of how you could do this lesson. You could give kids different colors for each number…you could give them all different colored paper… you could read them books about counting, colors, etc. All of those things, i’m sure you are already an expert on so I trust you’ll take this idea and run with it!

For the last part of this lesson–and one that makes it look a bit like modern art–I have the students color in the number that matches their age. This is a number they ALWAYS know! If you are working with kindergarteners they’ll be coloring in the 5 or the 6. This is a fun way to connect to something the kids know all about–their age! Depending on your students you could also talk to them about negative space (the shapes behind the numbers) or the little shapes that are made when the numbers overlap–all of these thing could be colored. I go around and write “I am” on the paper when they are finished ( at this time of the year I also write their name so I know who the artwork belongs to).

*****FREEBIE*****

I have created a FREE worksheet to go along with this lesson. Click on the image to download.

Have students find their age in the mix of numbers and then color it in. Use this before the art lesson or after depending on the needs of your group. It would server as a great example or introduction to the project or a review of the lesson the next day! Or simply as a fun activity anytime for early finishers, etc.

Thanks for integrating art into your curriculum, it’s so important!

Jenny K.

Providing this opporunity for children, “smoothing the way,” is what integrating art is all about. Teachers need simply to provide students with creative opportunities and “elminate obstacles” in order to witness the creativity of their students.

Using art in the classroom in connection with our modern world makes for relevant, meaningful and engaging experiences for children in their learning. I dare say we “trick them” into learning this way.  This is what I had in mind when I recently created my “Selfie” and “iDesign an App” lessons. These lessons are popular because students can relate to these projects and most importantly they are interested in them.

As soon as you have student engagement the rest is a breeze!

I’m sure by now you’ve heard the TED talk by Sir. Ken Robinson “How schools kill creativity” …and if you haven’t then it’s a must for all teachers. Check it out here:

One of the famous things Ken states is that we “…teach creativity out of children.” I bet you are wondering how that could possibly be.  Well, when children are always told they are “wrong” they start to be afraid to think for themselves and before you know it they no longer feel safe to be creative. Ken Robinson says it better than I ever could.

After all it takes bravery to be wrong.  All children are born artists, you’ve heard that saying from Picasso probably a million times.

It is our job as educators to keep our students from “growing up” when it comes to creative thinking and problem solving. We don’t know what the world will look like when our students are adults but we do know that creative thinking and problem solving skills will always be essential to their success.  We must provide our students with creative moments where it doesn’t matter if they are right or wrong, it doesn’t matter what their test score says and it doesn’t matter what others think. We must provide our students with moments that inspire them and moments that allow them to feel safe to create without judgement or fear of being wrong. These two lessons do all of these things. Both of these lessons make excellent bulletin board displays that your students will be proud of.

1. Selfie (self portrait) lesson with writing prompts (text messages). Students LOVE getting to make a “selfie” and write a text message in class. I told my student to go home and tell their parents that I gave them an iPhone at school and then to watch the look on their parents faces. The kids thought that was pretty funny! This project allows students to draw, write, and express their interests in a new and creative way. Nobody can tell them they are wrong when it comes to themselves. The writing prompts encourage students to discuss things that are meaningful to them like their summer and what goals they might have for the year. There is even a blank text message form so kids can do all the creating!

2. “iDesign an App” group poster project- This project is the mother of all creative and collaborative projects! First students will design an app that includes details like the app name, size, description and logo design. Students will also design and draw a “preview” of one page from the app. Then students will draw the logo onto a post-it-note. The notes from the class will be added to a group iPad poster (that the kids also make). The poster holds from 24-32 app logos that are 3″ x 3″ standard post-it-note size. Children get to work individually and creativity while dreaming up any app they can think of and then when they are all done their work will be displayed collectively on the iPad poster. The final poster will look something like this…

Both of these lessons are now availalbe in my TPT store. I know these lessons will be engaging, foster creativity in your kids, and will make your life as a teacher a little bit easier (and those are my two main goals with teachers pay teachers).

If you would like to see these products in more detail, please click on the images below and download the previews.

Thanks for stopping by my Blog–don’t forget to add me to your Bloglovin’ feed. Here are some freebies for taking the time to read my blog!

I also have this FREE handout on my blog… (click on the image)

Thanks for all your do!

This is my first ever “Currently” and I’m excited to be linking up with the Oh Boy 4th Grade blog, the original currently queen for this fun little blogger get-to-know-you game!  I started my blog many years ago but never really joined bloglovin’ so keeping up with posts was hit and miss–now that I have the bloglovin’ feed on my phone I feel more in the “loop” with all my favorite bloggers—and I keep learning about new amazing authors all the time.

So, without further ado, here is my First eeeever  Currently for September 2014.

Listening: When I put the music on I almost always put on the Van Morrison Pandora station. Something about Van the Man makes me feel like home, maybe because my dad loved his music…who knows? I also find that on that station they play a lot of reggae music…and that get’s my two year old dancing so it’s a win-win for me and her. The other station I love is Regina Spektor Pandora station because I always hear new music that I like over there.

Loving: The addition on our home. My brother graduated with a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Arizona a few years ago. So after graduation he was anxious to work on a house. We just so happened to have space on our property for him to build said house. Soooo my brother designed a kick butt modern “tiny” addition to our home. We submitted plans to the city on Christmas Eve of last year (2013) and now coming in for the home stretch. We will probably be finished by November. My husband and father have both given countless hours to this project. My brother works full-time at his firm and then comes over every day (yes EVER day) and works on his masterpiece. He is quite talented and very hard working. The results are stunning. Here are a few pictures.

(Left: my brother looking at original plans, middle: northwest corner of structure, right: cabinets built by my father).

Thinking: I drove the extra 10 minutes this morning to take my daughter to a grocery store where the carts have little cars on the front of them. She loves to “drive” and I love to shop in peace. After our grocery store shopping I took her to get breakfast. As I was sitting with her I just looked at her with tears in my eyes thinking “I just wish I could be with her all day, every day.” Some day I hope! Here she is…

(We’ve been doing “girly” things lately like putting pink in our hair and painting our nails!)

Wanting & Needing: These two go hand-in-hand because I am always wanting for more time and stealing it away from the time I should be sleeping. I have so many ideas and ambitions that I can’t ever seem to get my to-do list shortened. Once my daughter goes to bed I have a few hours to myself to work, create, blog etc. This is when I should also cut the night off at a normal time and sleep but usually I stay up too late working. I’m a big of a work-aholic and always have been. I don’t watch television so that helps but still there is never enough time or sleep!

3 trips:  My father turns 60 this month so my sisters and I are planning some thing fun for him but the location hasn’t exactly been nailed down yet. Most likely it will be in a cabin somewhere in AZ. Over fall break my husband and I like to try and get to San Diego for a few days. Last fall break we were in San Diego “dreaming” about Teachers Pay Teachers and brainstorming all the fun things we could do. Never did we think our store would have been as successful as it is today. My dream last year was to earn money on TPT to save for my daugthers college…and we have been so blessed to be able to do that. I might even make enough one day to pay off my own crazy college loans. The third trip will most likely be for Christmas but I’m not sure where that will be yet either! We took a huge, 3 week trip to Virginia over the summer and so that is most of our “trip” funds for the year!

Well, that was fun! thanks for reading

I’m joining Erin Cobb over at I’m Lovin’ Lit for her fun Thursday Throw Down Linky Party!

As an art teacher I know it’s a little bit “unfair” to compare how I use interactive learning to how a classroom teacher does. So I wanted to be “fair” and share how I integrate core subjects into my art lessons. I work at a title one school and the majority of my students speak English as their second language. Whenever I can help them with their math, reading, writing,  science, social studies , etc. etc. I do. There are certainly times we do art for just the sake of art, materials investigation and discovery learning, but most of the time I’m trying to integrate my art lessons with the common core subjects to help my students as much as possible and to provide them with an alternate (fun) way of learning. This is also what I try to create for my online teaching store over at Teachers Pay Teachers. I create and share art integration lessons that  save the teacher time and make learning fun for kids.  In this post I will be highlighing one of my favorite lessons: Quadrilateral robots (grade 3-5). Next month I will share my  math fact group posters (grades 3-5)  and my Salvador Dali telling time lesson (grades 1-2).

 Quadrilateral 

Common Core Standards

3^rd grade: CCSS.Math.Content.3.G.A.1 Understand that shapes in different categories (e.g., rhombuses, rectangles, and others) may share attributes (e.g., having four sides), and that the shared attributes can define a larger category (e.g., quadrilaterals). Recognize rhombuses, rectangles, and squares as examples of quadrilaterals, and draw examples of quadrilaterals that do not belong to any of these subcategories.

4^th grade: CCSS.Math.Content.4.G.A.2 Classify two-dimensional figures based on the presence or absence of parallel or perpendicular lines, or the presence or absence of angles of a specified size. Recognize right triangles as a category, and identify right triangles.

5^th grade: CCSS.Math.Content.5.G.B.3 Understand that attributes belonging to a category of two-dimensional figures also belong to all subcategories of that category. For example, all rectangles have four right angles and squares are rectangles, so all squares have four right angles.

5^th grade: CCSS.Math.Content.5.G.B.4 Classify two-dimensional figures in a hierarchy based on properties.

Math + Art = FUN! Learn about quadrilaterals while designing and constructing a robot. Show students an example of a robot made up of only quadrilateral shapes. Instruct students that they are to create their robot using ONLY the quadrilateral shapes of squares, rectangles, rhombuses, parallelograms, trapezoids and kites. Encourage students to use their imaginations to create a robot of their own design!

STEPS:

Step #1: Teach students what quadrilaterals are.  Click here for a free handout.

Step #2: Draw each quadrilateral shape on the board; square, rectangle, trapezoid, rhombus, parallelogram and kite. Instruct students that they will be making a robot using only these shapes. Encourage them to use their imaginations to create their robots.

Step #3: Give students a 12” x 18” sheet of black paper and a variety of colored construction paper. You can choose a color scheme or just let the kids pick!

Step #4: Give students scissors and have them cut out quadrilateral shapes for the body, head, arms, & legs using the primary colored construction paper (students should not glue yet). Some students like to use a pencil at this step and first draw the shape before they cut it out.  Other students like to cut without drawing first. Let the artists decide how they would like to solve this. Encourage student to describe the quadrilateral shapes they are making to one another

Step #5: Have students cut out smaller details for the robot, such as the eyes, mouth, hands, feet and other smaller shapes. Remind students that they are using only quadrilateral shapes.

Step #6: Once students have cut out and roughly assembled all of the pieces on the black paper give them glue sticks so they can begin gluing down each piece.

Voila! Your finished work will be a fun, creative and colorful quadrilateral robot. Not only will students have a lot of fun dreaming up their Robot but they will also become familiar with all types of Quadrilaterals in a very fun and easy way!

Here are some of the finished Robots.

This lesson was so fun I even created a holiday version: Quadrilateral Nutcrackers

On top of the art project I decided it would be fun to see how deep the learning of quadrilaterals actually went. So I created a game called “Robot Road” and students use their knowledge of quadrilaterals and all the subsets to answer higher level thinking questions. Students get to use a paper robot to move along the “road” and discover what quadrilateral is a subset of another. If you are interested in the game and worksheets click here.

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I have included one FREE sample of the posters that are in my unit. Please click here to download the Kite Poster.

I thank you for reading my post and I hope you see how fun art integration can be! Next month I will be writing about my math fact collaborative group posters – I have them for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and for all different times of the year. I hope you all have a great year!

See you soon !

Jenny K.

Fine Art Fridays: Nick Georgiou

[See "Update" at the end of this post to see what Nick has been up to this summer!]

This is a really fun story, and it starts at my wedding in 2009. My husband and I were married in Tucson, AZ at Tohono Chul Park. Each year the park hosts a holiday lights event where they put thousands of lights on their plants and trees and invite the city to come and enjoy the park at night. The year we were married they offered weddings at their park during the time the lights were up. We were married on new years eve 2009 with all the beautiful lights at the Tohono Chul Park. Then our cake cutting and other traditional ceremonies were held in the art studio of the park. Our reception was at the Westward LookResort but that is an entirely different story to tell!

Fast forward to our one-year anniversary in 2010 and we were yet again at Tohono Chul park enjoying the Christmas lights. We went into the art gallery to get warm and see what art was on display and there hanging on the wall in their art gallery were these pieces of art. (These two pictures are the actual photographs I took from the show)

WOW—I’ll never forget the moment I saw that cactus and owl!

The art was something I had never seen before and by an artist living in Tucson. The artist is Nick Georgiou and he came to Tucson via New York in association with the University of Arizona. I immediately thought that since my husband and I had our one year anniversary coming up (the paper anniversary) and these unique pieces of art were made from recycled books and newspapers, that I would contact the artist and see if he had anything available for purchase. What a cool gift that would be to a husband who has greatly supported my love of the arts.

I contacted Nick Georgiou and was able to visit his studio and pick out something I liked–a still life of flowers in a vase.  I gave the art to my husband for our anniversary and he loved it. It is still one of our most favorite pieces of art.

I’ve looked at Nick’s art hanging at my house hundreds of times and wondered why it is that I like it so much. One reason is because he reminds me of Vincent Van Gogh only in more of a 3D aspect. Van Gogh is my ALL TIME favorite artist. So there is something about Nick’s work that is similar to Van Gogh; so rich, textured and “juicy” but yet different and extremely unique. Nick is obviously his own artist but I would imagine that had I seen a Van Gogh for the first time the way I did Nick’s work I would have had the same response!

Recently I was lucky enough to meet Nick again and see his studio for the second time. This time I got to take my daughter to see all of his fantastic work. Nick is so approachable and “real.” He let Presley touch his famous dog like creature and we had wonderfully rich art conversations. He is passionate about the reasons why he creates his art.

Nick is now showing his art in a New York gallery called the Opera Gallery and is showing with artists like Andy Warhol and Keith Haring (uh, no wonder we like him so much!). I feel so fortunate to have met him (twice) and to have his beautiful artwork in my home.

If you ever get a chance to see some of his work in real life – take it! You will not be disappointed. If you like his work consider following his blog. He’s extremely nice, smart and talented and I’m sure you are going to see a lot from him in the future!

Here are a few more photographs from his Tumblr page!

UPDATE: Nick has apparently been hard at work this summer on a storefront display for the Hermes store on Madison Avenue in NYC. The display looks amazing!  To see for yourself, visit his new Instagram page!

There is something about the handprints of a child that are timeless and unique. I set out to try and do something “cool” with handprints with my new group of kindergarten students. I was trying to avoid the typical “turkey hand” projects. At my school each classroom teacher adopts a University of their choice and they talk to their students about being “College Bound.” My school is part of the No Excuses University network of schools. I decided to try and integrate the handprints of kindergarten students with the “mascot” of a kindergarten class that I teach.

When I dreamed up the lesson I was thinking about how neat it was going to be to have hands represent fur or feathers of the mascot of this class. Well…it turns out the “mascot” is actually an Indian Chief for the University of Illinois. AHHHH Cool—this was going to be even better than I thought. The headdress of the Indian Chief would look GREAT made out of the handprints of the kids. What a great way to get the kids excited about their college.

Now, I don’t know about you but I for one am not going to print handprints with 25 kinders at one time–ALONE. So instead I created centers for the kids to rotate through. I ran the center with the handprints while students rotated through other centers they could work at independently. When children rotated to me, I supervised as they printed their hands numerous times on a 12″ x 18″ piece of paper. Then one-by-one they went and washed up before rotating to the next center. This kept the project fun and manageable for me. That made me happy …and a happy art teacher is a good thing!

For more center ideas click HERE.

For week one (I have 40 minute classes) we rotated centers and we were able to get every child’s hand printed. I had some kids print in yellow, red and blue and then I had some other children mix the paints together and print some secondary colors.

The next week my “center” was cutting out the hands. Since it’s the beginning of the school year I wanted to actually be able to spend time with the kids watching how they hold their scissors and helping them cut around the hands. Luckily we didn’t lose any fingers (real or printed!). Each child cut out about 8 hand prints.

I then went home and created a larger poster of the University of Illinois  mascot and cut and taped the pieces together to get one large poster. Like this…

Once the poster was put together I cut around the circle to get rid of the outside edges.  I then glued the handprints around the headdress. I was able to use 2 or more hands from each kid! The teacher loved it and the kids were so excited to see what we had created with their hands. It would be a lot of fun to try this with other University mascots. Here is our final project!

Thanks for reading!

Making art is fun any time of the year! However, during holidays it’s especially fun because kids have some parameters to work within to help them decide what to create (sometimes that is the hardest part about art). For Halloween, kids get to work with shapes/symbols like ghosts, bats and cats while they explore colors such as orange, black and purple.

Here I have compiled (in detail) 10 Fun and Easy Halloween Art Lessons for Kids. You’ll have enough ideas here to keep you busy for years to come…so pin this article so you can refer back to it whenever you need to!

1.Exploring Halloween Shapes & Symbols using Magazine Strips

Materials: magazine strips, glue, scissors, construction paper and FREE Halloween templates (click HERE).

Download the silhouette outlines of the Halloween symbols HERE. Cut out the templates and have the kids use them to trace onto thick construction paper (the kids can pass the templates around the room when they are done).

Then, depending on the age of your students you can either have them cut long strips of magazine pages OR you can pre-cut them and have them set out on the table for the start of this project. I like to pre-cut because I have a paper cutter and it’s much faster (and straighter) if I do it. The kids take a looonnnggg time when they look through the magazines because they get…ya know…distracted!

Students should then cut the magazine strips to fit into the Halloween shape they traced. They can play with the direction and texture as they place the strips within their Halloween shape.This is great for fine motor development. Students will enjoy looking through the box of magazine strips for various colors and little pictures they recognize. Once the shape is completely filled with magazine strips, the kids can then cut it out and and this will “trim” the edge that didn’t line up perfectly. Then glue the final work to adifferent colors of construction paper and hang up for display. The final artwork will be full of texture, color and lines! 

2. Pumpkins with Tissue Paper

Materials: tissue paper, orange crayon, glue, scissors, paint brushes, permanent marker, construction paper and FREE Pumpkin template (click HERE).

I like to use the technique in this lesson for all kinds of other projects–it’s a nice “trick” to have up your sleeve as a teacher.  I love the way different warm colors of tissue paper like orange, yellow and red make new interesting shades of color. The final pumpkins are rich with color and texture. Kids get to work on cutting and gluing while strengthening their motor skills. Again, depending on your students either pre-cut the tissue paper, have them cut it our even let them tear pieces from larger pieces of tissue paper (whatever works best for your situations). 

1. Have students trace a pumpkin template onto a piece of construction paper and outline with a thick black marker (it needs to be a permanent marker or it will bleed when it gets wet from the glue). Download the free template HERE if you didn’t already.

2. Color the entire pumpkin with an orange crayon.

3. Put a few drops of glue down onto the pumpkin and then add the pieces of tissue paper. Cover the entire pumpkin and go over the edges with the tissue paper. Be sure to let pieces overlap so you create new shades of yellow, orange and red.

4. Put glue all over the top of the tissue papered pumpkin and “paint” the glue on the top to create a consistent layer all over the pumpkin–this is sort of like using modge-podge.

Here are the steps visually for you to see…

5. Once the tissue paper and glue is dry then cut out along the outline of the pumpkin to reveal the final artwork. I like to glue to black backgrounds to get a strong contrast!

3. Interactive Halloween Coloring Sheets

Materials: Crayons, colored pencils or markers, interactive coloring sheets view HERE. 

I have had an interest in Pop Art all of my adult artist life. I created interactive Pop Art style coloring sheets to provide students with the opportunity to try their own hand and learn about Pop Art images themselves. The great part about these coloring sheets is that no two will ever be the same. There is an endless number of combinations students can create with these coloring sheets. There are writing prompts also included with these sheets as well to help align them to the common core and provide students more time to practice writing.

These interactive coloring sheets are one of my most popular items in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Here is what one of my Instagram teacher friends says about my interactive coloring sheets…

” I found that my 5th/6th graders come to me and because of the focus on testing, never played with color or design or patterns. Your products give them that opportunity and I’ve seen so much improvement in their attention to detail as well as noticing patterns, lines, etc. It’s so much more than “just coloring.”

To get these coloring sheets to use in your classroom click HERE.

4.”Create a Creature” Group Project

Materials: 8.5″ x 11″ paper, pencils, crayons/markers/pencils, and Handouts download FREE lesson HERE

This lesson is an adaptation from the popular Exquisite Corpse game made popular by Surrealist artists like Salvador Dali. I for one, don’t like using that name with students so I’ve always done my own version called, “Create a Creature.” I’ve made an easy handout and directions so you can use this lesson as an “I’m done” activity, with a sub, or with your entire class. There is also a writing prompt included to give students more time to practice developing their writing skills. Your kids are going to L-A-U-G-H with this project!!! It’s a great group project.

Get your FREE handouts and directions to this lesson HERE.

5. Monster Matching and Memory Game

Materials: colored ink and printer, copy paper, laminator, scissors, envelopes.

While we are talking about group activities like the “Create a Creature,” let me share with you these fun monster games. I love having centers in my room so I can work individually with other groups of kids on clay and harder painting projects, so I like to have games like this one available in my room.  Classroom teachers could use this center for when they need to individually conference with students. For this lesson you, the teacher will print out and laminate the pieces to the game and then put all the pieces in large envelopes (all directions are included).

Both of these games are ones your students will recognize –  matching and memory games. I’ve just made them fun for Halloween by making the games with monster images.  You can get them HERE.

6. Haunted House with Milk Cartons

Materials: empty milk cartons, construction paper, scissors, glue, masking tape. 

Have you ever been in the lunch room at the end of lunch to witness all the milk cartons that get thrown away (or maybe recycled)?

One year I decided that we should make little haunted houses with those empty milk cartons. Luckily I have a super cool custodian and he was kind enough to save the milk cartons for me. He even rinsed them out–what a guy!

To start this project I opened up all the tops of the milk cartons and rinsed them one more time.

Originally, I thought each kid would make a haunted house using one milk carton (like the house on the right up above), but you know how kids are–they have WAY better ideas then I ever do.  They of course, wanted to build multi-level haunted houses. I had a TON of milk cartons so that was a great idea! Students started building and designing their haunted house however they wanted to. They used masking tape to hold everything together as they were designing.

Once they had their house designed then they started covering their milk cartons–er, I mean haunted houses, with paper. I didn’t require them to do this any particular way, I was more interested in letting them “solve” the problem of how to cover the house. Not all kids were successful in creating a “perfect” haunted house–but so what, it’s a haunted house! I wanted them to think for themselves and not rely on me to tell them exactly how to cover their house. I also hoped they would work together to figure out the best way…many kids did!

Some students measured the house and measured paper and glued it on. Some wrapped the house in paper…all kids solved it their own way–perfect!

Once the house was covered then students added details like windows and doors from scrap construction paper. Students were completely engaged in this project and truly enjoyed taking something they use everyday, like their milk carton, and transforming it into something completely new. That’s the beauty of art!

7. Haunted House with Brown Paper Bags

Materials: brown paper bags, mix of colored construction paper, scissors, glue, shredded paper, markers, crayons and pencils. 

My second grade students love how easy and fun this project is. Each student got one brown paper bag and was asked to design a haunted house. I provided students with an assortment of construction paper and very little “how-to” so they would dream up their designs (just like on the milk carton haunted houses).  First students designed the front of their bag and then I showed them how to flip the bag over and fold the flap so they could design the back of the house (if you don’t show them they’ll draw on the flat, which later becomes the bottom of the house). Once windows and doors were glued on and any other decorations were added then we opened the bag and filled them with shredded paper. An easy place to get shredded paper is from your front office. They often shred materials and have more shredded paper then they know what to do with. You might give them a little heads up that you’d like them to save you the next bag of shredding. Use a piece of construction paper and staple it to the top to create the roof and to seal the bag. 

The kids loved the playfulness of this projects and so did I. However, the best part had to be the end when we lined up all the houses on the floor to see. I was amazed at the way the kids would sit by them and look at them. I felt like I was standing at an art gallery watching the people “experience” the art. My second graders would just come, sit down and “look” at all the work and notice all the fine details kids came  up with! 

Variation: If students needed trick-or-treat bags you could leave off the roof and leave out the paper shredding and add strings to the bag so they could use them on Halloween to receive their goodies.

8. Haunted House Classroom Mosaic Door Poster

Materials: haunted house mosaic door poster (click HERE), copy paper, colored pencils, markers or crayons and tape.

I wanted to design something that would make your life as the teacher really easy for Halloween. I know teachers love the “idea” of decorating their doors for holidays but the thought of actually coming up with an idea, gathering the supplies and then making the door often gets marked off the “to-do” list before it’s created or just never even makes it on the list. This project is very easy for the teacher and allows all the kids in your class to be involved. There are two variations to this poster (making for even more easy options). The first, foremost and MOST easy is to just print the colored pieces of the poster, have your students cut them out, put it all together, and hang it up! Easy-peazy-lemon-squeezy!!! Here are a few pictures of what the door looks like if you like this option (or are crunched for time). This poster is a product available in my Teacher Pay Teachers store

The second, and funner, version is to have the kids color the poster themselves.  This makes for a great classroom cooperative activity. In this variation of the door poster students (also included in my TPT product packet), the kids will color the pieces, cut them out and add their faces to the windows (this makes it extra fun) and then put the poster together and hang it up! There are 30 places to add kid faces but if you don’t have that many students (hallelujah !!!) then just have the kids color the blank windows yellow. Take a look at this detail…

With both posters I’ve left room for kick plates at the bottom of your door and soft close hinges at the top. If you want the entire door to be covered, I recommend using butcher paper to cover the entire door and then add the poster to the paper. Once the poster is up simply cut around the door knob and be the envy of your hallway! Here are some “action shots” of the coloring version of the poster…

click HERE to view this poster in my store.

9. Pumpkin Pinch Pots

Materials: kiln dry clay or air dry clay, orange paint (or glaze) and various clay tools.

Pinch pots are the easiest of all the clay projects. You simply take a ball of clay and then “pinch it” to make an opening. This technique can be done with kids during Halloween to make small little pumpkins. This can be done by classroom teachers using air dry clay or by art teachers using kiln fire clay–or best of both worlds, classroom teachers and art teachers can collaborate to make these cute little pumpkins!

1. Roll a ball of clay and then take off about 1/3 of it. Roll both portions of clay into balls. Then with the larger ball (this will be the base of the pumpkin) put your two thumbs on the top of the clay and then push your thumbs into the clay thereby “pinching” the clay between your thumb and fingers on both hands. Use  your fingers to work the clay into the right size and opening you would like.

2. Use the 1/3 of the clay that you set aside for the top. You can do one of two things. Either create a top that is flat with a stem coming from it, or create a smaller pinch pot that fits onto the bottom of the pumpkin. Play with both shapes to be sure the match and fit together.

3. Add details and texture to the pumpkin. Using a skewer you can etch lines into the clay and you can even create eyes, nose and mouth if you are more interested in a jack-o-lantern design. . If you are using kiln fire clay you will want to let the the top and bottom dry separately so the two pieces don’t get stuck together). Make sure kid have put their initials on the bottom of both pieces. I love seeing an entire classroom set of clay pieces like this…

4. Fire the kiln fire clay (after letting the pieces dry to leather hard) or let the air dry clay dry per instructions on the container.

5. Next, decorate the pumpkins using either acrylic paint for both kiln dry and air dry clay–or if you have access to beautiful glazes, then go that route. If you don’t have little pointed stilts for the glazed pieces you’ll need to keep the bottom free of glaze or else they will stick to the kiln shelf. I recommend you use pointed stilts so you can glaze the pieces on all sides. They are pictured to the left. Simply place them in your kiln with the clay piece on top and then when they are fired the clay pumpkins will pop right off of the metal stilts. 

The finished products are stunning…

These directions are not intended to be a complete detailed description of how to use kiln fire clay, so if you have any questions don’t hesitate to e-mail me and ask!

 10. Student “Selfies” in Costume 

Materials: Halloween selfie handouts (click HERE), crayons, markers or colored pencils, scissors and pencils.  

Kids love selfies, teachers love selfies, everyone loves selfies these days (or so it seems). In art we’ve been in love with selfies for years and years, we just always call them “self-portraits.” I set out to teach my students about self-portraits with the popular buzz word “selfie” and what better time to play with this idea than Halloween?! Kids draw a self-portrait as if they were dressed in their Halloween costume. Kids have so much fun making up these pictures. When these cute little drawings are finished they make a really good bulletin board display. The product for this is one I created for my Teachers Pay Teachers store and it also comes with a PowerPoint slide set that features famous artist self portraits on smart phones as well as text message writing prompts. You can check it out here to see it in more detail. 

Whew! That’s it! If you made it this far, thank you!!  I hope you found lots of “treats” to get you through the next month. See you in November for a collection of Thanksgiving/fall ideas!

October is breast cancer awareness month and to honor and support all those fighting this terrible cancer (and all other cancers as well) I have created a cancer ribbon interactive coloring sheet that is completely free to use with your classes. 

Use these ribbon coloring sheets to raise awareness of breast cancer and support those fighting it. I have created a fully interactive sheet for older students and a pattern filled sheet for younger students (along with additional activity for older students at the end of this post). Start the conversation with your students about what cancer is and let them talk about the people they know fighting this terrible disease. This packet was made for breast cancer using shades of pink but can be used for any cancer (or cause) simply by changing the colors you use. Think about this…the children we are teaching right now in our schools could possibly be the ones that will help find a cure for this terrible disease. Let’s inspire them to care about people fighting cancer and to honor them.

Interactive coloring Sheets: How-to

 1. Using the patterns in the five small boxes at the bottom of the page as suggestions, fill in the different parts of the picture with patterns. Every time you run into a black line you need to change the pattern. You don’t have to put patterns in all the areas, you can leave some blank. It’s okay to repeat the patterns in different sizes in different areas or make up your own.

The finished product might look something like this (computer generated example).

Below is a “work in progress.” Notice how many shades of pink are being used. I pulled pinks, reds and light purples from boxes of crayons, markers, and colored pencils in order to create a variety of hues. By overlapping mediums, I was able to create texture and visual interest. This lesson is great for introducting the art concept of monochromatic (one-color). You could use these ribbons for any cause awareness and just change the colors accordingly. I included a few simple writing prompts in with these sheets as well.

Here is a finished sheet.

This project could easily be adapted from 1st grade to high school. Since drawing in the patterns can be challenging, especially for the early grades, I have also created a coloring sheet (included in this packet and all my coloring sheet packets) that already has the patterns included in it. This way you so you can differentiate for younger or less advanced students. For older students I’ve used my interactive coloring book to have students first sketch out their ideas for a Pop Art image and then I have them create paintings from them.  Here you will see images of students working with the summer ice-cream cone to first design their image, then draw it on larger paper and then paint it.

I did these ice cream cones with 3rd graders and they looked amazing, can you imagine how great these would be with middle school and high school students???  (If you do them please tag me on Instagram (@artwithjennyk)  or send me an e-mail because I’d love to see this done with older students too). This variation can be done with any of my interactive coloring sheets. If done with the ribbbons there would be so many unique and beautiful images to share with your school community. Maybe you could even have kids do all different colors for all the different kinds of cancer.

To get these FREE breast cancer ribbon interactive coloring sheets please visit my TeachersPayTeachers store and download. If you like these, maybe you could “Follow Me” on TPT as well! Click on the photo below to go to my store and get the ribbon coloring sheets.

Why follow me? Every time I reach a new multiple of 500 followers I will be sending my followers (exclusively) an e-mail (from TPT) that will have a link in it to a FREE product. This product will be a new release item not yet available in my store and it will be FREE to all of my followers. The product will then be available in my store for sale. Please help me grow! Last time I gave my followers my “We Can Do it” group goal setting poster.

I have many variations and themes of these interactive coloring sheets available in my online TPT store. My coloring book has over 80 images for all major holidays and season. You can view it HERE

Thank you for all you do to motivate, teach and inspire our students all over the globe!.

Halloween Bash Blog Hop, Giveaways and my 1st TPT birthday! Wow, that’s a mouthful–but there really are that many great things going on right now. The ladies and I over at The Teaching 2 Step are hosting a HUGE (over 40 bloggers) blog hop and giveaway and I have a special giveaway here as well (be patient, it’s at the bottom). Hopefully you’ve already stopped by over there to enter to win some of the prize pack (see link at bottom if you haven’t been there yet).  Each blog hopper is sharing a variety of things from recipes, free products, sale announcements to fun Halloween stories…Here are mine:

1. Recipe: Pop Art Sugar Cookies

Sorry folks, I’m not going to go through the actual “recipe”  for sugar cookies because quite frankly I just bought a bag of cookie mix and added the required butter and one egg (hey, I have a two year old, I can’t make them from scratch). Me and little missy made our mess…err, I mean our cookies and then she decorated hers and I decorated mine. Okay, let’s be honest, I begged my husband to please play with her so I could actually decorate by “Pop Art” cookies because there were too many cookies with finger smears on them that looked more like “Abstract Art”… Nevertheless here are some pictures of the fun we had (and show all the colors we made with white icing and food  coloring).  Making cookies with a toddler is actually a really great activity because they can mix the colors of icing, roll out the dough, stamp the cookies and icing them (oh, and eat them!).

2. Freebie Activity: Create a Creature

This lesson is an adaptation from the popular Exquisite Corpse game made popular by Surrealist artists like Salvador Dali. I have never liked using that name with students so I’ve always done my own version called, “Create a Creature.” I’ve made an easy handout and directions so you can use this lesson as an “I’m done” activity, with a substitute, or with your entire class. There is also a writing prompt included to give students more time to practice developing their writing skills. Your kids are going to L-A-U-G-H with this project!!! It’s a great group project.

Get your FREE handouts and directions to this lesson HERE.

For more fun ideas for Halloween check out my blog post, 10 Halloween Art Lessons for Kids.

3. Halloween Product in Use (and on sale during the hop!)

I wanted to design something that would make your life as the teacher really easy for Halloween. I know teachers love the concept of decorating their doors for holidays but the thought of actually coming up with an idea, gathering the supplies and then making the door often gets marked off the “to-do” list before it’s even gets put on the list. This project is very easy for the teacher and allows all the kids in your class to be involved (and do most of the work!). There are two variations to this poster (making for even more easy options). The first, foremost and MOST easy is to just print the colored pieces of the poster, have your students cut them out, put it all together, and hang it up. Easy-peazy-lemon-squeezy!!! The second poster isn’t hard by any stretch of the imagination but it’s more involved. The kids get to color their own pieces, add their faces to the windows and then cut out the pieces and put together the poster for your door.  This poster is a product available in my Teacher Pay Teachers store and will be 50% off during the blog hop October 10-15th. At only $2, it is quite a deal!!

4. Halloween Story (answers for my giveaway just might be found in this story…just sayin’). 

This is a  fairly unique Halloween tale to tell. When I was young, about 8 or so, my family of 7 (5 kids + mom and dad) lived in Maryland in a large house on 500 acre peach and apple orchard. We lived a pretty ideal childhood of picking apples and  peaches, swimming in ponds, riding our horses (we had several) and running free (and safe) on the large property. There were only two other houses and they were rented out by deer hunters so most of the times they were vacant. Well, our first year living in this new town my parent assumed (like most parents would) that trick-or-treating would be on October 31st. So all five of us got dressed up in our costumes (plus my cousins that were visiting) and we went into town for the fun. Every house we saw, lights were off and no one was home. Finally we saw a nice lady who told us that trick-or-treating had actually been the weekend BEFORE. Well, who knew??? So my parents had to think quick so as not to disappoint so many kids who were anxious for their sweet treats. The home we rented was large and had several doors and entrances. There was the main front door and porch and the back door  that was in a screened in area, and then there was another door  and porch off of my parents bedroom. My parents stopped on the way home and bought a ton of candy and then mom, dad and my aunt all took station at the three doors. We kids then went running from door-to-door-to-door, and around again and again, doing our trick-or-treating, and collecting more candy than we could imagine. Giggling the whole time. We all had a blast. It was truly a Halloween to remember!

5. Birthday Girl Giveaway: Coloring Book, Recycled Crayons  &  tpt store credits. 

…and now for the finale! A year ago, almost exactly, I signed up to start sharing my art integration resources on Teachers Pay Teachers. My main motivation for doing this was to try to earn a bit of extra money to put away for my daughter’s college fund.  We all know how hard it is to pay back student loans on a teacher’s salary,  so I’ve started saving now, hoping she will never have the monster debt I have from college.  Teachers Pay Teachers has turned into so much more than just a college savings account for my daughter. It’s been more than I could have dreamed for. I consider it a job and I work really hard and I LOVE my job. Sharing my ideas and helping other teachers all while providing art experiences for kids has fulfilled me in ways I never knew were possible. I get comments all the time that lift me up and keep me up  burning the midnight oil trying to share my next idea. When I think about some of my art lessons and how they have been created by hundreds and hundreds of kids I get goose bumps. It’s so meaningful to me to be able to help teachers integrate art easily and give kids those fun art experiences all while earning money for my daughter to further her education someday. I’ve enjoyed meeting so many new teachers and making new friends over the last year. The things I’ve learned about social media and technology are amazing–I’m embarrassed to think of what I knew (or didn’t know) a year ago and excited to think what I’ll know a year from now!

So without further ado, to celebrate this “1st birthday” on TPT I am giving away a hard copy of my best selling “Pop Art” coloring book of 80 interactive coloring sheets along with a bunch of my recycled crayons. If you don’t know about my interactive coloring sheets–keep scrolling and I’ll tell you all about them. The ladies I co-blog with at The Teaching 2 Step have also each donated $10 store credit to their stores (aren’t they sweet?) for my birthday. To enter to win simply fill out the rafflecopter below.  The winner will get all these items “snail mailed” to them from Tucson, AZ.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
My “pop art”  interactive coloring sheets are so much more than just coloring. Students are given an outline of a shape/symbol that has been fragmented by black lines to create new shapes. Students are asked to put various patterns into the shapes. There are so many great things about these sheets. First of all what I love the most is that no two are NEVER the same. There is an endless amount of combinations kids can think of so they are all unique. Second of all, students have to truly “think” about where they are going to place the patterns and then think about how they color them to make their composition successful, and last, I love how teachers use these sheets as writing prompts in their class so students can color and then write about something related to their art. Pictured below are a sample from my Fall and Thanksgiving coloring sheets…. I hope you’ve gotten a lot of great ideas for Halloween and maybe you’ll even try those pop art cookies (if you do, tag me (@artwithjennyk) on Instagram b/c I want to see them!). Now please be sure you’ve stopped by The Teaching 2 Step to enter and win one of the  three prize packs we have put together from generous donations and check out all the blogs that are linked to our blog hop for TONS of freebies, tips, recipes and more… Click here to go to The Teaching 2 Step.   

Thanks for reading and vising my blog!

Jenny K. 

Holidays were really fun as a child, then so-so as an adult and now with a 2-year-old they are really fun again. I would say they are even more fun now then when I was a kid myself. Getting to watch my daughter experience fun holiday events is a joy. We’ve been doing all sorts of exciting things like carving pumpkins and making fall-themed art. Yesterday my  niece and nephew came to visit from Phoenix with my mom so I wanted to do something super fun with them.

I researched a few ideas and found this Pumpkin Spice Playdoh recipe. It turned out to be the perfect project for the ages of kids we had, 18 months, 4 and 2 1/2. I have to admit, as an art teacher I would never try something for the first time with the kids, but I didn’t have time to test this out before my family came –luckily for all of us, it turned out great! Here are some pictures…

A word from the wise if you are going to try this yourself–make sure you have enough salt! It takes 2 1/2 CUPS! When I skimmed the recipe to see what I needed I didn’t even look at the amount because it was a basic ingredient –luckily we had plenty. This was the best “turn taking” activity for my 2-year-old because she could easily learn from her 4 year old cousin. There were 5 cups of flour so my daughter would do one, then my niece and back and forth. This was the same way with the water, oil, etc. They worked great together. 

I enjoyed letting them put their hands in the mix–fortunate for us we live in Tucson, where we were having a record warm day (in the mid-90s) so we were able to make a big mess and then hose down the patio afterwards.

The best part is the pumpkin spice… yummy–I let the kids just pour that in–shake shake shake!!!

After everything was mixed together it had to go on the stove for a little bit …

It looks lumpy and no good–but trust me, it gets better! Just follow the recipe and it comes out just right.

Once the playdoh was the right consistency, I took it back outside and dumped it on the table so it could cool off a little bit. Instead of giving the kids orange to color it, we mixed red and yellow food coloring so we could see that it makes orange. We had messy hands (and later our shirts) but it was fun!

…the kids (and adults) got in a little arm workout as well. For the little kids, I ended up breaking off much smaller amounts for them to mix and the adults mixed together the larger amounts. There was LOTS of playdoh and we were able to send my niece and nephew home with two big balls of it!

When it was all mixed up we pulled out all the playdoh tools and the kids rolled, stamped, cut and played!

My hubby even came down from his home office and tried it out. The consistency was great and even though our hands looked terrible they smelled great!

My niece and nephew were pretty tired right before they left…(I’d guess they probably slept the entire way home). 

When everyone left my daughter took her nap a bit later than normal and I joined her (picture not shown!).

Thanks for reading and making art!

Happy Halloween!

Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints for their big win against the Packers tonight!

Okay those of you who know me are thinking…What the ??? Jenny is posting about football?

Well, let me explain…

Erin Cobb from I’m Lovin’ Lit is a huge Saints fan and each time they win a game she gives away a free product of hers AND she gives away other products from teacher-authors like myself on her blog.

So I have been rooting for the Saints to win each week so she could share my product with everyone! This week, they did win and this week she’ll share with you one of her free items, one of mine (you’ll have to go over there to see what it is) and 2 other fantastic teacher-authors and their free items. You have to act fast because it’s only for a limited time (see Erin’s blog for details).

She does this each time the Saints win so make sure  you cheer them on and each time they win head over to her blog right away to see all the great items that she has available for free.

It looks like Erin was at this game so this is a particularly fun win for her–congratulations Erin!!!!

Okay, okay…stop reading here and get on over there!

This lesson is the perfect Halloween/Thanksgiving craft for young children. It lets them experiment with color mixing, cutting, gluing and exploring shapes.  I LOVE making textured paper with my students. In fact, I use this technique for all different kinds of holidays. I saw on pinterest where someone had made candy corn with textured paper and I just HAD to do this with my kids. Since we make textured paper all the time, I simply pulled out my “Eric Carle paper making” box that is  full of toothbrushes, combs, plastic eggs and sponges and let my kindergarten students have a ball!

To keep the mess manageable, I do centers with my students and when they rotate to me as their “center” we make the paper. The other centers are more independent activities like coloring, reading art books, etc. I have made textured paper with my entire class (many times) but I feel so much less crazy when I do it as one center–and less crazy is good!  I created this video awhile ago for my Eric Carle Valentine’s Day heart lesson that gives you an idea of what we do. The colors in the video are red, white and pink, but the process is the same no matter what holiday you use this technique for–simply change the colors.

For the candy corn, I let students “discover” that yellow and red makes orange. However, keep in mind that you want some yellow for your candy corn so for that I gave students orange paper and then let them make all different shades of yellow by mixing it with white. After all the paper was made, I let it dry over night and then I cut it up into workable pieces of paper about 12″ wide. 

Then on a 12″ x 18″ sheet of white paper I drew a large candy corn shape (think triangle with rounded edges). I  cut it out and traced 19 of them onto 12″ x 18″ pieces of paper for each of the students in my kindergarten class. I then traced one more large white candy corn, cut it out and then divided it into thirds.  I used the bottom two shapes to trace onto the textured paper. I traced 19 copies of the middle shape and the bottom shape onto the different colors of textured paper. Okay, let’s be honest, I had some 5th graders who always want to “help” me do some of the tracing. When I work with kindergarten students I like to “set” their places so when they come in everything they need is already out for them. I posted this picture on Instagram (@artwithjennyk) that shows the tables set up and all ready to go for my students–it saves so much time. 

Each student had one large 12″ x 18″ white paper with the candy corn shape traced on it, 1 piece with the middle shape traced on it, 1 sheet with the bottom shape traced on it, 1 pair of scissors and 1 glue stick. I then had a teacher example (pictured on the left up above) as well as another set of pages that were pre cut but not glued so I could demonstrate to my students how to put their pieces together. Students did a great job with these but I realized that it wasn’t easy for all of them this early in the year to cut all those shapes on the lines …but they sure had fun trying! 

Once the shapes are cut out then have student put the large shape at the bottom and glue it on, then the middle shape and glue it on and then leave the tip of the candy corn white.

Once the two shapes were glued on top of the white candy corn shape, I then showed my students how to trim all the edges so all the shapes fit perfectly. 

The end results were pretty cute! …and best of all, the kids were enganged and loving it!

Thanks for reading and making art with your kids!

On November 11th we honor the veterans of our great country. What better way to do so than with a classroom collaborative American flag group poster? For this activity each student is given a part of the flag poster to color. Each of the pages is marked with the color students will need to use. After each piece is colored, the students cut out the pieces, write the coordinates for the grid on the back and then assemble the flag. There is a great patriotic sense of togetherness in this project because students work together to create this poster and it takes everyone contributing to make it work (just like our country at large or our small classroom community). This classroom collborative poster is FREE just click HERE to download.

There are many ways you can put this poster together. I like to tape it from the back so that the tape doesn’t show on the front. However, you could also tape or staple it right to a bulletin board. You could also tape or glue the pieces onto larger butcher paper and then roll it up and save it for the next patriotic holiday.

A lot of the teachers who follow me on Instagram (@artwithjennyk) found this poster to be useful on September 11th. Here you can see an image by one of my teacher friends on IG where she typed up a writing assignment to go along with the flag for a beautifully rich lesson! 

Again, this calloborative poster is FREE for you to use and can be downloaded HERE if you have not already done so!

If you are looking for more patriotic activities for your students I also have a set of my popular interactive coloring sheets with Patriotic images that are great for September 11th, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, and Presidents day. The best thing about my interactive coloring sheets is that they are more than just coloring–there is not a set formula and no two are ever the same. Students get to truly test their creative thinking and problem solving skills when they try to put together a successful composition of shapes and colors. Students get to think about designs and colors that would be representative of our soldiers and American Patriotic holidays. For Veterans day you will obviously want to provide your students with a lot of red and blue! Included in this set of coloring sheets are 7 images of which are interactive and 2 that already have the patterns filled in–allowing for easy differentiation. 
I know as a teacher your time is very limited so to help with common core alignment I have added writing prompts to these coloring sheets as well. One teacher reviewed my interactive coloring sheets and said this,

“I love that I can incorporate artwork in CCSS using these student designed pictures. These pictures lend themselves to being a springboard for the writing process – addressing Core Standards.Very innovative!! Thank you!”

This is how they work…

The end results are always stunning…and unique!

To view these coloring sheets click HERE.

I also have a collaborative poster of the image above that got my students talking last year and evoked emotional reactions.  It works the same way as the collaborative flag poster I described at the beginning of the post. You can get it HERE.

Thanks for reading and making art with your students!

I like to use the arts to help my students with their academic success as often as I can in my art class. I feel like I’m contributing to my school community this way. We read, write and do math whenever it’s applicable. For a long time I’ve wanted to make my interactive coloring sheets into math coloring sheets, but one fun idea after the next kept bumping the math sheets down the “to-do” list. This month, finally, I did it! I used them with my students and they loved them. I couldn’t believe when I told them we were going to do math with our art that they actually cheered! (I sort of snickered and thought to myself “did they really just cheer when I told them we were going to do math” –go me– or go classroom teachers I should say!). 

As my students were working on these Thanksgiving math coloring sheets I was listening to them talk about the patterns that were being created and also working out the math problems at a slow rumble of chatter–it was in one word–AWESOME! The fun part about these sheets is that there are so many varieties of math-fact review available. I created these sheets for addition up to 20, subtraction from as high as 25, and then multiplication and division to review all the times tables. I was able to challenge each child on the level they needed. I was surprised how many students chose division to jump right in. When I created these beautiful Thanksgiving images with my younger students (2nd and 3rd grade) they got to pick between addition and subtraction and most chose the challenge–subtraction! 

The sheets are simple yet powerful. Students solve the math problems in each shape and then color it according to a grid that is located at the top of the page. For example if the answer is 20, the color might be red, and so on. This really allowed for processing time and while students were coloring they were thinking about math (not talking about video games and gossipin’ about who likes who–hallelujah). Some classes used crayons and some used colored pencils. Oh, and if you kind of hate using colored pencils because of all the pencil sharpener “casualties,” check out this post to see how I use them in my room to save my pencil sharpeners (and sanity!).  Markers would look great too if you have nice fresh juicy ones–kids hate using dried up old markers…can you blame them?

Of course my job is never fully complete until I’ve hung up the kids work for all to see. I made a bulletin board display in my room and also hung some up outside in the hallway. Kids always know their work when they see it and it makes me proud to see them so happy about their art!

If you’d like to try these sheets with your students  they are available in my TPT store HERE.

If you are looking for other Thanksgiving-related ideas, I have plenty…just check out my Thanksgiving Category on TPT for lots of fun ideas!

Thank you for reading and for making art with your students!

A few months ago, I saw that you could submit to guest write for Rachel Lynette on her amazing blog, Minds in Bloom. So, of course, I submitted a proposal to blog about art integration for classroom teachers…since that is my focus with the resources I develop for my online store.

Well…lo and behold, Rachel accepted my proposal and said “yes” to me writing for her. I was THRILLED–and then really nervous. I had writer’s block for a few hours because all the sudden I didn’t know what to say. Then my excitement and nerves calmed down a bit and I just reminded myself to be who I am and “do what I do.” All the sudden, I was my normal self, full of things to say!

This past Sunday, I was in Phoenix cheering for a friend of mine who was competing in her first Ironman competition and my guest blog post on Minds in Bloom was published. So there I was in the sea of athletes, spectators and vendors, off to the side looking on my little iphone to see my post with a cheesy grin on my face.

Art integration, as you know is very near and dear to me and something I have dedicated my career to. I hope you will take the time to go read the post I wrote for Rachel as it’s full of helpful ideas on how easy art integraiton can truly be…and to squash some minconceptions about what art inegration is…or isn’t!

…and don’t you think a post like that is perfect for a blog called “Minds in Bloom”?!? Click on the image below to read the post! 

Thanks for reading and for making art with your kids!

Jenny

Time is running out!

…did you know there is a fun little giveaway happening over at my group blog? No?…well, get on over there and enter to win! Great resources from some fabulous Teachers Pay Teachers authors!  Click on the image below to see the blog post.

While you are there grab a copy of our ebook.

You will also get to meet the three new authors on our blog…you just might recognize some of them!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Since my Thanksgiving math Pop Art coloring sheets were helpful to teachers I made them again for the Holidays and winter. I intend to make them for all major holidays and roll out an entire collection of them next summer. I use these in my room for when students finish their art projects early. Teachers comment on how useful they are for reviewing math facts in the classroom while allowing students a chance to color and use art supplies. It’s easy art integration for teachers and fun for the kids. I am responsible for a district  art show this month so these have been very handy as students finish their art project for the show and need something to work on.

The final sheets are great to display… I love how colorful they are. You can see these math sheets in my TPT store HERE.

This post has been updated to include my winter/holiday sheets. See the orignal post from last month…

I like to use the arts to help my students with their academic success as often as I can in my art class. I feel like I’m contributing to my school community this way. We read, write and do math whenever it’s applicable. For a long time I’ve wanted to make my interactive coloring sheets into math coloring sheets, but one fun idea after the next kept bumping the math sheets down the “to-do” list. Last month, finally, I did it! I used them with my students and they loved them. I couldn’t believe when I told them we were going to do math with our art that they actually cheered! (I sort of snickered and thought to myself “did they really just cheer when I told them we were going to do math” –go me– or go classroom teachers I should say!). 

As my students were working on these Thanksgiving math coloring sheets I was listening to them talk about the patterns that were being created and also working out the math problems at a slow rumble of chatter–it was in one word–AWESOME! The fun part about these sheets is that there are so many varieties of math-fact review available. I created these sheets for addition up to 20, subtraction from as high as 25, and then multiplication and division to review all the times tables. I was able to challenge each child on the level they needed. I was surprised how many students chose division to jump right in. When I created these beautiful Thanksgiving images with my younger students (2nd and 3rd grade) they got to pick between addition and subtraction and most chose the challenge–subtraction! 

The sheets are simple yet powerful. Students solve the math problems in each shape and then color it according to a grid that is located at the top of the page. For example if the answer is 20, the color might be red, and so on. This really allowed for processing time and while students were coloring they were thinking about math (not talking about video games and gossipin’ about who likes who–hallelujah). Some classes used crayons and some used colored pencils. Oh, and if you kind of hate using colored pencils because of all the pencil sharpener “casualties,” check out this post to see how I use them in my room to save my pencil sharpeners (and sanity!).  Markers would look great too if you have nice fresh juicy ones–kids hate using dried up old markers…can you blame them?

Of course my job is never fully complete until I’ve hung up the kids work for all to see. I made a bulletin board display in my room and also hung some up outside in the hallway. Kids always know their work when they see it and it makes me proud to see them so happy about their art!

If you’d like to try these sheets with your students  they are available in my TPT store HERE.

Thank you for reading and for making art with your students!

I set out the other day to teach my art kids a variety of holiday-themed lessons. Then, one of my 5th graders asked if she could draw Olaf. Now, I haven’t seen Frozen yet (don’t kill me) but I’d be hard pressed NOT to know who Olaf is, especially working with kids all day.

Being the good teacher I am (or, perhaps just easily persuaded) I said yes. This was then met with, “Well, can you put a picture of him on the board so we can see him?” “Sure I can,” was my response.

I “googled” Olaf and found a good image of him, projected in onto the white board and let the kids draw. The first class that hijacked my lessons (5th graders) drew him on white paper looking at the image on the board with really little-to-no “instructions” from me.However, for the next group of kids (4th grade) I was more prepared. When they entered the class, the large Olaf was still on my board and the kids all started screaming (really they did) with excitement that we were doing something with Olaf. Just for fun I asked them if they would “like” to do an Olaf drawing. You know the response! Being a bit more prepared, I gave the kids a light blue paper and some white crayons (I keep my white crayons and pencils separate from all the rest). I talked to the kids about the shadows on the body of Olaf and how he’s not just white. We talked about how the kids could use some blue and purple as reflections to help make him look more 3D. Kids drew him with pencil, outlined him with black Sharpie markers and then colored him in with white crayons. Using other colors and designs, they added the background. Most kids still need another week to work, but here are some of my early finishers:

I was actually able to display a few of them that day. I imagine a few of these kids will want to work more on their backgrounds this week..but for the time being the pictures hanging in the hallway are really creating a buzz of excitement about coming to art. 

While we are talking about snowmen… My daughter came home from daycare the other day and had made a snowman face from a white paper plate. Of course, having an art teacher for a mom, I felt like Presley just had to do something fun with this face. So I cut out some large white circles and made a body. We cut out buttons and then glued on a scarf. Now, I’d be lying if I said my daughter (2 1/2 ) did all of that. She did not. She was mostly interested in putting tape all over the snowman. She did enjoy the gluing and putting the sparkly glue on his feet at the end.  However, I on the other hand had a great time!

I love everything about how a 2-year-old thinks…for example, see this image for a list of what I thought would be important for our art lesson and what she thought would be important!

When the snowman was apparently finished (I was happy to keep working but she decided we were “done”), we hung him up (yes, with LOTS of tape) on the mirror in the playroom. Just in case you are wondering why the playroom has a GIGANTIC mirror in it, it’s because it used to me my private dance studio (speaking of having things hijacked!).

Well, Olaf certainly wasn’t on the agenda for my lessons this month, but it just goes to show why it’s so important to be flexible and to listen to your students. They had so much fun and truly embraced their artwork. Plus, it inspired me to do some snowman activities with my daughter. So, for all that, I’m glad Olaf came and hijacked things for a day or so!

Thanks for reading and for making art with your kids!

Happy Holidays,

Here are 4 ways I foster the love of reading in my classroom.

One of the books the kids ALWAYS ask for is “Beautiful Oops!” It’s so good for the real little kids!

2. I also use my art books and Scholastic Art Magazines for when students are finished with their projects. There are a million things students could do when they finish their art but reading is the foundation for learning and the students at my school need as much exposure to reading as possible. For younger children I always have a set of books out for them to pick from when they are finished and for older children I pull out my beautiful Scholastic Art Magazines. 

Jenny K.