Artist~Teacher... tishalou

I got the idea for this from one of the middle school teachers in our county – she was nice enough to offer her materials, ideas, samples to the newbies before she retired. I saw this little gem and I snatched it up – she even gave me the stack of astro brite paper to go with it. I have only taught it once – as a little extra at the end of the year to one 3rd grade class... See what you can do with it.

1.Fold the inside pages - 5 pages works best to form the star. This is made with regular copy paper – I used the astro brite neons. Your inside papers should be twice as large as your finished book. I made a large one for this sample. The finished book is 4” so the inside pages are 8”.

 2.Fold each page in half twice so your paper has a + on it with 4 equal squares. Then fold once diagonally. Push in the diagonal folds so they meet in the middle of the unfolded square.

4. Glue all the inside pages together. It is important that you have all the closed corners matched up and all the open “mouths” lined up – then you glue the outside of one page to the outside of the next page.
7. Now glue the top page to the cover and the bottom page to the back cover. The ribbon should wrap around the corner like this:
8.Tie your ribbon – flip the book around to open it into a star! I made this one with only 4 inside pages since I had alternating colors.

I made another one the size of the original one I had and added, yes some zentangles to it!! The inside pages are 3” - final book 1.5” It's so cute!

I did my drawings before I assembled the book – but you could work with it after assembly as well by folding it back and forth to get a flat surface to draw on.
Play around with some fun papers and see what you can come up with.. These would make great little ornaments – put a spin on the giving tree for the holidays!

Day 3 was the field trip! We got on the bus at Brumfield and then went to pick up the group at Ritchie - we had to sit several students 3 to a seat because the camps were a bit larger than expected! Student had their sketchbooks and had a few places where we would spread out and draw. This was a popular spot:

Here is the sketch from the student I had identified as GT this year. She was in the other camp - as most of my students were...

I had fun visiting the Brian Jungen exhibit for the third time - mostly seeing the students reaction to it. Here is The Prince my fave from my sketchbook:


A parent that went with us took pictures and burned them on a CD for everyone to take - too cool! THANKS!!
The art teachers in our too cool bones t-shirts. Good idea Jess!

Day 4 was our final day in camp so it was finish it all up day! We printed their skeleton collographs, connected their wire tot heir boxes, finished painting their caleveras and added some glitter touches to them.
We met with each student and discussed their work and which piece we were going to keep for the County Art Festival in the spring. They also filled out a questionnaire - just to get some feedback on what they liked, what they didn't and to make sure they had a good time. I will have to quote some of them - we enjoyed reading over them after everyone had been picked up!
Here are some highlights of the student work:

This week is two days of grading and rubric development. Then next week is the Middle School Summer Camp at Kettle Run HS. We are going to make pinhole cameras - it should be great!

Way back when I wrote about a site where I found some inspiration for a clay project.
I finally taught the lesson to my 3D 4th and 5th grade elective class and had some great results. I enjoyed making a sample and may have to make it my new signature gift item.
Here is my sample:

It is a simple pinch pot with windows. I made three small holes around the top and made a cone out of 36 gauge sheet copper for the roof - the kind I use to teach repousse. The kids LOVED it and the students who took my 3D class 1st quarter were mad they didn't get to make them. Here are some of the student's work: