Paint Day present for Mother's Day!

Let's face it, not every student we teach has a Mom at home. some students live with other family members and some live with family friends. Most kids however, have a mother figure living with them- it might be grandma, or auntie, or sister, or cousin, but they usually have someone who is helping to take care of them. 

This year I got the idea to have a mock Paint Party with my students and the resulting canvas would be a great Mother's Day gift for their mother, or someone in their lives who has acted as a mother to them.

I covered the tables with brown roll paper, and set up an easel at every spot. I put a 9x12 canvas on each easel and placed a paper plate by each students spot. I gave them a small brush and a big brush and white, black, blue, violet and pink paint. 

I used a big piece of foam board at the front of the room that I used for an example as I painted along with them. 

Overall I was really impressed with their work and I really hope their mother figures will love their paintings!

8th Grade Shoe Drawings

Kids love shoes.. right? Lately it seems that no matter what I do, I can't motivate my 8th grade students. Granted, half of them are only in there because they didn't turn in their elective choices and they just got "stuck" in there, but I really do try to pique their interests, maybe even more so than my students who chose to be there. 

In the past, I used to do shoe drawings with 8th grade, teaching them value and shading. It's usually pretty labor intensive.. .so this time around I decided to try something different. 

Day one we viewed the Netflix video about Tinker Hatfield (Nike Shoe designer, designed most of the Jordans)  on the Abstract series for Netflix. Our school doesnt have a Netflix account, I just logged into my personal account and played it from there. 
***word to the wise, the part where he is talking about the Jordan 20, there is a wall of shoes behind him, he does say "Holy Shit" but ive watched it with both 8th grade classes and they didn't skip a beat***

After that, I tell them there are several ways to customize a shoe design for themselves. They can: 

A: go to Nike.com, or Adidas.com, or Vans.com or any other website that has the ability to customize a shoe, customize one, then I will print it for them to draw.
B: find a picture of a shoe on google that they like, and want to just look at the shoe to draw its form and then customize it. 
C: design and customize a shoe from scratch. Many chose option A.

We discussed drawing from observation, and paying attention to details while drawing their shoe. They chose their own medium from the choice of paint, marker or colored pencil. The shoes were drawn on 8.5x11 printer paper cut out and glued to construction paper. 

Enjoy our shoes!

My personal favorite is the Nike Air Croc...

Special Needs in Art Education

Since I began my teaching career, I have always worked with students of all different learning styles, and learning speeds. I have worked with students who have a wide range of diagnoses, Autism, LD, Emotional Behavioral, Learning Support, and Multiple Disabilities. I must say that working with my special needs students are among the best experiences of my teaching career. Some of my students are very limited in what they can do, yet, in my classroom its as if the possibilities are endless, they can accomplish anything they put their minds to! 

My philosophy when it comes to special needs in art education is simply this: it is about the process, not the product. As artist's we all have this picture of what something will look like in our heads before we actually get started. With some of my special needs students, they are there for the experience of making art, not necessairily for what the outcome is. After they go through the process of making the art, working on fine motor skills, they are able to see the product, and they get so excited to see what they were able to create. 

In my art ed experience, I have never seen a curriculum specifically designed for my special needs students, so I have begun to develop one. It is always a work in progress, constantly being added to, as I am always experiencing students with different needs and abilities. 

Here are a few of my more successful project outcomes:
I tend to break my lesson Ideas into different units, ex: squares, circles, triangles, fall, process, specific colors, etc. 


First up is circles. We practice the 'round and round' motion that our arm or wrist makes when we are creating a circle. We create lots of different types of circles using lots of different media. 

This project involves gluing pre-cut circles to a 12x12 piece of paper. Students then use a toilet paper roll and black paint to stamp black circles on the colored pre-cut circles. lastly we use dot markers to add a little something else to our project. 

For this project we look at Kandinsky's circle painting and we use a 12x18 piece of white paper and divide it into 6 sections. we work on folding skills to divide our paper. We then use three different colors of paint to create concentric circles in each of the 6 spaces. Lastly we cut (depending on the level of ability of the student) and glue them to a larger piece of colored paper.

Some of our other circle projects include using different materials to create that 'round and round' morion, like chalk, marker and paint. We learn about oil pastel resist when it comes to watercolor and other water paints.

Next up: Squares.

We look at the work of Mondrian and glue pre-cut red, yellow, and blue squares and rectangles to a piece of 12x18 paper. We use a piece of cardboard to create vertical and horizontal stamped lines using black tempera paint. 

Another project we work on is laying painters tape on a piece of 12x18 paper in a grid pattern. Then we use different colors of paint to add color to the remaining spaces. I also use this project as a color mixing project to teach primary and secondary colors. 

The project with the yellow T's is actually a cube pattern that we use to make a 3D cube when its done. We begin by choosing a colored piece of 12x18 construction paper. I pre-cut the first letter of each students first name. Students trace a pre-made template of a cube onto their paper. Then they tape their letters into each of the 6 spaces created by the template. I place their paper into a copy paper box top, and students choose several different paint colors. We add paint in a few places on their paper and drop in a few marbles. Students pick up their box top and roll the marbles around through the paint. When it dries, we remove the taped down letters. cut out the template, fold it, and tape it together to create the cube. 

Next up: Triangles.

We complete several tape resist paintings practicing laying the tape down in a triangle pattern. We use paint for one and dot markers for the other.

 We complete an analogous color scheme process painting, and then use our scissor skills to cut it into triangles. We then create a mosaic on black paper.

 This one is a multi step project. We use tissue paper and modpodge to fill different sized square and rectangle papers. We use a light blue piece of 18x24 piece of construction paper and paint a snowy scene. Students use bundled qtips to make the snow in the sky. Lastly we cut triangles out of the tissue paper squares and rectangles, and add them to the paper. 


Our Fall projects include print making, stamping, leaf rubbing with crayons, painting, gluing and resists.

Our process art is constantly changing and these are usually the most successful. 

We focus on particular colors and create various projects using a monochromatice scheme. Marble paintings (which we did around valentines day so we used a heart theme) Apple prints, torn paper collages and tissue paper collages. 

 I try to hang up most of their art by their classroom so that they can see it when they go to and from different places in the building, but I also include their work in with the rest of the student body around the building.