It’s another school year and we know most of our readers have been busy preparing their art classrooms to inspire and organize their students. Did you create a genius new system for storing sketchbooks? Or is your storage room an original work of art that maximizes every inch of space available? Then we want to see it.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to see the organizational solutions used by other art educators for supplies, artwork and more? Well this is your chance to share your art space solutions… and see others.

By September 25, send a photo of your art classroom organization to info@theteachingpalette.com. We’ll compile all the art classroom photos into one showcase post and in our Flickr photo stream. Take a look at last years “Art Room Showcase 2009″.  We’ll also feature three lucky photos on our home page as the new “cover art” for The Teaching Palette.

It doesn’t matter what level you teach, we want to see how you organize your space. No art classroom space is too small or too large to share. In the end, we hope to provide an abundance of solutions in an online gallery to help art teachers around the globe get inspired to organize their own spaces. Start opening those drawers, cabinets and storage closets and snap some photos!

How to send your organizational tip:
Snap a photo and send it as an attachment to info@theteachingpalette.com with the subject line Art Room Organization. Include your name, school, town, state and brief description of the photo.

Pictionary

Center activities are a great way for students to work cooperatively, experiment with new materials, and think creatively.  I start by organizing groups consisting of 4-5 students.  At this time it is also important to explain the center rules including how each station works and a one minute clean-up before rotation. One of the easiest ways to keep track of time is by using a count-down clock projected on the screen for everyone to see. Centers have been a life-saver for situations when a class is finished with a project way ahead of the rest of the grade level (due to assemblies, no school, etc.) or as a back-up sub plan.

If you’re looking to develop your own art center activities, or looking for new ideas, the following may inspire you:

Pattern Play

Pictionary. This classic game can be played in only a few minutes. Create your own words for kids to draw or use the ones provided in Squint.
Sculptorades. Cranium created this twist on Pictionary where instead of drawing you sculpt objects out of Cranium clay. You can easily create your own version with play-dough, a sand timer, and playing cards you create. Just grab a digital camera and take pictures of different objects (i.e., celery, dog, car, hand, butterfly). You can even sneak in cards that make connections to what students are studying in the classroom. Print images on a heavy weight paper and laminate for durability. Taylor the game to students even more by creating numerous sets of playing cards for different ability levels and grades.
Pattern Play. Kids love this puzzle game! I use it with students as young as Kindergarten. Or build your own wood pattern puzzle by following directions found on Mer Mag.
Toobers and Zots. Thanks to a guest post by Jan Johnson (and eBay), these sculpture-making objects are a hit in my room.
In the Garden. These soft foam puzzle pieces have endless tessellation possibilities. Busy Beetles and Batty Lizards is another option shared with us by Susan Tiemstra. For older students who like more of a challenge try Squzzle Puzzles.
Art Print Puzzle. Read this post on how to create your own for free.
“How to draw” cartooning books. Just set these out with some copy paper. Among my students’ favorites are 101 Funny People and Spongebob Squarepants. I also encourage the students to create their own funny pictures by combining two objects.

Connectagons

Connectagons. This product is so simple, yet creates fantastic sculptural forms.
Squizzles. I inherited a set of these square puzzles when I first started teaching. Read a product review here.
Modeling Clay. Set out tooth picks, plastic knives, forks and let the creativity happen.
Color Sudoku. Based on the original, I developed this color logic game for my students. Download this color sudoku game for free.

Computer Activities

Laptops. If you have access to a few laptops and the Internet, let your students explore online art games. I use this page set up for students to choose their online activity (resource page created by Hillary Andrlik).
Picasso Carnival. This idea was developed by Tricia Fuglestad consisting of centers focused around Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory.

The following is a guest post written by

Good Things Come in Small Packages. It is such fun to come across a book that our elementary-aged students can read that have ideas for visual arts lessons built right into the story. The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone does just that. It is a fantasy tale, perfect for 2nd-6th graders, about the Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago.

In our story, Jack and Ruthie go on a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago and see the Thorne Rooms for the first time.  Jack discovers a key while on a separate special tour with one of the museum guards. The key leads Jack and Ruthie to discovering much more about the sixty-eight rooms! These exquisite rooms, whose design represents the style of a different era and place, were commissioned by Narcissa Niblack Thorne.  The artists and master craftsmen created each using only the finest materials. They were built using 1 inch to 1 foot scale. Even the doorknobs turn, and the desk drawers open, truly representing design in miniature. Our characters discover that the key is really a magic key, which transforms the person holding it into a miniature version of him or herself. We live vicariously as they walk into these rooms and step back in time to pre-revolutionary France, or to late seventeenth century America. By connecting with artworks mentioned in the story including Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze, we can demonstrate the link between history and art. In this case, Jack and Ruthie realize that they landed in France prior to its revolution, that had been partially inspired by the American’s fight for freedom from British rule.

Kupjack Georgian Dining Room

18th Century Violin Makers Shop

Not all of us can travel to the Art Institute of Chicago to visit this wonderful collection. However there are other museums around the country that also have a connection to Thorne’s incredible legacy. The Knoxville Museum of Art, in Knoxville, TN, holds a collection of Thorne Rooms. These represent some of the earliest of her works. The Mini-Time Machine Museum of Miniatures in Tucson, AZ is a museum dedicated to miniatures. In its fantastic collection, one can find the Kupjack Georgian Dining Room, an example of work by one of Thorne’s primary artists, Eugene Kupjack. The Phoenix Art Museum also holds 20 examples of the Thorne Rooms.

Make curricular connections:

Drawing & Math
Connect this wonderful fantasy to the creativity of our students by asking them to design their own “Contemporary Interior” where they design a room, using 1 inch to 1 foot scale, representing their place and time. Either using one-point perspective in drawing, or photomontage from magazines, the design of their own space would be a fascinating view of our 21st Century world from a child’s point of view.

Sculptural Paper Folding & Math
Jack and Ruthie, our adventurous 6th grade characters, go to school together in a Chicago neighborhood. In the opening chapter, Jack shows a bento box that he brought for lunch to school. Ruthie had never seen anything like it, and your students may not have either! Integrate a wonderful paper folding lesson, that implements measurement and folding for creating the bento box, and using paper folding and sculpture for the food.  There is a wonderful example in the Thorne Rooms collection of Japanese architecture and design known as the Japanese Traditional Interior that would connect wonderfully with this lesson.

The Sixty-Eight Rooms is a wonderful addition to any book or art club looking to connect literature with art. The magical tale would be a great read-aloud in the art classroom, leading to specific art projects that make children think about their enviroments and design.

Special Thanks to the Mini-Time Machine Museum of Miniatures in Tucson, AZ for permission to publish the photographs of works in their collection, both taken by Balfour Walker. The museum can be found on Twitter at @tucsonmuseum Thanks to Nancy Walker for sharing her Bento Box lesson as well. Photos of teacher samples are from the Center for Educator Development in Fine Arts Summit XI Elementary Sessions hosted by Samantha Melvin and Nancy Walkup.

The following is a guest post written by April Millian, a high school mathematics teacher in collaboration with Lisette Morel, a high school art teacher.  April and Lisette teach at New Milford High School in New Milford, New Jersey.

Background:

As a child I loved art class and excelled at mathematics, often creating artwork with a definite geometric flair.  However, it wasn’t until college that I developed a real appreciation for the connections between these two subjects. I was fortunate to spend a January term (a three-week class) in Greece for a Classics course studying of Greek art and architecture. Along with our two Classics professors, a math professor joined us. My initial thought was that it’s crazy to have a math professor on this trip. I mean, what was he going to teach us in Greece? I was standing in front of the Parthenon listening to my professor discuss the Golden Ratio and how it applied, not only to the ancient structure in front of us, but to countless other works of art. That is how my love of mathematics and its significance in art was born.

Fast-forward 13 years I, Miss Millian, am now fortunate to be teaching in a school that is technology-oriented with a fantastic art teacher, Ms. Morel, who shares my interest in relating our two subjects.  I was teaching linear perspective to my geometry students when I realized what a great topic it would make for a cross-curricular activity. Ms. Morel and I began to develop an idea for a video scavenger hunt at The Metropolitan Museum of Art that would combine the art with the mathematics behind it.

Teacher and Student Preparation:

Our objective for this interdisciplinary lesson was simply to introduce our students to and have them recognize and apply the relationship that art and math share. It is crucial to establish and maintain real-life connections in education. This connection brings relevance to the subject matter and to our students’ lives.

To prepare students for the interdisciplinary lesson plan I, Ms. Morel, introduced my drawing students and Miss Millian’s Geometry class to western and non-western viewpoints, such as Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Asian and their applications to visually documenting real life. Afterwards we discussed the Renaissance and linear perspective and how it was utilized by the architects and later by painters. For a real life experience I had our students step out into our hallways and view a one-point perspective. We also looked at photographs of homes and streets where students had to point out a one point, two point, high, low or normal vanishing points. While in Miss Millan’s Geometry class I used a document camera which I found to be extremely helpful in my demonstration and presentation to a large class. Our lesson culminated with a technology, art and math scavenger hunt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Scavenger Hunt:

To create this scavenger hunt, we started off by visiting the museum ourselves to get acquainted with the layout and decide which pieces would be included in our scavenger hunt. We also took pictures of each work of art.  Then the real work began. We used iMovie to create a video that would take our students throughout history on a search for linear perspective (or sometimes the lack of it) in art. The students were armed with an iPod Nano for each group of two, and a question sheet that they needed to answer. The clues were recorded on the iPods by Ms. Morel and myself. They were also given visual clues, such as a cropped part of a painting, to help them find the correct work of art. To add a bit of challenge to the adventure, the first team to complete the scavenger hunt with the most correct answers received a prize of two prints we had purchased at the museum gift shop.  Upon returning from our quest, the students created their own linear perspective drawings and completed an online survey.

It was so amazing to watch our students scamper through the museum, intent on finding these works of art. The students enjoyed the activity and found using the iPods more engaging than just reading off of a sheet of paper. What made this scavenger hunt so fascinating was that it brought to life a true connection between classroom learning and real life experience for our students.

Below you can view The Met Scavenger Hunt created by Miss Millian and Ms. Morel.

(Having trouble viewing this video. Try this link.)

(Download Scavenger Hunt Here:  The Art Scavenger Hunt Worksheet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Preview Scavenger Hunt Worksheet by clicking on the image below.

April Millian is a high school mathematics teacher in New Milford, New Jersey. She enjoys traveling and coaching the school’s Varsity Bowling team.

Lisette Morel is a teaching artist-mom, working with her students in a variety of art disciplines while maintaining an active art career.

A big thanks to @NMHS_Principal for sharing his teachers creative ideas on Twitter so we can hear about them and share them with you. Check out Eric’s blog A Principal’s Reflections.

Experimental fun re-arranging Baldessari still life.

Major contemporary artist John Baldessari launches new iPhone/iPad app John Baldessari: In Still Life 2001-2010 in conjunction with For Your Art and support from Ovation. According to the the official website, “John Baldessari created the first In Still Life in 2001 for an exhibition at LACMA. He hung Abraham van Beyeren’s Banquet Still Life on the wall next to an empty frame and invited exhibition visitors to digitally rearrange or remove the 38 objects in the original 17th-century Dutch painting, thus creating a new still life of their own. Visitors were encouraged to print out their still lifes and hang them in the room or take them home. When someone completed a still life using In Still Life, it became his or her own artwork, not John Baldessari’s or Abraham van Beyeren’s artwork.”

Although, the app is free through iTunes you might not have access to a classroom set of iPod Touches. That’s why we really love the online preview that allows anyone with a computer to create his or her own still life (click here to preview app online). This is a wonderful alternative for giving a whole class access to creating their own Dutch influenced masterpiece. The website would also work well with an Interactive White Board to introduce a lesson on Dutch still life painting, show connections between modern artists and past art or to talk about symbolism. While visiting the site make sure to check out the “Learn” tab in the menu. It lists each of the 38 objects in Abraham van Beyeren’s original artwork and describes the and meaning behind each object.

Check out images already created with In Still Life on Flicker and Twitter.

Thank you to all our loyal readers and guest authors as we continue to advocate for quality art education.

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Product Title: Toobers & Zots

Grade Levels: Kindergarten & up

Product Review: Intended as creative building tools for open ended play, Toobers & Zots are made out of the same material as swimming pool “noodles.” The large tube pieces, called toobers, are of varying lengths from a couple of feet to over a yard.  Toobers have wire inside which allows them to maintain whatever shape they are twisted into. They can be curled, bent, folded, and zigzagged into three dimensional forms. The other pieces, called skinnies and zots, can be attached to the toobers and other skinnies and zots. They add a decorative element to the work. There are over a hundred dots, short tubes, star bursts, circles, crowns, and other shapes. Watch the video of my Kindergartners using this product below.

Can’t see YouTube video above? click here.

This medium allows my students to work in a scale that is larger than they normally get to experience. Because of the abundance of material in each kit, several students can easily work cooperatively on one sculpture. I would suggest that you allow 1-3 students per box. Although my students do not get to keep their work when they are done, I take a photo of each student with their work and print a copy of it for them.

The forms come in a small box in which they fit tightly. Once they are put to use, it is near impossible to get them back in their cardboard box. I put each set in a plastic box about the size of two shoe boxes. The long tube pieces I keep separately in a large plastic bin. Storage is an issue for these currently, as I have limited storage space in my classroom.

The person in my county who introduced us to Toobers & Zot said that they are durable. She had been using her sets for over eight years.

When I priced them online, they seemed to be expensive. Amazon is selling them for around $24 a set. I did see several other sites offering them and the price was comparable. There were sets on eBay, new and used, for considerably less. Our county ordered so many thousands of sets of these, they were able to work out a much better deal with the company.

Though these were purchased for a specific lesson in my kindergarten curriculum, my older students have begged me to let them try them out as well. The kindergarteners thoroughly enjoyed using them and were slow to put them away.

Bucket Rating (5 out of 5 – Love! Need it! Gotta have it now!):

(5) Love it! Need it! Gotta have it now!

If you’re interested in being a Teaching Palette contributor and submitting a review, please click here to learn more.

Product Title: Say the Time (PC-only computer program, see Mac alternative below)

Grade Levels: Kindergarten-12th grade

Product Review: I am an elementary art teacher, and I know that schedules are hard to keep. In my classroom, we have fifty-five minute classes, and when you take away clean up time, that doesn’t leave us with nearly enough time to get our work done. I also realized when I was helping students, that sometimes the time got away from me. So I  searched online for some kind of timer. What I found was Say the Time. It is an amazing program that can set reminders to go off every day.

I have set a reminder for when it is clean-up time for each class, and I have it repeat every week day. Whenever the bell rings, the students know it it time to clean up. This gets everyone going very quickly, and always on time! The program costs about $30.00, but that is a one time fee. There are no subscriptions or any other costs. Just recently, I have added another timer that tells students when they need to be in line and ready to walk out the door. Just today, I had a fourth grade class that was cleaned up and in line in less than one minute! It has worked wonders and given me back my class time. Another added bonus: You can set it to “Say the time” whenever you want it to (I have it set for every 15 minutes) which helps the younger students with elapsed time!

Please note:  Say the Time works on PC only.  If you are a Mac user, we found a similar product called “Timer 7.0” (click “download page” for free version)

Bucket Rating (5 out of 5 – Love! Need it! Gotta have it now!):

(5) Love it! Need it! Gotta have it now!

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