Word Cloud for Art Lessons For Kids

Have you heard of Wordle, Tagul or Tagxedo? These sites help you create what is known as a word cloud from the content found on your blog, tweets, tags, or other sites you like. The more times a word is used in the content, the bigger the word is in the cloud.

I used Wordle because you don’t need to sign up for an account like Tagul and for some reason I couldn’t see my word cloud in Tagxedo. Tagxedo did look interesting though because you can add your word clouds onto products and buy them. All I had to do on Wordle was type in the Url for Art Lessons For Kids and the most frequently used words I have on this entire blog came out as one big word cloud. How awesome is this? I absolutely love that the word ‘students‘ stands out the most.  It’s all about them when I create my lessons so I am so happy the cloud reflected this.

Here are 5 other creative ways that you can use this fun tool in your classroom.

1. At the beginning of the year, ask your students to type in words to describe their feelings about art or write an essay and use this to create their word cloud. Print these off and save them. Do this again at the end of the year and see what changes have occurred throughout the year. Save them for their portfolios.

2. Your students can create word clouds for research projects about an artist, art movement, a particular work of art, etc. and display these around your classroom along with their finished art work.

3. You can make a cloud using words to describe you, your teaching philosophy (great for a resume), your classroom expectations/rules, supplies, you name it! and display it really creatively where your students will see it.

4. Make a word cloud with all of you fears and frustrations you currently have in your classroom. See what stands out the most and work on turning these into positives. Sometimes all it takes is to see and be aware of what bugs you to take action and fix it!

5. Save all you report card comments onto one document and use this to make a report card word cloud. This will help you see what words you are using the most and hopefully they will be caring and positive words.

And the most important and first way you should use a word cloud is to:

6. Type in all the adjectives to describe what you love about teaching and what makes you the most wonderful art teacher ever. They can be words, sentences, thoughts, a poem or whatever you like and see what word cloud comes up. Stick this somewhere you will see it every day just as a little reminder when you are having one of those days. I’ll give you the first word you can use: inspiring…

I hope you start using word clouds and enjoy making them as much as I am. Use the share buttons below to let others in on the fun. Can you think of other great ways to use word clouds?

By The Way…

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Finally…

Dick Blick art supplies is having a huge sale now. Click on my affiliate link below to get the best deals. If you do purchase something then a big thank you hug just for you!

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Hello from Vienna!

Happy New Year everyone! Doesn’t it feel like the year has flown by? And now we are half way into the school year which is incredible to me because as many of you know, I have taken a year off from teaching to concentrate on making this blog even better and write more eBooks.  With half a year left of ‘me’ time, this means I have to stay focused. My dream is to eventually become a full time blogger, seminar leader, motivational coach and more, by the time my son graduates in 8 years time.

Anyway, exciting news happening here at Art Lessons for Kids. I have started a newsletter! I have been wanting to do this for a while but didn’t know how to do it with a wordpress.com blog. Well I finally figured it out and I am so excited it’s a reality. There are a few newsletter services out there so I finally went with aweber because of the great reviews they had. I totally recommend these guys if you are planning to do something similar. The set up was easy and it took me a few hours to get it running. As soon as I put the links on my blog (see the side bar) I received 10 subscribers!!

What is the difference between subscribing to a blog and subscribing to a newsletter?

When you subscribe to a blog, you receive the new posts straight to your inbox which makes it quite handy if you are busy and don’t have the time to go to your favorite websites to see what’s new.

When you subscribe to a newsletter, you get information and news that is exclusive to you for subscribing. And the best part is that the newsletter is also delivered to your inbox.

Note : You do have to sign up twice though as they are separate services-but oh so worth it!

If you want to receive my weekly Art Lessons for Kids newsletter with teaching tips, how-to’s, inspiration and more goodies that you won’t find here on the blog, then go ahead and sign up here, below this post or click on the link in the side bar. As a thank you, you will receive a link to a copy of my eBook Creative Art Projects for Kids for Anytime. ( Note: right click on the link you receive after subscribing to download the eBook to your computer.)

What Else is New?

Video training and workshops are all in the works as well as 5 new eBooks coming out filled with awesome lessons that will help you cut down on your planning time and concentrate on the fun stuff in class.

In this new year I wish you all the success, health, happiness and abundance this fabulous world can give you. Make it your goal to be the most amazing and inspiring teacher you can be. Make it your goal to make your students smile more often. Make it your goal to bring out the artist inside every child and help them shine. I know you can do it!

All the best,
Alejandra

One More Thing…

Art Lessons for Kids has a Facebook page and you can follow my adventures on Twitter (@Ms_Alejandra)? Click on over. I would love to see you there!

Happy Holidays! I just wanted to take the time to thank you for following Art lessons for Kids. You inspire me to be here and share with you all of my fabulous art lessons and teaching tips that work for me and for sure will work for you too. I hope that in return, I inspire you to be the most wonderful art teacher you can be!

Sign up for my new weekly newsletter and as a BIG thank you, I’ll send you a link to a special FREE e-book with three of my favorite art lessons that have been HUGE hits with my students. Use them in your classroom, home or after school art club. If you need to use these lessons for commercial purposes, please contact me first so we can work something out. As always, feel free to adapt and change the lessons as you see fit and according to your needs.

Click on the image above or on this link to sign up.

If you do use one of the lessons I would love to hear about it!  You can leave a comment below this post or over at the Art Lessons for Kids Facebook page. A tweet or a link back from your site or blog back to me would be nice too!

Once again, happy holidays and may you use this time to spend it with your family and loved ones and re-energize yourself for a wonderful new year of MAGNIFICENT teaching.

Here’s to your success today and everyday. You are an amazing teacher and never forget this!

Ms. Alejandra

Picasso has to be one of the most influential and well known artists of all time. Kids tend to gravitate to his art because it’s different and ‘weird’ as one of my young students pointed out and they feel that they can create their own Picasso inspired art work quite successfully.

This art lesson was inspired by another lesson I saw somewhere online or in a magazine and I feel absolutely awful that I can’t remember where… Has this ever happened to you? Apologies to the author and a big hug for the inspiration! Anyway, I always say it’s ok to copy as long as you change it and make it your own so that is exactly what I have done with this lesson. Everyone will be a HUGE fan of Pablo Picasso by the end of your lesson.

Before you introduce our artist to your students, I suggest you Google ‘Picasso’ and build up a whole visual feast for the kids to see and get inspired from. YouTube has a ton of  stuff so go there to find some great movie slideshows and documentaries. If you have some time, why not make one of your own? When you Google ‘Picasso ‘ click on the images tab and you will literally be a click away from thousands of images you can use to create your own stunning slideshow or video adapting it to your needs. For this lesson, focus on art work that show his unique way to portray the human face. Take a look at this clever video to see all the many faces of Picasso.

If you prefer using books as your intros, there is a great series called Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists with cute books on a variety of artists. My students really enjoy these books because there are comics, cute little jokes and stories about the artist. This is what the book looks like:

Before showing and reading anything to your students, ask how many have heard of the name Picasso before. Ask them what they know, have they seen any artwork by him, where, do they know his full name, etc. Ask if anyone knows the meaning of the word abstract and have a bit of fun with this. This would be a good time to show your slideshow, book or the video link from above.

Then go ahead and explain that everyone will make their own Picasso inspired face using colored construction paper and paint for the final details.

Give everyone a 12x 18 colored paper for the background plus some white and black scrap paper.

Give each student two 9×12 pieces of construction paper –they should choose two very different colors- the brighter the better.

Have your students draw an oval on one of the papers. Place the other color under it and cut both papers at the same time.

Next, have your kids choose one color to draw a profile down the middle including the nose and chin. You might need to show them how to do this on the board. Your students should cut it out, glue this over the 12×18 background paper and add a neck with the remaining scrap paper.

From the white scrap paper, cut out one circle and one cone shape which will be the two eyes. The round eye will be the forward looking eye and the cone shape will be the profile view of the other eye. The black paper is for the pupils.

Have the students ‘figure’ out where each eye should be glued. Hint: the profile view of the eye goes on the paper with the nose. Some kids were a little confused so review profile and frontal view and demonstrate how different the eyes look. Since this is Picasso though–it doesn’t really matter where they put it since this is abstract art right? Extra paper is for a closed mouth, big lips, open mouth, etc.. Let your kids go crazy here. They can add hair by cutting up or crimping the rest of the paper.

The background looks really nice with some painted lines, dots, zig-zags or anything else your students can come up with. I adore oil pastels so I would even add some designs over the dry paint, necklaces, etc..

Aren’t these so gorgeous? Betcha Picasso would love them. What do you think?

I love the dots in the background

Guess what?

Art Lessons for Kids is on Facebook  and we are GROWING. Hit the  ”Like” button and join the conversation. No pressure but we are ALL waiting for you!! You can also follow my adventures on Twitter (@Ms_Alejandra).

Why not use the share buttons below and let someone else try this lesson too?

I am a HUGE fan of owls. I love their big eyes and the wisdom they transmit. I love the white ones, speckled ones, grouchy looking ones, big ones and little ones. In a nutshell, I LOVE  owls! Because owls come in all different sizes and colors, they are the perfect animal for kids to learn how to draw.

I wanted to share with you these gorgeous owls my grade one students drew during a whole group guided drawing lesson. These are not my students by the way because I am currently taking a year off from teaching. I was asked to sub for the art teacher at my son’s school and she even let me do my own lessons if I wanted to. These kids by the way were so adorable and it made me miss being in the classroom. Any chance I can teach kids art I realize, makes me a very happy person indeed.

Let me start by showing you this gorgeous video that is going around the web recently. Isn’t this little guy so gorgeous? Don’t you just want to have your own little owl too? Definitely start this lesson by showing this quick video to your students so they totally fall in love with owls and be excited, inspired and ready to learn how to draw their own!

Drawing With Children, by Mona Brookes is a fabulous book I have recommended before on a previous post I wrote on how to draw birds. You can see the post here. I love the way Mona Brookes explains the  5 elements of shape. It’s done in a way that students can break down a picture into shapes and lines quite easily and not feel intimidated when drawing from still life or copying from subject matter. I briefly introduced the lines and shapes in the Mona Brookes way and made sure the kids repeated the lines and shape after me. Kids are sponges and they learn QUICKLY.

For most of my guided drawing lessons I generally like to have all the students together on the floor and in circle. It makes the lesson feel different and special. This doesn’t mean you have to do it this way so please go ahead and do whatever way works for you. Give out some small individual white boards or a clipboard with some recycled paper. These will be the ‘mini’ tables as I call them–kids love this! Give out pencils and erasers. Alternatively– and this is what I always do in my own classroom, is to give out thin or chisled white board or dry erase markers to each student. Because this is the practice part we do as a group, drawing with whiteboard markers allows the kids to erase and keep practicing (without wasting paper) till they go back to their tables to do the real drawing on paper with a pencil.

I also draw along on the board so my students can visually follow each step as I say them.

Begin by asking your students to draw a small ‘dot‘ and fill it in as this will be the owl’s eye. Make sure to remind them to do this dot not too close to any of the edges of the whiteboard or paper so they have room for the owl’s head. Leave some space and do another dot to the right or left of the first dot.

Next up…draw two big circles around the dots. Owls have BIG eyes so the circles should be nice and big too.

Add an upside down triangle shape for the beak.

Next is a curve line for the head and a larger curve line for the body. Your students can add a line to close off the head shape.

More curve lines for the wings and feathers. Use angle lines to make claws on the feet.

At this point ask your students what might be missing from this picture? Details of course! Show them how you add your details to the eyes, or add designs to the feathers. Draw branches, leaves, berries, etc. Let your students add details to their pictures and remind them to not copy the details you made. They can ‘borrow’ your ideas but make changes and make it their own.

Once everyone had a practice, I normally encourage my students to erase their owl (if they are using whiteboards) and either try drawing another owl if they feel they need more practice time. This is so important to let your students have time to explore and feel comfortable with their work.  I don’t believe in 45 minute art lessons in fact I love lessons that take more time.

Last step is to give your students a 12×18 piece of paper and send them off to their table to do their final drawing of their own special owl. For this particular lesson, the students used the owl they drew during the guided drawing lesson and colored them in with crayons because I only had 45 minutes with them– remember I was subbing?

There are so many wonderful ways your students could color in their drawings. Try crayons, oil pastels with a watered down tempera paint wash over it (gorgeous!), draw the owl onto black paper and color in with any of the pastels (oil or chalk), use tempera or acrylic paint, etc..

With the short amount of time these kids had to learn a new way of looking at lines and shapes plus draw and color an owl, these came out simply stunning, don’t you think?

Did you know…

Art Lessons for Kids is on Facebook  and we are GROWING. Hit the  ”Like” button and join the conversation. We are ALL waiting for you!! You can also follow my adventures on Twitter (@Ms_Alejandra).