When Pigasso met Mootisse by Nina Laden is a great book for elementary art students. It is full of colorful pig and moose versions of Pablo Picasso's and Henri Matisse's artwork, playful word puns, and a bit of art history.

->Buy the book here
->Play this youtube version
->Have an actor read it to your students here

I put together an active learning lesson to accompany this story using an ipad app called, Compare a Twist. This app allows you to make custom lessons on any concept that helps student literally sort out their facts. I demonstrate how to download the lesson and use it in the quick video below. The lessons asks students to sort images by artist.

I went to a one-day conference in Chicago called Arts Alive sponsored by the Illinois Alliance for Arts Education. This conference was for all arts educators by arts educators.  One of the sessions I was most looking forward to was on using theater games in the classroom. The presenter, Aimee-Lynn Newlan, had us actively learning the games for the entire hour. It was so much fun that I (literally) laughed until I cried! 
If I'm having this much fun with all my grown up inhibitions, then my fun-loving freely expressive little students will have the time of their life as we learn about art with these games. To make sure I didn't lose my ideas and to better communicate them to my students, I put this little video together with the ideas we developed during the session.

Hey You and You Two

One student takes the lead and points to one person in the circle and calls out an artist composition. That person and the two on either side of him/her have to use their bodies to become this composition.
Symmetrical, Asymmetrical, Landscape, still life, abstract, cityscape, seascape, etc.

Compliments and Complementaries

For this game students are thinking about saying nice words (compliments) and opposite colors  (complementaries). This forces all students to listen and be ready with an answer and a kind word.

Sculpture Game

One student is the "clay" and two students work as "sculptors" to create whatever the leader calls out. You can have students sculpt action poses (run, slouch, ponder), emotions (fear, hurt, sad), or pieces of art (The Thinker, The Scream, The Mona Lisa).

The No Talking What-so-ever Quiet Game
My students have trouble doing anything quietly. So this game is a great way for them to use their bodies to make collaborative art without words. The leader calls out something like "Become a winter scene". Students join in as they catch on to each other's non-verbal cues.

Pass on the Name
This game is derived from "The Name Game". Instead of using our real names we would take on an artist name to begin with and pass it on to each classmate we meet and greet while taking on their name for our own. It requires good memory and concentration.
Sit out if you forget or meet "yourself" again.
Print out these artist greeting cards to start.

One Voice

This was the game that made me laugh until I cried. A group was formed and told we are one person and must speak as one. Then we were asked a question like "What is your favorite color?" We had to look at each other and start to speak, follow, blend our syllables until we were really saying the same thing.

Mr. Know-it-all

Students were lined up and told they could only contribute one word when it was their turn to speak. This word was to help make one collaborative statement that answered my question. This game forces you try to adjust to other people's thoughts and contribute a word that fit grammarically.

Graphic Organizers
Compare-a-Twist allows the teacher to set up a compare and/or contrast review game on any topic. Students drag the text or image to the correct side of the screen. Animations give immediate feedback to learners. Teachers can save their games and share them via google docs. Ideas: Sort primary/secondary colors Sort warm/cool colors. Sort images by genre.

Collaborative Art
Make a Monster App
Create a Monster App
Faces iMake
Art Doodles
Ideas: as students are individually sketching ideas for an upcoming art design, pass the ipad around the room and have each contribute to a class design. Watch it build on the screen through the projector.

Art Puzzles
Art Puzzles: Sliding Slices
Find an art puzzle that relates to the art subject or artist that your art project is based on. Let each student make one move until it's solved. Keep track of how many moves it takes to solve and see if they can beat other classes' scores.

Quizzes
You can make your own quizzes in Educreations or use a pre-made interactive quiz from the art section of BrainPop App.

Idea: pass the ipad from one group to the next giving them the first chance at getting the correct answer.

Interactive eBooks
Find an ebook that ties in nicely with what you're learning in art class. We made monsters from shapes . When finished I had student's take turns turning the page in There is a  Monster at the End of this Book
starring Groover. We used a Finding Nemo interactive puzzle book  to accompany our monochromatic fish lesson too.

Digital Portfolio

Don't forget that an ipad is a video camera and still camera too. 
Photograph and upload art with the 
Artsonia app
Use Evernote to collect images
Use Dropbox app to collect images

Let your ipad roam!
Mirror your ipad through your projector wirelessly with
Apple TV
Reflection App
Then pass the ipad around the room.
No wifi? You can create a closed network and still mirror your ipad with a laptop hooked up to a projector.

I have so much to say about this digital graphic design lesson based on the painting Christina's World created on the ipads that I wrote it up as an article for School Arts magazine. Hopefully I will be able to share every last detail with you if it is accepted for publication.

Meanwhile, I wanted to share some resources that I made to accompany the lesson so you can explore these ideas now while you might have time. How to use instant alpha on a mac to erase the background is  in the beginning of this video. How to use the magic wand tool from photoshop to do the same thing is in this video.

I erased Christina out of Andrew Wyeth's original piece, Christina's World. View the video below to learn how to do it in both Keynote and Photoshop Elements. The end of the video shows a student creating the artwork on the ipad using the Brushes App.
The key to making this project work with students is the Dropbox app for sharing and accessing images for the ipad.
View our online art gallery of completed student work for this project. Many students wrote a bit in their artist statements explaining the new story they intended to tell.

We're so excited to be featured
 this week on clustrmaps.com! 
Thanks for stopping in to take a peek at my Fugleblog.  (See my message below).

May I suggest you take a moment to watch our newest fugleflick: Elementary Art
Take a peek at my k-5 student art gallery from last school year
Write a comment telling us where you're from. 
School is out for summer but my students will be THRILLED to hear from you this fall:)

The video above was made using Doink Express app. The image below was annotated in Skitch for the ipad. Want to see more ideas for the ipad look here.

This is the time of year where I reflect on what worked and what I would like to do differently in my classroom. Classroom management is one of the biggest issues for any teacher, but I think even more so for Arts Educators who service the entire school population. I have over 500 students in and out of my art room all week long. Our time is limited yet I want to make it rich and meaningful. So, strategies that prevent disruptions and encourage good listening, following directions, and make clean up run smoothly are very important.

Here is a list of some of my resources:

• Push up your Sleeves- (39 second video) Students made this Fugleflick to visually demonstrate how you should enter the art room. Sometimes I run it in quicktime and set it to loop. I hold an sign in my hand that says, "Do what the video says".
• The Pencil Exchange- (40 second video) This video is like a commercial for how the pencil exchange works. It saves me from explaining it to every class at the beginning of the school year. I show it once to every group. They all completely understand how it works after this viewing and I rarely have to say a thing more all year long.
• The Scoreboard- (digital file) I use this image and run it through BlockPosters.com to enlarge it to the size of my bulletin board. This scoreboard keeps track of behavior for each class all school year long. Every group gets 4 points per class:          1 pt for Listening, 1pt for Showing Respect, 1pt for Being Polite, 1pt for clean up.         We work our way to a "star" to receive a prize (Shhhh! I'll let you in on a secret. The prize is usually a smiley faced eraser cap and a lesson on being kind to your erasers).
• Clean Up Digital Organizer- (for Interactive Whiteboard) This digital file was made in mimio studio which you can download for free for PC or Macs. I use this to organize clean up when students know what "number" they are. I put a number on their seats, but you can have them pick numbers from popsicle sticks, or something similar. Watch this screen cast video to learn how I use it. Find more of my interactive mimio resources to download along with screen cast demonstrations on my Art is Interactive Wiki.

Here is one video I made a few summers back as a result of my reflections on the school year. It's called the LISTEN PLEA. It is literally a song and dance routine that teaches the specific components of good listening (there are four-quiz students afterwards).  I have used it from time to time as a refresher for my students when they stop listening to me. They seem to want to listen to my video though-go figure!? 

The more you know what an app can do, the more you see how you can use it with your students. So, I've been playing and exploring on the iPad all summer. 

Last night I decided to try to make an image to communicate our new weekly #ArtsEd Chat on Twitter (Join us!). To make this image I used the Brushes App to draw, ArtStudio App to add text, create an overlay effect, and import an image I borrowed from the PlayArt app. I thought it might be helpful to demonstrate how to do all these steps, so I practiced using another app called, Display Recorder (which is not in the Apple store right now for some mysterious reason) to make a screencast on the ipad. I uploaded it to youtube (see below).

I've been entering my students' videos (Fugleflicks) into film festivals for 6 years now and I'm only just beginning to realize what they've been lacking all along.... PROOF. 
I remember being in  the audience of a international film fest a few years ago watching all movies in my students' category before the judges announced the winner. I was thinking,

I know I'm biased, but my students' video is so much cleaner, communicates better, is oozing with creativity, and the audience loves it. How could there be any question as to who would win? 

But they didn't. The audience even gasped with surprise when the other filmmakers were announced as the winner. This particular festival gave the teachers feedback forms from the judges showing comments and scores from their rubric. I read many encouraging comments, but one stood out to me: "Too good. Did the teacher make it?"

That was very frustrating to read. My students had spent two months of their lunch recesses participating in every aspect of the movie-making experience from storyboarding to editing. They did take after take to get it right doing the best they could with our consumer grade tech in our little art room. 

They were so warm and supportive of each other during the filming that they all felt comfortable enough to sing their little hearts out as if they had just stepped off broadway. 
(See their video, Swept Away.)

My objective as an art teacher is to help my students approach movie-making as an art form while learning to collaborate, be creative, and problem-solve. I want them to strive for artistry and try their best in all they do. So, the final product may look "too good"  for what one might expect of a group of 10 year olds.

What I'm trying to do now is add a bit of proof to the video before I submit it to a film festival. This is not what I do for Fugleflicks in general. I like to keep them short and to the point so that teachers can interject them into a lesson to introduce or teach art concepts. But the FULL VERSION of a video needs to have a bit of behind the scenes to help erase any doubts from the minds of judges that it truly was made by children.
Here is our FULL VERSION of Elementary Musical (less than 4 mins)

I bought a class set (6) of stuffed giraffes and the book 
Giraffes Can't Dance by Giles Andreae.

They were on sale at Kohl's for only $2.50 as part of the 
Kohl's Cares charity.

Click here to go shopping before 
they run out.

The plan:
1. Read the story or watch the video (below)
2. Practice drawing giraffes by placing one giraffe at each table and asking students to
 a) manipulate the giraffe into a dance pose
 b) photograph it with the ipad
 c) import the photo in the brushes app
 d) draw over the photo
 e) email the finished drawing to me 
 f) I print the drawings for them
3.  Students turn the prints into paintings

I've seen this book inspire lots of art projects on Artsonia.com, 
so I can't wait to give it a try with my students. 

Way back when I was first playing with iMovie to make videos for my students I had to go through a very complicated process to do special effects. Be Kind to Your Erasers was filmed as two layers: one for the the finger and one for the lips. I used a third-party plug-in to create a picture in picture FX and did my best to layer the lips on to the fingers. It was inaccurately placed at times if the finger moved too much and the coloring didn't blend well. But, the results worked for me. I was only trying to convince my students to be kind to their erasers.
I remember destroying a Barbie Doll for the hair, painting a finger themed school room background, and using a twist tie for glasses. I was having a blast, giggling and playing like a 10 year old while putting the story together. I think I spent only a day or two of my summer vacation working on this video, but learned enough about editing imovie, script writing, and organizing a video to start doing this with my students the following school year. This is my favorite way to learn technology; by playing.

Now that I've acquired an iPad, I'm finding that there are apps that can be used for awesome video FX that would make recreating this movie much easier.
Funny Movie Maker- layers video over images (the lips effect). example
Paper Camera- makes rotoscoped looking videos. example
Doink-makes animated movies a piece of cake (like Flash but easier interface). example
Brushes- makes video from every stroke and choice made in creating art. example
FaceJack- does what Blabberize does for making an image talk. example
Puppet Pals or Explain Everything-make animated videos w/audio example

What else can we add to this list? Please chime in!