Check out these other great art ed bloggers sharing some of their tips for early finishers:

Skyline Middle School invited 25 guest readers to our 5th Annual Art Read Think Day last week. The day long re-adthon had a diverse group of readers that included the Harrisonburg Mayor, Superintendent, School Board Members, City Council, Radio DJ, Administrators, Teachers and others from the community who shared their favorite stories or from a collection of Art Books. Teachers signed up for 15 minute time slots throughout the day to bring classes to hear stories being told.
The event is a wonderful way to highlight the creative connections and inspiration found when art & literature combine! Dan Rublee, one of our guest readers summed up the event for our local paper beautifully: "Art, literature, and music bring solace, peace and good feelings amidst the struggles of life. It's an escape mechanism. If they [students] can immerse themselves in those things, they can create a whole new world for themselves". 

Here are some of the books shared during our ART Day event:

• Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon Illustrations by Henri Sorensen
• Black Cat Bone by J Patrick Lewis  Illustrations by Gary Kelley
• The Three Pigs by David Wiesner
  
• 10,00 Dresses by Marcus Ewert Illustrations by Rex Ray
  
• Edgar Allan Poe Edited by Andrew Delbanco Illustrations by Gerard DuBois
  
• The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer pictures by Elizabeth Zunon
  
• Love by Matt De La Pena Illustrations by Loren Long
  
• How Artists See the Weather by Colleen Carroll
  
• Radiant Child - The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat by Javaka Steptoe
  
• Last Stop on Market Street by Matt De La Pena pictures by Christian Robinson
  
• The Pencil by allan Ahlberg Illustrations by Bruce Ingman
  
• ​The Dot by Peter H Reynolds
  

Many thanks to our readers, teachers, administrators and my collaborator- our librarian Sandy Parks for helping to make this annual event happen!

• Language Skills- my students must READ, WRITE, and SPEAK every day in every class. In the art room we have a variety of ways to bring those skills into art. Writing about art through my week long warm up "THINK about Art", peer guided art description and drawing activity, ART Day, or using Chatterpix to add a voice to art statements.
• Math skills happen daily in the art room whether in measuring, grid drawing, symmetry, patterns, creating mats for their own art to be displayed or understanding proportion. Perhaps having a mother as my own 9th grade math teacher helped but the connections are infinite!
• History speaks for itself through the arts. Students make connections to history and current events through Political Cartoons, creating art based on understanding of events or people in history, etc.
• Science collaborations can make quite an impression! Students have created cyanotype printed quilts based on aquatic life forms, and made relief prints to help imprint the difference between a plant or animal cell in their minds.

Making connections across the curriculum are endless through the arts. I have found inspiration through visiting the Power of Arts Workshop at the Lab School of Washington, DC as well as through resources from ArtsEdge- Kennedy Center. What are some of your favorite ways to help your students make CONNECTIONS to learning?

Students started to create their own collaborative scrolls this week. A variety of short folk tales were sifted through to pick the groups inspiration for their crankie. Students started by storyboarding the scenes of the story and dividing it into at least 10 scenes. The art classes are working on 11 different  scrolls and will work next week to create artwork on the 25 foot scrolls. Stay tuned for updates on our progress and our efforts to present our Crankies in an after school performance with the drama department on March 20, 2018!

For more information on Crankies check out The Crankie Factory
The guest artist visit and the collaborative project with drama & art students was funded through a Harrisonburg Educational Foundation grant awarded to our librarian, Sandy Parks, drama educator Rebecca Rogers, Choral educator Deborah Mongold and resident Art Lady Ms Kincaid

March is Youth Art Month!

The month will be filled with wonderful activities, art shows, presentations and opportunities to share your appreciation for art work.

WEEK #1
​

Saturday, March 10th, 2018 1-3pm 
All are invited to the YOUTH ART MONTH ART Show & Reception
Massanutten Regional Library
​

Personally, I will have 30 pieces of 6x6"art-work
created in thirty days in Jan-Feb 2018 on display
at the VMRC Parks Gable Gallery through the month of March.

​The series of paintings represents my family tree
from my own self portrait through ancestors
​who migrated to North America in the mid 1600's-1700's.

The Virginia Art Education Association hosted the first annual social media event to share art, moments of creating, appreciating and visiting art. Virginians shared on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram using the hashtag #artacrossva18. It was a wonderful way to Kick-off Youth Art Month by  glimpsing into art classrooms, galleries and museums around the state for a day!
Below are a few of the wonderful posts from around Virginia. Thank you to all who shared!

https://storify.com/ArtLadyHBK/art-across-virginia-2018.html

My art story starts at home. As a child, I was blessed to be taken by my mother to see the local artisans in the community where I grew up in WV yearly for craft shows. The community where I grew up didn't have an art education program available until I was in Junior High School. The artists that started my love for making things and sharing my creativity started within my own community. Hidden in the hills of WV are some amazingly creative individuals that have long traditions of craft and expression that have been passed down through the generations. In my own home town of Beckley, WV you can quickly stop by Tamarack to see a variety of artisans in their studios hard at work or browse through the gallery. The community of artists is an ongoing source of inspiration and pride.

Memories of traveling up to Pittsburg on occasion to be inspired still are vivid in my memory. One day is clear in my mind when I went to see work at the Mattress Factory. The docent led me down a row of old houses where she unlocked a door and let me in. Alone, I entered the home to experience Ann Hamilton's art installation that would forever change how I view art experiences.

At first I feared going to the top floor but reminded myself that this experience was ART. On the top floor to my surprise I found birds nibbling away at the bird seed suspended in the wax melting beneath the coffin shaped container of face forms. ​ There was a beauty within  the decay and I found myself frozen in that moment questioning life, materials and how I define art. Later, I was fortunate to meet a Professor Beckley at an art reception and he asked me about the art that inspires me and Ann Hamilton's work fueled a long discussion. Later that year I was thrilled to be contacted and invited to a lecture and diner with the artist afterwards. She remains a source of inspiration, strength, and humility that shows in all of her artistic installations or experiences.

Each child has a visual voice ready to reworked, polished or woven together in a new and exciting way. Beyond the tough exteriors of a typical teenager, we must, as educators push forward to explore the creative inspiration inside us all. 
What art or artistic experiences have molded the way you view art? 
​Students also have a wonderful opportunity to share their own inspiration through the Doodle for Google Annual Contest.
Be sure to check out the other wonderful art educators sharing their own artistic inspiration via the links below!

A collaborative project between the students, faculty, and staff of Smithland Elementary School and Skyline Middle School, Woven Together is a visual representation of each individual's story, shown within the context of our campus community. Participants answered questions about their region of origin, family make-up, favorite subjects, and spoken languages, and their answers were "graphed" onto their respective weaving. As you view this project, we hope you are reminded that while we each have a unique story to tell, our stories overlap and share commonalities with the stories of others in our community.

The students and staff of SMES & SKMS were surveyed and the creation of our collaborative project began! Many thanks to our Tech Ed Department for helping to cut our 4' diameter circles as the base for our project. The SMES Art Club painted the tints that became the base for the woven string art created by SKMS art students. Each circle has a number/letter in the center outlined with an equal number of nails representing that group. The outer edge of each circle has nails corresponding to each possible answer from the survey questions.  The finished string art creations are each a unique visual representation of the diversity of our learning communities and elements that help us find the ties that bind us in unity.