Works for Me Monday: Balloon Stamping

It's time for another Works for Me Monday. Last week I had a great idea for a post. Of course, I didn't write it down and now I can't remember what it was. So instead I'll post about one of my favorite art techniques, balloon stamping. I learned about balloon stamping from a video produced by the folks who make Biocolor paints. The video contains examples of lots of fun way to use these paints and is worth checking out if you can find a copy.

To balloon stamp, you need a partially inflated balloon, at least three colors of paint, a paint pallette (we use paper plates), and your project. Put a small pool of each color of paint (approximately dime size) on your pallette right next to each other so they are touching and form a triangle. It is preferably if the pools touch. Then dip the end of your balloon into the paint, dab off a bit, and stamp onto your project multiple times by bouncing the balloon. You get a really cool marble or tie-dye effect. We have yet to find a color combination that doesn't work.

I particularly like this technique for several reasons. I work with kids with little to no fine motor control. However, even my most involved student can bounce a balloon with help. They also like the feedback they get from the bouncing. In addition, this technique facilitates multiple opportunities to make choices, an important part of any art project for us. It also lets the kids show their individuality both in the colors they choose and how they stamp (lots of stamping close together or a little stamping far apart and everything in between). It is also a nice "no fail" technique. No matter what the student does, the project will come out looking nice

We use this technique all the time. We have made backgrounds for bulletin boards, t-shirts, greeting cards and stationery, as well as too many art projects to count (check out the constellations we did in this post). Using balloon stamping works for us. What works for you?

Thoughts on Macaroni

Part 2 of my musings on Rob Rummel-Hudson's latest post...

As part of his discussion on the uselessness of state assessments, Rob also talks about what he terms as "macaroni art." I LOVE the term. My kids' parents tend to refer to it as "para art." You know what I'm talking about: the kid who can't hold a pencil and would prefer to eat a crayon rather than color with it comes home with a perfect masterpiece of an art project that in no way reflects the child's artistic abilities, lovingly created by a staff member at school so the child feels "included" and the parents don't feel "left out" or "burdened" by their child's disability and will have something "nice" to hang on the fridge. The parents mostly smile politely and quietly throw those projects away. They are meaningless. I have actually seen paras sit at a table alone and complete a project while the student whose name is on the project is elsewhere in the room doing something unrelated or worse, sits there totally disengaged, tuned out, or even ASLEEP! UGH!

One of the first things I teach my paras is the Principle of Partial Participation. Essentially, the mantra in my classroom is "No one can do everything but everyone can do something." We do NOT do "para art" in my program, although many of my paras do enjoy doing art and will often do their OWN project alongside the kids (thus the phenomenon of the multiplying dream catchers, HA HA). But, the projects my students do are wholy influenced by them. They might not be able to hold the marker or paint brush, but they can certainly pick the color or shape. We do a lot of "glue it on" projects. Those cute "follow-the-directions-cut-along-the-dotted-line" projects you can photocopy from teacher idea sites? Not for us. I choose techniques that are pretty "fool proof" like balloon stamping, finger print painting, daubing, mosaic, and decoupage. And I don't care if we have day-glo orange Totos or Dorothy has purple hair or the Emerald City ends up being more orange and brown than green. Projects of any sort MUST maximize choice making opportunities for the students or I won't even consider them. You won't find "coloring sheets" in my room (OK, except for one student who enjoys smashing the paint daubers onto them when she's working on color identification). Our projects turn out as varied and interesting as the kids themselves and I LOVE it. So do the parents, as evidenced by the numbers of our projects that I've seen hanging on fridges or lovingly displayed in rooms. For more examples of some of the projects we do, look in the side bar under "Curriculum" at posts about our News-2-You related projects. And I promise, Wizard of Oz project pix will be coming eventually.

I should also mention that my staff is forbidden to make choices FOR a student. I have students who don't particularly care to do most art projects and will communicate that by absolutely refusing to choose ANYTHING (we call it "staring through the wall"). Frustrating? You bet. But for me, "not choosing" is the choice and we honor that choice (even when the project is super cute and part of state assessments). There are consequences for not doing your work, just like for any other kid (I have really supportive parents). I can't stand it when people make choices "for" kids. All that teaches them is that their desires are irrelevant. A big serving of "learned helplessness" anyone? Seriously, if you want to see me lose my cool, go ahead and make that (non health and safety related) choice for one of my kiddos, I dare you.

So I say, "DOWN WITH MACARONI ART!" Unless of course, it's a macaroni collage that unquestioningly reflects the student--as in a big blob of glue in the middle of the page because the kid LOVES glue, with one little blue piece of macaroni stuck in it because he HATES making choices for art projects (or threw the other bits on the floor).

We Shall Remain

Hello all! No I haven't disappeared. Just been very very busy with a lot of things I can't discuss here. Plus, as I mentioned in my previous post, I've run into "teacher's block" (sort of like writer's block) and just haven't had too much to say. And of course, now that I'm in the mood to post, the little guy I'm doing respite for has decided that he MUST be out of bed and MUST have a snack and some playtime. It's waaaaaay past his bedtime. The stinker. :-)......

OK, problems solved with much giggling and even a couple of belly laughs plus a whole lot of cheese crackers on the floor, much to the dogs' delight. I LOVE this kid! Anyway, I mentioned that I was struggling with how to structure the rest of the regular school year for us and talked about doing something with the PBS series "We Shall Remain." That is indeed what I decided to go with. We got started a bit late so had to do two episodes last week (After the Mayflower, which is about the European "invasion" of America, and "Tecumseh's Vision" about Tecumseh's attempts to unite the Native American tribes into one nation separate from the white man). Both episodes were excellent although I will say we were all more fascinated by After the Mayflower (you mean the Pilgrims are actually the bad guys? How different would history be today if Massasoit had just decided to let those foolish Europeans die from their own ignorance). I'm using both the News-2-You and the website to create synopses of the episodes using Boardmaker which we read during Morning Meeting prior to watching the episodes (we watch during gross motor/standing time). One of my students, whose Dad is Puerto Rican, was fascinated by the pictures of Native Americans that I used and kept pointing to himself and then to the Smartboard, making it very clear that he thinks he looks like a Native American. Very cool. He got VERY ANGRY when the white men treated the Native Americans badly during the first episode and got really into it when the Native Americans fought back in the second. It was so neat to see him responding like this because he is usually completely disengaged from anything even remotely "academic."

We didn't do much of a project with After the Mayflower, although there are some nice Pilgrim and Indian crafts at dltk-kids.com and Kate also posted some great resources on her website. With Tecumseh's Vision we decided to make dream catchers. The project on dltk-kids did not work for us. It was designed by a teacher in the UK and we weren't able to lay hands on all the materials, particularly the mesh bags. We used this project instead. This is one of the most fun projects we've done, or at least one of the most popular. The kids enjoyed choosing colors and materials and the adults had a blast weaving (my group of students don't have the fine motor skills to do the weaving but had loads of fun checking the adults' work and criticizing, I mean commenting, on it). I think we have 20 or so of the things floating around the room at the moment. We made small ones. The challenging part was figuring out what to use for the rings. In the past we've brass embroidery rings but they are fairly expensive and we didn't have any in the supply closet (yes, this was yet another last minute project idea). What worked best was cutting the rim off of disposable plastic cups (the white, nearly transparent ones work the best). We also tried the rim off of plastic containers like cottage cheese and Cool Whip, but they were too flexible and didn't maintain their round shape. The rims off the LIDS however, worked great. However, the cups are cheap and there are lots of them available compared to the containers. For the string we used crochet thread (the kind used to make lace) for the smaller ones and yarn for the larger. We have a whole collection of various sized beads that we could string on as requested by the students. For the bottom the kids chose a feather (or 5) onto which we strung 3 pony beads (on the shaft end). These were then tied onto the bottom of the dream catcher either in a group or singly. They all turned out really neat. I forgot to take a picture of them but will add one later.

Next up we have The Trail of Tears, Geronimo, and Wounded Knee. I'm not exactly sure what projects we will do to enhance these topics as I need to keep things really simple. I do know we will be taking a trip to the Mid America All Indian Center which has recently reopened and is doing a bunch of stuff related to the We Shall Remain series. And there are more than a few good movies featuring Native Americans (and no, I'm not talking the John Wayne-type where the Indians are the bad guys). And maybe we can find someone from the Indian Center who would be willing to volunteer some time to come in and do drumming and storytelling with the kids. I also have a collection of Native American music we are listening to.

For those of you who would like to borrow my We Shall Remain Boardmaker adaptations:

Email me OR leave a comment with your email/contact information and I'll contact you about sharing. Some of what I have created uses copywrited materials owned by News-2-You so I have to be careful how I share. I plan to use this unit again in the fall closer to Thanksgiving with more activities.

News-2-You Fun

Just about every week we read the News-2-You adapted newspaper (see previous post). I always try to plan at least one extension activity to go along with it. Here are some of the projects we've done so far. Please note that while many of these projects are arts and crafts related, I also look for science experiments, cooking activities, and games.

Hubble Space Telescope: We made our own versions of space nebulae. We used BioColor paint to balloon stamp on coffee filters. The NASA website had a fun activity that gave examples of different space formations that have been seen using Hubble. The kids chose from those to decide what shape to cut their nebulae into. (NOTE: We attempted the project as described on the website but our markers wouldn't "bleed" on our coffee filters. I had planned to let the kids choose colors and make random marks then spray water using a switch adapted water pik. We had a big mess and a lot of wet fun but no projects.) The entire website has some fun projects which will be perfect when we do our more in-depth space unit this spring to tie in with state assessments. Balloon stamping has to be my favorite way to paint. I learned about the technique on the BioColor video which came with my first order of paint. Basicially you place 3-4 small puddles (about dime size) of paint touching each other in a triangle/square then stick an inflated balloon in the paint and stamp onto your project. It's something everyone in my room can do, a "no fail" outcome, and just looks really cool. The paint washes off of and out of nearly everything. Mix it with some liquid soap or detergent and you have awesome fingerpaint. There are recipes for puffy paint and other projects as well.


Iron Chef America: I was so excited when this came up as a News-2-You topic because I love this show. We had a blast this week. I was able to find some on-line video of the show to share clips of. Then we had our own Iron Chef Showdown. The secret ingredient was pudding mix. The kids chose between various ways to make their pudding and different ingredients to mix in. Everyone then taste tested everyone else's and voted whether or not they liked it and which they liked better. This was mainly based on yes/no responses and/or how enthusiastic they were about eating/tasting the sample and requesting more. The surprise favorite was vanilla pudding mix combined with whipped topping, bananas, blueberry pie filling, and crushed chocolate chip cookies. I took the kids' recipes and votes and made a recipe card using Boardmaker.



Political Conventions: This was a fun week that allowed us to talk about current events. We learned about the two candidates (and yes, I stayed nonbiased in my presentation, for those who know my political views) and talked about the two-party system. We then did an art project where the kids chose between making a donkey or an elephant. They had color choices of red, white, or blue for each piece of their chosen project, could choose whether to use stickers. etc. We all laughed when every single kid chose a donkey, including the one who would later wear a McCain-Palin shirt at least once a week. The art projects come from DLTK-kids.com. I LOVE this resource and use it all the time. It is rare for them not to have something that supports a lesson topic.

Olympics: This was one of the first topics of our school year this fall. We had just finished summer school by holding our own version of the Olympics and inviting friends from some other classes to participate with us. We spent lots of time watching the Olympics, viewing the very exciting Opening Ceremonies, learning a bit about China, and playing various games. For this project we used small paper plates to make our Olympic rings. Although the kids did not get color choices because I wanted to stick with the "real" colors, they did get to choose to use finger painting or a paint brush. They also chose 1-5 favorite Olympic sports using PCS symbols, which we cut out and glued onto the circles cut from the middle of the rings. I think the projects turned out pretty cool and they are still hanging in our room.

Last year I sent the News-2-You worksheets and related projects home every week. This year I decided to collect them to make portfolios. We can look back at what we've done before, I can compare performance on the worksheets to look for growth, and I might just be able to use some of this for state assessments. How cool is that?