Accordion Book Project

Book binding is a love of mine and I think the book arts are under-rated in terms of art lesson plans. To me, book making is the perfect way to marry language arts and visual arts for an interdisciplinary lesson. After a slide show of all of the exciting things going on in the book-art world, and reviewing parts of book (case, text block, head, foot, front, back, spine), I demonstrated how to make an accordion book. This is an easy method that doesn't require any stitching. Paper, board, glue and scissors are all you need.

To make an accordion book, we cut 18"X 12" paper in half length wise to make 2-6" tall pieces. Each of these were folded in half.

We folded the ends back towards the first crease, one side, and then the second. This should zig-zag like the letter "W."

We repeated the process on a second piece,

 and then run a glue stick a cut edge,

 before stacking another cut edge against it so that it ends up making two "w"s attached at the middle edge. You may double the number of pages by folding and gluing more strips of the same sized paper. This should make a double"W".
 Cut two pieces of book board, mat board, or cardboard that are slightly larger than the text block.
Cut decorative paper or construction paper that is about 3/4" bigger than the boards. Cover the board with glue. We used a glue stick. Flip it upside down onto the paper, than flip it back so you can rub the paper down on the board.

  Cut the corners off at a 45 degree angle. You want to get close to the board, but not too close, about a board's width worth of paper left to cover that corner.

Run glue along each edge, and fold it over, onto the back of the board.

 When attaching the end pages, place a piece of paper between the end paper and the rest of the book, to keep the glue where it should be. Glue the page with glue stick, going the whole way to the edges. Center the text block to the board, and then open it and rub the end page to the board to make sure it is attached completely. Do the same for the other end, and you are finished binding the book.

My students filled their pages with content before attaching the boards. One did a book of dessert recipes, another made a "How to Rap" book, written with rhyme and rhythm. Some did lists of favorite things or favorite foods. A couple did simple auto-biography. There were quote books that ranged from themes of love to money. And one student made a "Baby's first ABC" book for a teacher's newborn son.

About half my students wrote their books in Braille, and for some of them, I glued a print translation. They illustrated the pages with whatever worked for them (several blind students used stencils, one used Wiki Sticks).

There's something to be said about spending time to combined personal interests, words, and images in a unified way. There's something to be said about gaining skills and learning a craft. And there's something extra nice about being able to carry a piece of art in your hand or your back pack to share with friends.

School Mural

This year we, on the school media committee, decided to do several school-wide media festivals, each under the theme "Georgia On My Mind" and so we had a couple Georgia authors, such as Carmen Deedy come to work some story telling magic one day; another day we had a character parade and presentations on the people of Georgia. I had my students talk about the natives who lived on what is currently the Ocmulgee Indian Mounds, and make the coil pots in the same style and using the same techniques of people 10,000 years ago. For our final big hoorah, I worked with a couple of students, to create a mural of some favorite landmarks from various spots in Georgia:  Macon, Savannah, Atlanta, St. Simon's Island, and Cumberland Island.

I painted the outlines of the mural in chalk and traced them in bold black so my visually impaired students could see. One had the task of painting large areas like the sky and sand, while the other did small areas of under-painting, like the Indian Mound, or a tree.

By three Friday classes, we had most of the painting finished, but I realized that some of the buildings looked a little crooked, so I came in some afternoons on my own and ended up completing the whole thing myself, although my helpers feel good about their ownership in the piece.


With every mistake, one of my students kept saying, "Oops. That's OK, you'll just paint over it."  I loved that she wasn't beating herself up, but I finally asked why she thinks that I'm supposed to step in and fix every mistake, and so she changed her mantra to: "Oops. That's OK, I'll just paint over it." And that realization, that it's just paint and any mistakes can be fixed with more paint, is exactly what is needed to have the courage to do a big project like this. The four large stage sets we did during the course of the year, was perfect preparation for me to try to make my mistakes in public (in the cafeteria lobby rather than my own classroom). Lots of people had opinions about what landmarks I should be adding, but I would tell them to feel free to use their great ideas when they do their mural.

Here are some details so you can see my how large and loose brush strokes can work from a distance.

Cinco de Mayo Tissue Paper Flowers

Now's the time to get in fiesta prep-mode for the Cinco de Mayo. This holiday commemorates the Battle of Puebla in 1862, when the French army was defeated, despite the fact that they were better equiped and outnumbered the Mexican resisters three to one. The win was a real a boost to morale and today Mexican Americans celebrate their heritage on the 5th of May. 

My school's prom happens to fall on May 5th this year, which is why the theme is Cinco de Mayo. My students and I are making tissue paper flowers for decorations.  Large flowers require 4-6 pieces of tissue paper (we're using 20 inch squares for most of them). Three half sheets make a medium sized flower.

The tissue is stacked and folded like a fan (or accordion). Then small notches are cut for the wire or string to tie the pieces together. Petals can be formed by cutting the ends round or pointed.

 Slide thumbs deeply between two sheets of tissue and gently pull in opposite directions, to fluff each layer.

This very large table holds flowers made from about 70 sheets of tissue paper, so you can get a lot of bang for you buck when it comes to decorating. Small flowers, like the ones seen near the top of this page, are made from 1/4 or 1/6 of sheet of tissue, and are nice for table toppers.

Enjoy your Cinco de Mayo in style this year!

Personal Symbols Flag

Symbolism isn't just used in literature. Visual art is also full of symbolism. I try to tie my art lesson about symbolism to social studies and U.S. history. I ask students to come up with a list of things that represent America: statue of liberty, the flag, Uncle Sam, the Liberty Bell, a bald eagle, etc. Then we dig a little deeper as to what those specific symbols mean. The flag alone is packed with meaning. I ask. why 50 stars and 13 stripes? Why red? Why white? Why blue?

Then we get personal. What if you were a country of one? What would your flag look like? What are your interests? What colors represent you and why? Most of my students who do this project are functioning at a very low level cognitively, but they still have preferences, whether it be pounding on something, or humming to a favorite song.

We used felt, glue, and puff paint to each make our own flag using personal symbols. My hope would be that each parent could come and pick out their child's flag without being told which one it was. Symbols help us find a hamburger or a hotel from the high way, use an app on our phone, understand a poem or song, and read a map. It's important for students to understand that colors and shapes have meaning in art and know how to read those too.

Do It Yourself T-Shirt design

The music teacher, in my school, came to me yesterday, in hopes that I would have an idea on how to get Beethoven's head on a t-shirt. There is special paper for inkjet printers that allows you to iron on an image. That's easy, but it costs about $18.00 for the cheapest package, would mean a trip to the store or waiting for an order to be delivered. Besides, I have a laser color printer, and only found the iron-on sheets for ink-jet printers.

So I decided to paint his head on with black acrylic paint. As I was rummaging through the cupboard for acrylic, however, I came across puffy paint, which does very well on fabrics and was so easy to use, that I had the t-shirt done in 15 minutes, less time than it would take to drive to the closest Staples.





I started by printing an image of Beethoven. Then I traced it onto wax paper with a Sharpie marker, to simplify the dark and light areas. I placed the wax paper inside the t-shirt and traced my tracing with the puffy paint. I used a light box to see, but taping the paper inside the t-shirt and using a widow would work too! In that case, however, I might trace it with disappearing fabric pen or pencil and then use puffy paint on a flat surface so that it wouldn't drip at all.

Viola! It was so easy and fun, that it makes me think about drawing portraits of ancestors on t-shirts for a family reunion or favorite quotes in cool fonts and colors! The sky's the limit.

Portrait Perfect

One of my art professors told me, "If you can't make it good, make it big." Scale gives some legitimacy to art. Claus Oldenburg's spoon with a cherry, would be far less impressive if it were life size. It's the making it bigger than life that makes it spectacular. Adding a fountain element to the cherry stem is the over-the-top silliness that sells it to even anti-Pop Art grumps. I decided to give my students a larger-than-life self-portrait assignment, and ended up with some really happy results.

I teach proportions by having students draw a line of symmetry, and find the vertical placement of the eyes on that line. One student kept those preliminary lines, and I love it. This portrait (left) reminds me of Paul Klee.

Because the student, whose paintings are below, has no vision, I would move his hand in the shape the head, four or five times before giving him a brush and having him do it independently, based on muscle memory. Or I would hold his hand over a painted eye and say, the eyebrow goes here, and he'd paint it. I loved these so much that I had him do the assignment four times! Each time, I cut a construction paper head and neck to match his shape, and tape it to his painting, so he could paint the background without any worries of covering the figure. 

 The student, whose work is shown below was so excited about his image that he decided that he and I should publish a picture book of just this one image. "We'll be rich!" he insisted. He just started art this semester. Fingers crossed that the enthusiasm lasts.

A few students drew in pencil, but could not see their lines, so I traced them in black paint, and that was bold enough to help them paint the shapes.

This portrait was done by a cognitively impaired student who is completely blind. I positioned the his  hand and told him what part of the face belonged at that spot. I traced the marker lines with hot glue for watercolor boundaries (the acrylic would have covered the lines). Then I covered the portrait and the student used a stencil and colored pencil to add pattern to the background. It feels simultaneously ephemeral and playful to me.

My advanced students could choose their own medium. This one chose to work in pencil,

and this one used marker and pastel. 

When I look back on an assignment, I can tell if it's a good one or not by how broad the range is in terms of style and interpretation. Everyone definitely was able to show off their skills and reveal their unique style and preferences. Plus they were forced to be bold, by working large. I'll be using this lesson again in the future.

Wall Vase Craft

A few weeks ago, my little artists were each given a chunk of clay to run through the slab roller before choosing a shape to cut from the slab. This was the first step in their wall vase project. Then they created texture by pressing objects into the clay. Pockets were cut and textured before the slip and score technique was used to attach them to the original shape. Holes at the top ensure that these wall vases or wall pockets can be hung by a nail or a ribbon.

I made a small clay wall vase in elementary school, but I don't remember ever explicitly being taught about elements of design: line, shape, color, texture, and value. Simply by talking about these elements with my students, helps them recognize that they have choices. They can decide the shape of their slab. Not everyone has to make an oval. They can choose what kind of texture they make. It doesn't just have to be the first tool they come across. There are options. Some chose not to even make pockets, just shapes to hang on the wall.

Finally, students chose the color paint to use for the surface, after the pieces were fired. Some students used multiple colors; some used thick paint to fill in the bumps; others dried brushed color on top of dried thick paint to show contrast and expose the texture.

I don't know if any of these projects will survive the bus ride home, but I like to think of children hanging it on a bedroom wall and keeping tiny treasures or dried flowers in them and remembering art class.