End of the Year Poetry and Art Books

Okay - so I'm a little late in posting this ... I guess I've been enjoying the start of summer too much.  ;)

Those of you who follow regularly know how much I love doing art projects with my students.  If you click on the "Friday Art Feature" button on the right column, you can see all the fabulous art we have completed this year.  We've completed all our art on 8.5 x 11 pieces of paper this year, with one goal in mind - compiling them into a fabulous art book at the end of the year.

Do you remember these crate stools I made last summer for my classroom?  I bought the crates at Staples, and legal-size hanging files fit perfectly in them.  I use one to store some phys ed supplies, but the other two are full of student files - one for their portfolios, and one for their art projects.  By the end of the year, we had quite an impressive collection in our art folders!  But that wasn't all - because we had "published" all of our poetry in such a visual way, they became art pieces, as well.

During the last two days of school, students organized their art and poetry pieces together to make their very own books.  Each book had between 20 and 30 pages.  I had the students create their own covers for the book (we used cardstock so they would have a little more strength).  They were free to create anything on the covers of their books.  We laminated the covers, and all the art pieces had already been laminated over the year.  I pulled out my binding machine ... and voila - an impressive book the students could be proud of, and the parents would appreciate so much more than a bag full of papers and supplies brought home at the end of the year.

We tried to arrange the poetry and art in a way that "fit" for the books.  For example, our "If I Was In Charge of the World" poems went with our "Recycled Earth" pictures.

I really liked how some of our art and poetry just naturally fit together - I think I'm going to do a lot more of that next year.  Perhaps, each time we finish an art project, we'll do a poem to fit the theme of the art.

Happy Tuesday!!!