Art-Room-Friendly Books

First I just want to say thank you to those of you who responded to my last question! I really appreciate your input, and I hope to get even more! I also wanted to let everyone know I have been researching and gathering more ideas and tips on keeping the art room green. I will post these sometime before our school year starts back up in August.

My next question is a fun one - one I bet teachers, parents, and students alike will have no trouble answering:

What are your favorite books for the art room? Whether they're good stories with beautiful illustrations, fictional, fun tales about kid artists or imaginary events, historical accounts of artists and art movements, books on art elements and concepts, or even just great messages about how our students should treat one another - I'd love to know what books are a must-have for you! And for that matter, what are your favorite movies for the art room?

I'll go ahead right now and tell you my all-time favorite: Ish by Peter Reynolds.

It's sweet, authentic, and has a great message about inspiration, encouragement, confidence and self-acceptance. I read it every year to every grade on the first or second day of class. Everyone loves it. I think we've all had experiences at some point in our lives that help us relate to every character in the book. "Ish" has become a regular part of our classroom vocabulary.

Looking forward to your comments (I'm sure we'll have some common favorites!)

Keeping the Art Room Green

What steps can I take to make the art room more "green"? Seems no matter how hard I try to stop the wasting of paper in my room, there is inevitably a LOT of paper waste, among other things. More and more these days I have become increasingly proactive in my personal life about living in a more environmentally friendly way. My husband and I eat organic at home, we often carpool, we use organic soil and fertilizer in our garden, etc, etc, etc.
In my classroom, we have rules in place for hand-washing to limit paper towel and water usage. We have a recycling bin for leftover scraps. I hardly ever let my students start over on a new sheet of paper (which is really a great lesson in creativity and flexibility as well). We incorporate things into our art-making such as newspaper and used cardboard. But it just doesn't quite seem like enough. Please leave some comments - tell us about your ideas for keeping the art room green (you get bonus points if it also help us save money!)

At Briargrove Elementary, We KNOW Tape!

The past few months, while preparing our creature sculptures for the fourth grade art gala, we have used a LOT of tape in the art room. The students and I have become tape experts! We know which brands work best for tape sculpture, and which don't. Here's what we learned:

Col-R-Tone System Masking Tape Class Pack (shown below) from Dick Blick was our favorite! It's pretty expensive, though, so depending on how many students you have it might become very pricey... I would estimate that we used 1.5 packs per class. This was also one of the only brands with brown and orange - very popular colors for creature-building. This tape has a matte finish.

Here are some creatures made only with Col-R-Tone tape.

Duck Brand Duct Tape (shown below) was a hit too! We discovered this one at Michaels Arts and Crafts later in the project. It's easy to tear and has the strongest adhesive. It's not too expensive, and covers large areas easily. We found it in about 12 colors. I think that they also sell it at Walmart. There is a cool silver color that the kids love, too. This tape is glossy and has kind of a plastic finish - just like regular duct tape.

Here are some creatures made only with Duck Brand Duct Tape.

Colored Masking Tape, 8-Roll Assortment (shown below) from Sax Arts and Crafts worked very well, too. There's less variety in colors, though. It's not as expensive, and the rolls come with a little more tape. We used that tape when making our collaborative creatures.

Unfortunately, we had to learn the hard way which ones didn't work well!

The Colored Masking Tape Class Pack (shown below) from Dick Blick does not - I repeat - does not work well for sculpture! The ends do not stay stuck down, nor does it stick very well to the newspaper and clear tape under structure of the creatures. I had ordered a few packs of this to get some variety in color, so when we discovered it wasn't going to work, I found another use for it (see this post on drawing with tape.) This tape is crinkly like crepe paper, thinner than the other brands, and has a matte finish.

When building the creatures, we used regular clear scotch tape. This helped us cut down on waisting the more expensive colored tape. We also found a bit of extra clear packing tape. If you can get some of this it really helps reinforce joints to make a more sturdy creature! Here are some of the creatures before the students added colored tape.
The students and I hope you will try building with tape and let us know how it works for you!