As I said in the last post it has been a busy two weeks around here. After days off for Professional Development and MLK day I also had to take off for some doctors appointments.
I follow a lot of Art Ed blogs and I tend to feel like a lot of them are lacking in suggestions for substitute plans so I’m pretty excited to be posting some of my favorite ideas this year. I will have a few different posts because towards the end of the year I will be on leave due to a new baby girl joining our family this May.
Last week I was out for two days back to back. I planned a lesson for 2nd grade, 3rd grade, and 4th grade. Then separate lessons for kindergarten and 1st grade. I don’t see 5th grade on either of the days I was out so I didn’t need anything for them.
For the youngest ones I like to leave “finish the picture” pages or drawing prompts that correspond to a book the sub will read. This time I was only preparing for one kindergarten class and one 1st grade class so I just ran some copies of drawing ideas from Education.com. Anytime I leave I always make sure the sub has a finished sample to share with the class so I completed one of each design for her to post on the wall while they worked. I let the little ones take their pages with them when they finish so there aren’t any pictures of those.
The older students had something a little more difficult. Kathy Barbro has these great drawing tutorials on her website Artprojectsforkids.org. I ran copies of two so that it was front and back. This time I chose the running rabbit and the hungry bear. Students were left with instructions to choose one and complete the drawing on a separate sheet of paper. If they finished early they could get another sheet and start on the other animal. Most students chose the bear because it was the “easier” drawing, but a few more brave ones tried out the rabbit with great success. These samples are all from 4th grade but the 2nd and 3rd graders did great too!
Before starting those drawings I left an alternative assignment for the 4th graders only. They were to illustrate a Shel Silverstein poem. I made copies of poems years ago with the poem in small text at the bottom corner of the page. The sub explained the instructions and passed around a finished sample for them to see. Its always interesting when I get these back. They come up with some great designs!
