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What homeschools are looking for in an art class.

To learn more about what it’s like to teach art when homeschooling and what a homeschool parent looks for in an art program, we reached out to Krysten Lynch Callina.

Krysten has homeschooled her two sons for nine years and she’s the moderator of the Massachusetts Homeschoolers Connection Facebook group which helps facilitate support and fellowship among Massachusetts homeschool parents.  

What is your favorite thing about homeschooling?

The opportunity for kids to learn at their own pace and with their own learning style, and the freedom parents have to find what works for their children.

When planning an art lesson what resources do you use?

Library books, Pinterest, formal classes, YouTube, DIY.org

When you plan art lessons, do you teach them at home, gather a group of homeschooled kids or sign up for a lesson?

We have done both

If you could ask an art teacher to help you with your art curriculum what kind of help would you ask for?

Higher level lessons beyond arts & crafts that is connected to other subjects (history, English, mathematics)

How much importance do you place on visual arts in your homeschool curriculum? Do you try to incorporate art with other subjects such as science, English or math?

Our children were very interested in aspects of art including portrait drawing and anime style drawing, so we tried to incorporate that as its own subject. However, we love museums, so we spent a lot of time at different museums discussing art through the ages and across cultures. My kids are very experiential / hands-on focused learners, so that is what worked for us.

Do you use your public library? What resources do you use the most?

We did more when my kids were smaller…for books, videos, books on tape, planned social activities.

What kinds of programming do you wish your library would offer?

I’m happy with their offerings.

I appreciate that she’s exposed her children to art museums. The act of looking at a piece of art only scratches the surface. There’s so much information there about world history, art history and cultural history. A painting or sculpture is a snapshot of the time and place in which someone created it.

Krysten has taught visual arts to her children through lessons at home and outside classes. I’m most interested in her response to what kind of help she would request from an art teacher:

“Higher level lessons beyond arts & crafts that is connected to other subjects (history, English, mathematics)”

If you’re like me, you’re a walking encyclopedia of art techniques, art mediums and art history. Art teachers bring  unique skills to the table that can be used to enrich subjects like math and English. Furthermore, our lessons appeal to hands-on learners who might otherwise struggle with rote learning.

Many thanks to Krysten for sharing her thoughts and experience with us!

Do you homeschool your kids? Are you a librarian who serves homeschool families? Or, are you an art teacher who would like to provide art experiences for homeschooled kids? If so, leave us a comment.

Thinking about an MLM company? Here’s what I learned.

MLM or multilevel marketing is a business model in which there are two ways to make money. The first is selling products to the consumer. The second is recruiting team members. When a team member buys inventory the recruiter earns a percentage.

I’ve always wanted to have my own business, but I knew I didn’t want to go it alone, so when the opportunity came along to sell skincare and makeup with Mary Kay I signed on the dotted line. That was 18 years ago, and I consider it one of my self-employment experiments. Here are some lessons I learned along the way.

It’s all about the numbers

One thing I heard and experienced for myself is this: The more people you talk to, the more appointments you will book. For example, if I made 20 cold calls and six people answered my call, I probably booked one or two parties. The goal was to get as many names as possible, so that I could find the people who would say yes.

Rejection is part of the process

To get to yes you have to plow through a lot of no’s. Once you realize that rejections are part of the experience it’s easier to handle them because you know the next yes is just around the corner.

A support system is vital

I joined Mary Kay because I was a stay at home mom who felt isolated. A Mary Kay consultant came to my home and gave me a makeover and the pitch to become a consultant, so I agreed to go to a meeting with her. The meeting was fun and there was a lot of energy in the room. I had always wanted to have my own business, yet I didn’t want to do it alone. My Mary Kay experience fulfilled my desire to have a business and provided me with a social outlet with adults.

Teaching and sales are close companions

In both teaching and sales, you must present an idea or product in a way that engages your audience and brings them to an expected outcome whether it is a sale or a test score. Either way, there is a measurable result of success.

I always approached my makeovers and parties with the attitude of teaching people how to use their skin care regimen and how to apply make-up. The more I focused on providing useful information the better my sales were. My demeanor wasn’t sales-y it was helpful and reassuring.

In the end, Mary Kay wasn’t for me. Did I lose money? No, but I can’t say I made much either. Recruiting team members is fundamental to making a profit, and that was my weak point; I was not comfortable asking individuals to fork over several thousand dollars for inventory. I’m glad I didn’t. I ended up with a shelf full of products I couldn’t unload.

I’m now a co-owner of a successful teaching side gig and I’ve found what I was looking for all along: entrepreneurship with a friend. Drawing upon my art skills to conduct workshops and using creativity in marketing is fulfilling. Providing art experiences for kids, teens and adults is a wonderful way to make a living.

If you are considering starting a business, you don’t need a pre-made template like an MLM company. Instead, join a Facebook group for entrepreneurs or listen to a side hustle podcast. Your community of like-minded people is out there—keep searching, you’ll be glad you did.

5 Creative Ways to Make Money (for teachers)

Pop up Art School has been happily chugging along teaching 45 to 50 workshops a year, almost all at public libraries. It’s been a legit way to make an extra $1,000 a month, but our business model has the potential for more. Here’s how we’ve been expanding our offerings in 5 new ways.

  1. Downloadable lesson packet for libraries

It took us a few months to develop, write and design two STEAM lessons for librarians to teach in their libraries.

The packets include:

  • PowerPoint slideshows
  • PDFs
  • diagrams
  • promo materials
  • video instruction

We have a newfound respect for educators who sell products on TPT (teachers pay teachers!)

  1. Blogging

For five years, we’ve had a basic WordPress site that we’ve used as a landing page. Now, we’re publishing a new blog post every week. On the back-end, Janell has been working hard to redesign the landing page, and she built a shop using WP plug-ins, so that people can sign up online. The ability to register online is important because of the next two items.

  1. After-school Art Enrichment Classes

After listening to a podcast on Nick Loper’s’ Side Hustle Nation about May Najafabadi who teaches after school art and craft classes, we have been contacting local schools.

It hasn’t been as easy as she states, but it’s a real way to make more money per hour, depending on sign ups.

Here’s what we’ve found so far:

  • The art teacher doesn’t want competition.
  • An outside company manages the school district’s after-school programs.
  • My email or call disappeared into a black hole.

Those 3 reasons haven’t deterred us; we’ll keep emailing and letting people know what we offer.

So far, we’ve booked one school. Initially the director of the program told me he couldn’t bring in outside people because it would be competition for the art teacher. We were lucky to have two friends, who live in the district, contact the director and recommend us. It turns out, the art teacher is on leave and can’t offer an after-school class for a while.

Yay! A foot in the door. Sometimes, it comes down to whom you know and a healthy dose of persistence.

  1. Bookstores

Another route for after-school enrichment is independent book sellers.

It’s a win-win for both businesses; we get to use space in a brick and mortar location and the bookstore gets more foot traffic. My son used to take a chess class at a local bookstore, so I contacted the owner and we’ve got a session starting this week!

  1. Adult Art Instruction

At our library workshops, it’s clear that the adults want to create because there are always a few who stay to make the project.

To start, we surveyed the parents on our email list to discover their interests. Our first workshop was on wool felting a three-dimensional cactus and our upcoming adult workshop is glass mosaics which was everyone’s top choice in the survey.

Since we started the expansion of our business we’ve had a few opportunities fall in our laps.

  • Two private childcare centers emailed us to teach workshops.
  • A friend who runs Lego robotics summer camps wants us to come once a week to do a STEAM project.

Sometimes what you want doesn’t come from the direction you’ve been looking in. The important thing is to be open and persistent!

If you’re looking for fun and creative ways to make money join us in our Facebook group Freelance Art Teachers in Libraries or share your ideas below in the comments.

Art Bingo

ART BINGO GAME

The teen art workshops we teach at libraries are two hours long and we usually need time for paint to dry. There’s nothing worse than watching paint dry, in awkward silence, especially with a room of awkward teenagers. That’s when we bring out the Art Bingo! Like Sketch Artist (a free art game on our blog) Art Bingo is easy to pack and always a hit especially since the winners get lollipops!

Of course, playing Art Bingo is a great way to help students recognize famous paintings and the names of the artists who made them. More importantly, playing fun games helps everyone relax and enjoy a shared experience. Play Art Bingo for 20 to 30 minutes to allow for plenty of chances to win. If you are an art teacher in a school, Art Bingo is a great way to end the school year.

Pop up Art School’s version of Art Bingo uses famous paintings by artists such as Monet, Klee, Hockney and Haring. They run the gamut from old masters to contemporary artists. It’s available in our shop for $4.00. With your purchase of art bingo you’ll receive instructions for playing art bingo, a list of artist names for the bingo caller and 26 bingo cards.

Download Pop up Art School’s free art game Sketch Artist here.

Sketch Artist Free PDF

Library Card Art

Hi, Janell here. A fun fact about me. Along with teaching art to awesome kids I’m also an illustrator. (janellgenovese.com) I’ve had some super fun clients and have created illustrations for a variety of markets including books, magazines, toys, bedding, posters, etc.

One day while teaching at my local library I was approached by the director about doing an illustration for their new library card for children. I was thrilled! The library was one of my favorite places to go when I was a child. I can remember getting my new library card and feeling like I’d been given something special that was all mine. Now the kids in my town would get their new card with one of my illustrations on it!

When starting an illustration I like to make a list of words that help me set the mood for the visual. For the library card I wrote:

  • cozy  
  • adult reading to child  
  • imagination  
  • home
  • adventure/fun
  • books
  • safe  
  • for everyone

My specialty is drawing anthropomorphic animals. I chose Hedgehogs to be the characters in my illustration. If you look closely, the hedgehog family is reading one of my favorite children’s’ books, The Little Red Hen.

Here is the finished illustration.

I’m so proud to have my artwork on something as special as a library card.

 

Love Bugs

 

After taking the $5 challenge to make a Valentine’s Day project (take two)  I taught the project to my fourth grade class. You know when you put together a project, and then release it into in the hands of a child and it falls apart? Literally— the floral foam we used for printmaking crumbled before my eyes! When I teach printmaking, I always tell the kids to practice on a scrap piece of paper to decide how much paint and pressure they need to apply before they make the finished print. In this case, it was bad advice. By the time they got to make the final print the floral foam was falling apart for half of the kids. The next day, I had to scrape bits of floral foam out of the dried paint!

After the printmaking crashed and burned I was nervous about the next week, so I modified the legs of the love bug and used strips of card stock instead. Luckily, the assembly was a success!

Look how this student not only made a face with a heart but she made a tail as well. I love the double layer of doilies for the wings.

This student complained that his didn’t look like all the others, but I reassured him that his was a unique solution. He turned the bug body upside down and used it like a taco. Those doily wings make a yummy filling!

Look how this student used two doily hearts facing in opposite directions to make the wings.

This one wins the prize for the tallest love bug!

This boy has a crush on Katy Perry and I like his candy-heart-worthy phrase Lift off to Love!

If you use this project with your kids we’d love to hear about it. Give us some love– please share this post!

 

Stop Motion Animation Hack

Over the summer, the location of the art room changed, and without my knowledge all of the supplies and equipment were moved to the new art room. If you’re an art teacher, you know that most people’s trash is your treasure! One “treasure” that was thrown out, during the move, were 10 cardboard boxes I had scavenged from BJ’s Wholesale Club. They weren’t just any cardboard boxes, they were for the stop motion animation club. All I did was turn them upside down, cut a hole in the top, place the iPad so the viewfinder is unobstructed and taped the iPad to the box. They are very handy and of course free! One drawback is that they’re bulky and can’t be stacked. Students are also limited to filming from above.

Just before this year’s stop motion animation club I realized that eight of the 10 had been thrown out–aargh! As I rummaged through the storage closet I came upon two dozen coffee cup trays and inspiration struck. As you can see in the photos, it’s a simple cut with a box cutter or X-Acto blade to make a free iPad stand for stop motion animation. The red indicates where the iPad should be inserted. If the tab on the cupholder breaks just rotate the cupholder and use another side. To make the iPad perpendicular to the table I inserted a marker between the back of the iPad and the stand.

   

Now, I can offer two ways for the students to take the pictures for their animations. They can use the boxes from BJ’s to film from above or use the cup holder to film in front of their subject. By the way, the cupholders are easy to stack and take up little room. Now, what about the backdrop for the animation? In the classroom, I put a chair on top of the table and tape a piece of white paper to the seat. For a portable solution, make our DIY Social Media Photo Booth.

Like we always say at Pop up Art School, “Cardboard is an art teacher’s best friend!” What free and easy hacks do you use in your art lessons?

 

Collaborative Project

Recently, the school where I teach had an International Night for students and families. I volunteered to put together a collaborative project to display. It brought to mind a project that Pop up Art School did with a public library that was celebrating diversity in their community.

For the library we created a custom workshop that resulted in a collaborative art piece that is still on display. The project was designed so that the kids would have something to take home. Each student made a “quilt” square on an 8 inch square of paper. On it they painted concentric circles with colors and shapes from a world flag that represented their family’s heritage. On a separate piece of paper they drew pictures that represented something from that country. It could be a favorite food, a popular sport, a holiday, etc. At the end of the workshop we cut the squares into four smaller squares and gave each student a square from their piece to take home.

After the workshop, we took the cut squares, shuffled them and assembled them, so that each circle was comprised of four different artist’s work. The circles were mounted on poster board and made a colorful paper quilt for the library to display! We called it the Diversity Circle Quilt.

For my school I decided to have grades two through five make the quilt squares. There are 74 students in those four grades, so I knew that I had to make the quilt squares smaller than the original 8 inches. Otherwise, I would have a mammoth paper quilt that would be hard to hang. I used 4 inch squares instead which made it a manageable size.

First, students filled out a worksheet that asked them about their family’s heritage. Next, they identified the colors and shapes on the world flag associated with the country and painted their concentric circles. My favorite part was the variety of things they drew to represent their country: shamrocks, bowls of rice and beans, the Eiffel Tower, maple leaves, stars, slices of pizza, dogs, hockey sticks and cuckoo clocks!

The finished collaborative project measures 32″ x 36″ and I changed the name to World Flag Circle Quilt. The finished piece visually represents the many countries that Americans have immigrated from and how we weave our lives together under one flag.

STEAM Art Project

Student balancing a circus performer on a pencil. Get the Free PDF download form Pop Up Art School.

Balancing Circus Performers can be used in a variety of settings and as a complement to lessons in art and science. Use them in your classroom or library to spark discussions about balance, bilateral symmetry and center of gravity.

Start by balancing a completed performer on your finger. Have the kids guess how it’s able to balance and sway on your finger without falling off. You can let one or two kids touch it gently so they can feel the weight of the pennies hidden inside.

Here’s how to make one:

  • Cut carefully around both copies of the performer.
  • Color both sides with markers.
  • Lay one figure face down. Tape a penny onto each hand.
  • Put the second cut out figure on top, so the pennies are hidden.
  • Tape around the sandwiched copies so you don’t have any buckling or big gaps.
  • Test how well your figure balances.

Our favorite part of this project, is when the kids experiment with where they can balance the circus performer. Before you know it, all of them will have a balancing circus performers on their noses!

 
Free Circus Performers PDF

Five Dollar Challenge-Take Two.


I challenged myself to put together a lesson for Valentine’s Day. It had to be for a class of 25 and I could only spend five bucks. Last week, I attempted making a Valentine with the same supplies. I was happy with my discovery of printing with floral foam, but the end product was so-so.

Here is take two.

I’m really happy with this week’s results. It’s a Love Bug! I completely transformed the doily by cutting it apart and turning it into wings and legs for my love bug. Here’s how I did it:

Make the texture print like before.

Cut out the body and eyes.

Cut the outside trim off of the doily heart. This will be used for the legs.

Cut out a heart from the center. This will be used for the head.

Use all the pieces to construct an insect with a glue stick. After it’s put together use the red paint to add detail.

Now students can play with the pieces to make the insect unique. The finished bug is glued down on another piece of paper so it looks like it’s standing.