Bringing Our Students Art To Life With Buncee!

For the last few weeks, I have been working on one of my all-time favorite projects.  This is a project that is making such a difference in the lives of our students and one that is amplifying their creativity, ideas and most of all, their voice.

Since this project has a lot of different parts, I am going to be sharing it in a series of four blog posts, starting with this one.

 The story behind this project starts with one of our 5th graders at Van Meter, Molly.

Molly creates these amazing paper dolls that she calls Molly Dolls. You can find them on Facebook here.

When I told my dear friends at Buncee about them, and showed them the paper doll created for me to take with me when I traveled, Buncee made it into a few stickers....

....along with a few more of hers from the photo I posted too.  

As my friends at Buncee and I were talking about how special her art work is, it made us think that the paper dolls Molly creates need to be stickers within Buncee of her art work! 

In fact, Molly is very excited to announce that she is kicking off a project with Buncee called Molly Dolls that will be revealed super soon!  I will share more in post four of this series. 

The work we are doing with Molly, made us want to empower even more students to be artists within Buncee, so we are kicking off the new Buncee Student Artist Contest, which myself and a few others, including Molly, will be judging and announcing each month.  

The details for this will be shared very soon and I can't wait to tell you all about it in post three of this series. 

Last week as my friends at Buncee and I were making plans for the Buncee Student Artist Contest, I was working with our 2nd graders who are some of the BIGGEST Buncee fans and users I know.  

All of the sudden it dawned on me, 

My 2nd grade friends and teachers will be the perfect artists to help kick this off!  I would have them create art and write stories to show how all students can be empowered and inspired through projects like this, and can be given a global voice. 

I was so happy when the three 2nd grade teachers, Staci Braun, Tracy Ferguson and Megan Warwick, were excited about this project too! We would co-teach and collaborate on this one within the classrooms and library for the next few weeks. 

After we shared the project with our 2nd graders, we asked them to think of a story they wanted to share in Buncee with a sticker they would create.  They could create anything they wanted and we encouraged them to be as creative and personal as possible with the Buncee sticker they were going to draw and color.

Using card stocks, they set off to create unique, amazing, colorful and wild drawings with markers, colored pencils and crayons.

 It was really neat seeing how seriously...

...they took this process....

 ...and all of the amazing sticker drawings they....

 ...created!

We loved them all! 

After all three classes were finished with their sticker drawing, it was time to brainstorm and write the story that would go along with their sticker. 

We decided to tie a theme around the entire project and call it The Day Our Stickers Came To Life!  

With a theme, each student would contribute to a big collaborative global Buncee between all three classes and one that will be very special and exciting to share with others around the world. 

We used this template from Buncee to get started...

...and give them a place to draw and write their Buncee story.  

They did such a terrific job...

 ...with this process.

 Not only were their stickers incredible,

the thought, passion and voice they put into their stories was the best!

By knowing these stories were going to be about the stickers they created,

we could see the pride and excitement as they worked very hard.

As we scanned and sent the student drawings to Joel at Buncee, he created the new Student Art category and...

...turned all of the 2nd graders individual art work in Buncee stickers. 

Their stickers were definitely coming to life! 

Later in the week, something really awesome happened with Mrs. Braun's class in the library.  One of her students made a background that started Buncee thinking...

The Buncee Student Art Contest could include backgrounds too! 

 Take a look at how beautiful this background created by our 2nd grade friend is!

After we realized how neat student created backgrounds would be,

 Mrs. Ferguson and her students drew several that will become backgrounds within Buncee.

 They are very proud of these and....

 ....can't wait to use these background with....

 ...all of the stickers they made too!

These backgrounds can be found in the Student Art section of backgrounds.

There is such a variety of themes and they are all unique in their own way.

I really love this farm scene created in Mrs. Ferguson's classroom and just look at it as a....

Buncee Background.

This week, the 2nd graders will finish up their storyboard and draft so they are ready to go when their Buncee stickers are revealed to them on Thursday.  

Joel, their graphic designer who has been creating their stickers, and a few others from the Buncee team, will be joining us for this special reveal on Skype. 

They will then each create a 1 to 2 page Buncee, that will be stitched together with all of the other 2nd graders to make the story, The Day The Stickers Came To Life. 

And as you can see, others are already using their stickers and background....just like Buncee is doing here. 

I will be using this lesson for my professional teacher observation too this week, so in post two I will be sharing that lesson plan and other materials you might need. 

Thank you Buncee for always embracing wild, pie-in-the-sky type ideas!  And for giving our students a platform to share their talents, creativity, ideas and voice.  This is one project, they will never forget. It's just the best! 

We can't wait for Thursday, friends. 

Stay tuned for information on how your students can be part of the Buncee Student Artist contest too.