Scholastic Book Contest

Kids Are Authors

Several years ago I collaborated with one of the 3rd grade teachers, to create a book and submit to the Kids are authors contest.  Our book entitled The Twelve Days of Checkers Escape recieved  2011 Honorable mention.  Which was great, we were able to pick out $500 dollars worth of books to add to our library.  It was lots of work, but fun and we had something to be very proud of when we were done.  Below is a few pages from our book.

 



Star Wars Pop Art

May the Force Be With You...

Star Wars Pop Art

This lesson was so much fun and unexpected.  Our school just finished round one of the STAAR test, and is about to tackle the second round (this is the *New...And Improved*-Texas Assesment)

As a school, we decided to do a Star Wars theme.  I already had planned round 2 of my pop art lessons, but thought this would be a perfect fit, not only with the school theme, but the pop art theme as well.  The kids LOVE IT!!  This will be a lesson I repeat and build on for sure!!

Second through fifth grades did the character pop art.  We only focused on a few characters, can't wait to add a few more next time!  These were done with colored construction paper, art sticks and sharpie.  

Kinder and first did the light saber rubbings with the art sticks.  This was on the difficult side because they were so long.  We used some tape to keep down, but they still managed to move them a bit.

 These are the light sabers I made from heavy paper and glue.

Butterfly Art

Butterfly Festival

We have an amazing little outdoor theatre just down the road in a little town known as Wimberly.  It is the EmilyAnn Theatre.  Each year they host a Butterfly Festival to honor EmilyAnn, a young girl who died before her time.  The festivial itself is great, they have lots of family friendly activities, 3000 butterflies are released, each child gets to walk around with their butterfly on their slice of watermelon until the butterfly feels it is time to part ways. Plus, tons of beautiful butterfly artwork.   While I don't always get my artwork there on time, we do our best.  Especially considering March is YAM and I am usually wrapping up my art fundraiser with OWY.  None the less, we always do butterfly art.  It is great for learning and practicing balance with line and color.  Here are some of the butterfly projects I've done.

 

Diffusion paper with black sharpie and watercolor detail.

Blotto Butterfly with warm colors, sharpie detail.

 Glue 1/2 of butterfly image (white glue on black paper) and chalk pastel for the color.  You can see on these two butterfly images, we were also talking about warm and cool colors.

Black Blotto with construction paper crayon designs.

 

 

 

Eric Carle styled butterflies, with painted paper.

Various metal or foiled butterflies, colored sharpie details.

Black constuction paper cut-out, with art stick details, and traced with clear glue.

Van Gogh

Van Gogh!!!  A Lesson on Texture

 

Van Gogh Chairs- 5th grade Markers and oil pastel

Starry Night- 3rd Grade marker and oil pastel

If Van Gogh had been from Texas!- 4th grade Marker and oil pastel

Van Gogh Sunflowers- 2nd grade, Markers and oil pastel



Home, Sweet Home

Home, Sweet Home

About a year ago we wrapped up our biggest home improvement project so far.  We have been in our house 10 years, and my husband and I both agree this project made us feel like real grown ups!  Ha, we are on the threshold of 40 so I guess it was time...  Expecting our third baby, we tossed around the idea of moving to a larger home.  But, in the end we decided it was just too hard to give up all those memories or this house, and we really like our house.  Let's face it, we have made improvements to every room, and most rooms are pretty significant changes, we would be starting over even in a new house.  We decided the room behind our bedroom, which served as a closet, storage space, and a small sewing table and no natural light, would be transformed into the nursery. You could only stand in about 1/3 of the room because of the slanted  roof line. We have now gotten to enjoy this multipurpose room for a year.  It is Lucy's nursery, 2nd TV and living space, and serves as my craft space, lovingly dubbed the Mom Cave, by my sweet hubby.  But, we all know that having three children, one under a year, working full time, shuttling kids to ballet and tap, choir and karate, well not a lot of action in the crafting part of the room.  One day, one day!!

 One of my favorite features of this room is the window benches.  They run almost the length of the room, provide lots of storage, and extra seats.  One day...I will tackle making seat cushions, until then a pillow will have to do.

Aboriginal Art

Aboriginal Art

Many years ago, in my first few years of teaching, I got a book with our text book adoption.  It was called Brown Bag Ideas from Many Cultures.  I used it a lot those first few years, and I still reference it every now and again.  With some of these I was experimenting with ways to make the dots.  Some are done with q-tips, some with the backside of a paint brush.  The next time I do aboriginal art in paint I will definitely try the pencil eraser method.  Little hint...don't use the q-tip, they grow with every dip in the paint, before long the dots are the size of dimes.  Oh well, had to try, someone donated 3 enormous boxes of medical swabs.  Just trying to be resourceful!!