Art by Patrick McDonnell

This is a very cute book, probably geared more for K-3.  The illustrations are clever and the character "Art," who loves art, is adorable.  This is a good book to have for a 5-10 minute window of time.  Art, the character, creates a fun world for himself, out of his doodles.  Another book that celebrates the creative minds of our children.  Your students will oh and ahh over these fun illustrations and as an adult and mother, the ending is my favorite part, very sweet!  

The Incredible Peepers of Penelope Budd

What a wonderful book (my girls and I love this book).  Although, I really believe the lesson here is more for the adults. In this book, Penelope Budd has one eye blue and the other brown.  She sees things in a different, unique way.  This book is a celebration of the imagination of so many children and why we should celebrate these fun imaginative little people.  Sometimes, as an adult, it is a good reminder to try and look at the world through the eyes of a child. Things would be so much more pleasant if we just took the time to do this!

Math-terpieces

This is a great book to have in your classroom.  It combines art history and math in a fun way.  It is creative problem solving, where kids are looking for patterns to find solutions to the "riddle".  I love using this book with all ages.  It is a great time filler when you are done with a project and you still have a few minutes left of class.  I used this with all my K-5 kids.

Back to Reality!

We have just returned from our yearly summer vacation in Manitou Springs.  Every year we try to stretch it out a little longer each time.  It still seems to go by so fast.  This year, it was really hard to return.  The weather there was perfect, while a few days were a little warm, most days were in the 80's and even some in the 70's.  As soon as we crossed the Texas line coming home, we hit 100 degrees.  So hot...this is when I start wanting school to start.  We start to feel trapped in our house to get out of the heat.

Someone figure out how to keep an eye on her mommy!  

One happy little girl.  While she does love pink, she also loves all things dinosaurs, dragons, sharks and eagles!  

http://www.rmdrc.com/

While you can feed the giraffes here, this giraffe almost helped himself to a phone.  I was turning on my husbands camera when a large slimy tongue almost licked my face and started wrapping it's tongue around my hand and the iphone (with a bright green metallic cover on it).  I quickly scared Melvin here away with a nice little scream.  Everyone around us got a kick out of it.  Giraffe cute, slimy tongue not so much  :(

Day at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, best zoo ever!!

Lots of great sculptures and artwork at this zoo.

My little sunshine enjoying her day at the zoo.

Seriously, why do my own children photo bomb their own pictures???

Ok, finally a picture for mom, with no crazy faces!

Travel up to Pikes Peak on the Cog Rail.

Aren't they precious!!

Little piece of heaven. Although covered by the clouds in this picture, on a clear day you can see Pike's Peak.   So relaxing!

Horse Derby, at the old Penny Arcade!  So much fun, and yes my daughter beat all these old timers!!

I think they finished this in about 30 seconds.

Peanut mustache!

Love going to see the Rockies game!

Playing in the creek, behind the house, creating lots of memories.

Driving by Garden of the Gods, isn't it breathe taking!

Last pic before driving away from our little getaway.

Superheros and Art Apps

So I got a chance to play with a few apps and I personally had fun adapting these pictures.  This was the Mike Esparza lesson that I did with my 3-5th graders.  I picked one of the Wonder women pictures from my students art pieces and uploaded to one of the camera apps. With simple cut and paste techniques, I added in my oldest daughters picture.  Once this was done and I was happy, I added this picture to yet another picture app. Here I could futher adapt and enhance the picture.  This was my first attempt on my iphone, but now I am getting the itch to have ipads in my classroom.  Paint FX and Instaeffect are the two apps that I used to alter these pictures.

3-D Birds

This is a lesson that was done by one of my student teachers several years ago, Jennifer O'neal.  Originally, we did this with 4th and 5th graders.  I believe we spent at least 3, 50 minute sessions on this project.  I was a great project, because once we got the major features done, the kids were free to decorate their birds as they wished.  We had hula birds, superhero birds, ballerina birds, ninja birds...so in other words, the possibilities were endless.  I did these once again with my art campers this summer.  We didn't get to spend the time on them I had hoped for, but they still came out really cute.  

Jeweled Sketch Book

So, I had to blow a thick layer of dust off these babies.  I think these were done about 12 years ago by my 4th and 5th graders.  Most of these are pieces left behind by kids that moved before the year was up.  The kids first used the math manipulative pattern blocks to layout their design.  They traced, then added color with oil pastels.  They were asked to tint and shade to make it look more jewel like. Raffia was used to bind the papers into the sketchbook.  If I do these again, I will make them smaller, they were really big, like 13" by 14", plus they were really thick because of the paper I selected for the outside cover.  So, trying to find space for these was an issue.  Hind sight is always 20/20, right!!