if only i had a smART board....

I am lucky enough to have a projector in my room! None- the- less this website would be way cooler if I had a smart board! So if you do I urge you to check this out and have your students play with this while you are learning color mixing. On this website you can help Curious George mix paint and fill in a pre-drawn picture. It is very cute and pretty handy!



http://pbskids.org/curiousgeorge/games/mix_and_paint/mix_and_paint.html

Homemade Watercolors...

Simply take dried out markers and place them in cups of water over night. Enjoy your homemade liquid watercolors!

Pumpkin Patch by kindergarten!

This week our kindergarten, 1st grade, and pre-k students all visited a pumpkin patch for a field trip! Part of our MNPS curriculum is to teach our kindergarten kiddos landscape. So I read a fabulous story of "Pumpkin Town," which the students loved, and then taught them a step by step drawing lesson on creating their very own pumpkin patch. We started with a brown crayon in drawing a horizon line and a wooden fence on that line. We next made a "spooky tree" without any leaves. Next I had the students draw their pumpkins, inside the patch including squiggly green vines. Finally we ended with the white moon and yellow stars. The following class I had the students use my home-made watercolor paints to complete their artwork with a blue sky and a brown ground. The students loved this, and it is a festive way to teach landscape!

Still Wild about Warhol!

Probably the last Warhol project for a while, second grade completed an assignment similar to one I did at the Frist this summer. I had the students cut out their own flowers out of tissue paper, and I helped them with squirting water on them to make a print from the bleeding tissue. The next class the students used a sharpie to outline and draw details on the flowers. Finally we used a green and a black oil pastel to create the grass around the flowers, similar to that in Warhol's flowers. Below is one of the many examples I showed the students, and the rest are the students work. Of course you can find more in our artsonia gallery!

On the road...

On my way from Nashville to Dallas I stopped along the way at the Arkansas Art Center. You never know what you might find...

Short on Funding?

A super wonderful resource that I learned about this last spring is Donor's Choose! Teacher's can post projects online for donor's to choose, just as the name says, to donate money too. Last week I posted a project that would help to fund my kiln shelves, clay, glazes, kiln wash, etc. Totalling $700 and change.... You choose the items that you want from website such as School Specialty/ Sax, and once you've reached your goal amount, the website places the order for you, and ships it to you! On Saturday I noticed that we already reached $549 of our classroom goal, and that is only from one donor! Big thanks to the Emma Email Marketing from Nashville!!!!

Wicked awesome New Eric Carle book!

This morning my school's wonderful librarian brought me a copy of Carle's brand new book "The Artist who Painted A Blue Horse." It was so sweet of her! Piper is not just a fabulous school librarian but a great friend. Check out that book! It rocks!