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My super second grader's finished up their mixed media still life today. We used watercolors, crayon, texture plates, china markers, oil pastels and markers. Woooo....This lesson covers so many of the grade level objectives. My lesson does take about 4 class times to finish, but each kid is super successful! Direct Observation! Drawing with China Markers is the best, no erasing! A sunflower from my garden this summer! I found this at the Dallas Museum of Art! Kindergarten lesson .

My New Year's resolution was to make time for my art. So.....Needing to make clay pieces for another Raku fire day at Eric Orr's  studio next month, I made four pieces. I also needed to make items for a PDH next month on glazing. I loved using the Trinity Raku clay. It is so gritty. I made several pieces following the how to on Gary Jackson's  site. I also made leaf bowls using stoneware clay from Trinity Clay in Dallas.

                            I am teaching a new landscape lesson with my 5th graders. Their objective is to express mood and show depth in a winter landscape. I am always excited to try something new, but working out the bugs can be a creative challenge. As a group, we have been successful painting a winter landscape with a cool or warm color pallet, and tearing watercolor paper to make Birch trees. Tuesday, we started adding fences and shadows. Fences..... A perspective challenge!! Shadows.... A bigger challenge for my picky students! When they mixed the colors, we had muddy shadows.                                                        I backed up on my teaching plan, and had the students pull out their sketch books. We practiced a perspective fence, and then transferred it to the painted paper. Mixing grays for shadows next was a mess. As I drove to work today I decided to help out with the mixin!  I created three different grays using Dick Blick liquid water colors, and had t

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I was so excited to post pictures of our woven Burlap art. Not only is this my favorite group of kids, but a lesson that I have done for years. Doesn't every kid loves yarn and beads? This year we finished the lesson differently. After weaving patterns into the weft we removed, we added a stick. I found this idea while surfing on Pinterest I noticed a neat post from  Panther Palette . She had her students add a stick at the top. I suggested  this idea to my students, but we added a chop stick to the top edge of the burlap with hot glue. The kids loved it and came up with unique ways to hang their work!

We had so much fun finishing up our Chinese New Year art lesson today. We did the printmaking pattern lesson last week on 18 x 6 inch paper  after watching the video stream, "Sam and the Lucky Money." I love love love this book! Today we created a folded mask that I taped to the main part of the printed paper. We attached 4 strips of tissues for the tail with glue!! The 1st graders wanted to take them home today, but I can't wait to display them.

I have been trying different I pad Apps in my attempt to be a life long learner. Face on Stamp looks like a fun app to use for portraits. I am thinking about using it to extend a portrait lesson. Suggestions? Face on a stamp! I just discovered  Dryden ART ! Everything you want to know about IPad art is on this site!

What a fun week for the students and teachers at my school! I work on the displays, and I love it when we collaborate.

We finished up our Potato prints collages in Kindergarten and our Tissue paintings in one my classes that is running behind due to Monday Holidays.  Here are a few Potato prints from the past that I included in my powerpoint today. They make me smile! I love the vibrant color of tissue painting. It is messy, but intriguing enough to keep the squirmy Kinder students on task. We started the lesson with the book, "Snowflake Bentley." We observed his photographs of snowflakes and drew them with oil pastels and FX crayons. Afterwards, we scattered cool colored squares of bleeding tissue paper. We wet the paper and added salt. Let the papers dry on the background paper before removing. We added a winter tree today to add the finishing touch!

I woke up to unexpected snow this morning. I remember wanting to paint snow pictures in elementary school so I changed my planned lesson today. I had planned to paint winter trees and snow people with Kinder today, so we did a different version in 3rd. They loved it!!