.

I updated one of my favorite back to school drawing sheets  for the first day of art for the little ones.  You can find it here .  In the past I use a sheet that I received from a previous art teacher. The students created a drawing of themselves and me with the information about me, which I cropped out of this photo)  and their art day of the week.  I usually started off the lesson with the book ART!  Art by Patrick McDonnell Hope this helps you start off the school year stress free!  

Our schedule has been a mess this week with picture day, the end of the 9 weeks, and Open House tomorrow. I decided to spend the rest of this week creating Dr. Seuss inspired art works. I modified a lesson that I had previously pinned from Patty at Deep Space Sparkle . My kinders and 1st grade did this lesson today one class period.  It was super fun and successful! I showed a video to introduce the book.  We then drew a forward facing fish or side fish on construction paper with black China markers.  The student's colored the details with oil pastels and then cut them out. The background was painted with Metallic Paint Sticks. They dry super quick so that you can glue it on right away.  Enjoy!

This is an old lesson repurposed. I used to do the traditional paper bag and headdress lessons with Kindergarten and 1st grade, but they now do it in their classroom.  I still have all of these handouts.  Most came from the Art Teacher's Book of Lists .  My learning to read and ELL student's love these.  I decided we could still use them but on a  Canoe Sculpture.  Using the Reading Rainbow streaming video of  The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush as my lesson introduction  the student's expressed a story with pictures on their paper canoe. I pre traced a canoe on a 12 x 18 folded sheet of brown paper. The more faded the better. to add a little texture and fun we rubbed on color using the texture sheets and peeled construction paper crayons. What fun! The students then wrote their stories with black crayon and colored them in with the construction paper crayons. I went around gluing the curv...

Kindergarten's annual Mothers's Day bouquets are blooming from the April Showers.  We had a record amount of rain here in North Texas last month.  The lakes in our county are finally full. Hopefully the drought will go away.  The kiddo's have not been out to recess very much,  but a garden has bloomed in the classroom and my personal garden has too.  I even have tomatoes! We have created Mother's day flower sculptures. We have Painted flowers in first grade....check out Laura at Painted Paper  for fabulous ideas.  We have also created Clay pinch pot flower vases. Second grade students are studying plants so these sunflower collages and pinch pots worked well cross curricular.  Check out Mrs. Knights site for more of these awesome creations. I had enough clay left in my cabinet for 5th grade to make a second project. I can't wait to see how these turn out...  Stay tu...

The Dallas Museum of Art  has a wonderful   Monet Painting  in a beautiful gold frame which inspired me to create this lesson for our Big Art Day which is fast approaching in Texas schools.  For our Big Art day this year I have a Theme....Circle Art!  Themes are the way to go when organizing events.  I love this new lesson that was inspired by one of my favorite artists,  and two favorite bloggers:  Painted Paper and Cassie Stephen's who also use themes.  I ordered the 10 inch cardboard circle rounds for this lesson, the same size  Cassie used in her Dot Day Art .  School Specialty has various sizes. The kids loved painting on this canvas instead of paper.  We read about Monet's garden and look at prints of his masterpieces. I even show them some of my pictures that I took when I   visited his garden in France.   On day one, we painted the pond and the water ...

I have created  Texture Shoe Print necklaces with my Kinder student's for 14 years.  I use stoneware clay and  Mayco Stroke and Coat Glaze . I got a few samples of it at the TAEA convention. I like using it for this lesson since you only have to fire one time. I use a straw to poke a hole and  I write their names on the back. I use a plastic string so that it doesn't break when they wear it home.  It's a keeper!!

What a fun way to end the first semester. My KDG kids made Winter Crowns this past week to wear to our Winter Holiday assembly and party today. I made these years ago using 18 x 24 inch marbled paper. This year the kids sponge painted the pre cut crown on manilla tag board.  While the paint dried, we practiced cutting a simple snowflake. This was soooooo hard for some of them.  After gluing them on, I added some glitter..... it's all over my room still.. I am sorry wonderful custodians.  I sized and stapled ........ Very clever if I do say so myself. Happy winter break!