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I accomplished a few goals! I cleaned out my closet.... And I went to the new Perot Museum Perot Museu m with Miss Carter! Oh... I did get a new hair cut too! Happy Second Semester!

This year I really put some thought into my Texas Art Association  entries. My goal was to enter student work that reflected lesson's I wrote, and were tied to Texas curriculum standards. I entered one of our Longhorn still life and weaving lesson, as well as a Day of the Dead project. Wish us luck!

My school district requires that I enter student art work in 2 contests a year and on exhibition. There are many more that we can participate, but it is very hard and sometimes expensive to take part in them all. I have found that the competitions in the spring are a little easier after we have an abundant of finished art work. I chose to enter the Holiday Greeting card contest this year. The theme this year was, "Bold and Brilliant Holiday." The art work had to be submitted the last week of October, and I only spent one class period on the lesson. I encouraged and bribed the student's to finish entries at home or at recess.  I was so excited to have a finalist in the elementary division this year. We also used this student's artwork as our school greeting card.

I spent this New Years afternoon teaching myself how to transfer my first blog, Mrs. Carter's Artroom , over to It is Art Day . I was not able to access my previous blog at school since it had my name on it. I feel pretty proud of my old self for figuring out how to actually transfer the posts. I am already noticing how much more user friendly Blogger is. This is my first art post on Blogger. I have to thank The  Tiny Art Room  for her holiday lesson post. I followed her directions and used it as a center station my 4th and 5th graders. They had the option to create this lesson when they finished their work the week before winter break. I think they like the lesson. Some students added snow, holly, snowflakes and so on. Happy New Year!

We finally finished our shoe print clay projects in Kindergarten today. I love the way the Stoke and Coat glaze made this old lesson pop with gloss and color.

Remember the Art Teachers! North Texas Elementary Art Teachers I am so fortunate to be able to attend the TAEA conference this year in San Antonio. I made a cool door sign for the auction.

The Art department and the Music Department collaborated with each other to display patriotic student flag collages during the Veteran's day program this year. Here are the steps I took with the third graders to create their beautiful flags. Patriotic Collage[/caption]

I discovered Peep this summer. Have you used it in your classroom? The site has wonderful science connections that I use to support art lessons for the younger art students. Check out their awesome Peep website. Our district has the videos on Safari Montage, but some are available on the homesite too!

My daughter, Miss Carter, teaches high school art 1. She is a great first year teacher. She is hanging her students Day of the Dead banners in the morning! She used a batik method on muslin with water colors!

Once again a great lesson from Deep Space Sparkle . The lesson fit perfectly with our IC unit on cycles. This lesson also motivated all of the kids! The painting and cutting skills challenged all the kids too. I started the lesson with my favorite book, "Pumpkin Jack." I followed almost all of Patty's steps, but changed the last material by using only oil pastel for the background. This lesson will be repeated next year!

Because I love teaching art and it's Halloween....I made crayon pumpkins!

Dia de Los Muetro is a colorful holiday celebrated in Mexico on November 1st and 2nd. My 4th grade students created celebratory sugar skulls with soap and oil pastels. This is a great lesson that supports our Texas history curriculum and the end art product is very divergent. I began the lesson with a great book, by Tony Johnston, "The Day of the Dead." After the introduction to the Holiday, the students practiced various types of skull drawings in their sketchbooks. They redrew their skull with pencil on good 9 x 12 black construction paper. They added and bedazzled their skulls with personal details. Be careful to not draw too small. Using small pieces of white bar soap, they traced the pencil lines. The soap is washed away at the end to expose black outlines! I have the students color the white skull first, followed by brilliant colors that stand out on the black paper. Try not to color over the soap! When they have covered the entire paper, submerge the paper in water to ...

This past weekend, Our school district had a small fall break. My mother and Miss Carter joined me for a fun day today at the Dallas Arboretum!

I was super excited to display the 5th Grade Leaves today. They were too!! When researching the lesson, I found many sites that had various directions for students to follow.  I combined a few ideas and I will make a few changes next year. This lesson is a keeper and it also coordinates with the student's adventure camp trip later this month! Note to self...Next year I will: 1. Only use Terra Cotta Clay. I used white this year and terra-cotta looked much better. 2. Put the clay leaf in a bowl instead of draping it over a bowl. 3. Bisque fire the clay first, instead of using Stroke and Coat glazes. Too fragile. Over all, I think they are beautiful!!   [caption id="attachment_581" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Terra Cotta with Stroke and Coat Glaze [/caption]

I pulled out an old Pop Art lesson from my file cabinet this past month. I changed the paper colors to a vivid pallet and added sushi to the menu. The students were introduced to the art of Wayne Thiebaud. They had a choice to create a hamburger or sushi. The first day we made the entree. We completed the lesson with a woven place mat and we drew chop sticks or fries as three-dimensional forms. I think they really do POP!

[caption id="attachment_570" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Red Leaf Yellow Leaf[/caption] Thank goodness we had an early release day today. I was finally able to display some of the beautiful leaf prints the first graders produced. I found this wonderful lesson over at the amazing Deep Space Sparkle site. I really followed Patty's steps, but did make a few changes. I  use artifical leaves and changed some of my paper color from black to copper. The results are Beautiful!  

I read about some great classroom management techniques on Jessica's blog The Art of Education . I love the Timed Timer. My kids love the Timed Timer. It is my favorite new classroom tool!! I am also using her quiet working technique with the letters ART. Very cool!

I came up with this 5th grade patterned hand lesson last year after seeing many versions on Pinterest. Our school district has a back to school theme each year that I try to include in my displays. This year we are Bold and Brilliant. I am excited by the art connections and equally excited about a new school year!

The beginning of the school year always brings PDH classes with new options to organize the way we use technology. A new system to organize art links is called LiveBinders . I will use this system io limit the sites my students can us in the art classroom. The free site is also available as an IPAD app.<;;a href="http:// Elementary Art Class Websites ">;;my Binder

Well, it's time to start organizing my planners and calendars. Last our school system switched software on us so I am still using my pencil and paper organizer. I do like this method to keep track of which of my 30 classes are on each lesson. I print color labels for my planner. After sticking them in I color code and label the months and days of importance. Next, I will import our district curriculum with some of my own lessons that I have found on blogs and Pinterest. I am lucky that we have a curriculum guide, but am allowed to add my own twist to it!