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  This is one of those old but good lessons that we just revisited in 4th grade. My teacher friend, Melody, shared this with me when I was a new teacher in my district 15 years ago and new to Texas.  The ties to the IC curriculum are really great in this lesson. I start out with the story of the  The Caves of Lascaux's I have many prints from this collection and we focused on the horned cow. We then talk about how these animals came to Texas .... I follow this with some research on the Texas Longhorn symbol and we do a guided  contour drawing of a longhorn together with various options.  We use pencil and follow up with China Markers for the Rock Art look.... On day two we talk about VALUE.  We do a quick value scale and practice in our sketchbooks. I then give the student's a choice of materials to finish 1. China Markers 2. Ebony Pencils 3. Crayons 4. Oil Pastels The objective is to finish ...

I was planning on taking down all the winter displays today, but we have the day off due to ice. The kindergarteners made these last month. While you can't make a snow man or snow angel with ice, you can have fun staying in your PJ's. I have been chatting away with the 5th graders on Google Classroom too.... It is so funny to see them post pictures of what they are doing today.  I am still in my pjs... The ice hasn't melted... And I beat my daughter finally! Stay safe and stay warm!

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 am on a roll," said this little artist) My Kinder's finished up their open house Circle art earlier than the rest so we paused and just made hearts today. I am really trying not to rush and hurry the kids this year. I want them to have more time to become happy makers. Using various square of construction paper, glue sticks, white paper and sharpies they became HEart experts at folding and cutting. This is some type of a game that I have never heard of before! They even cleaned up super fast for heart stickers! 

Our group has grown so much that we changed the hashtag.  #k12artchat is replacing #pisdarted. Join our group for a Creative Chat tonight with the lovely @GrundlerArt hosting. See you there!

I have a Chinese New Year lesson that my kiddo's love to make every year with sponge stamps. The old stamps that I have had are worn out. I ordered a cardboard stamp product from  School Specialty called  Miracle Sponge  to reuse the handle part of the stamp.  It is thin like cardboard. I drew on it and cut it out dry. I then picked off the old sponge on the plastic stamps that I had. I hot glued the dry cardboard sponge to it.  After the glue was dry, it ran the sponge under my little cold water only sink, yes, and poof the sponge expanded.  They have lasted through many cold water washes.  Yes, my fingers are cracking.... But the quality of the material with tempera paint was worth it.  Score!

Please join me ...and many of our peers, as I drive the twitter bus for my first time.  I am hosting Thursday's art chat.  The topic is a good one: blogging and social media in the art room.  I need my peeps to be there, and to be kind as I branch out into the twitter world of chatting.  I am filling in for my awesome boss lady @grundlerart.   She supplied the questions and I am manning the twitter!  Prayers please LOL! Check my previous post for more details. 

I am hosting an art educator themed twitter chat for the first time this Thursday  on my professional twitter site @bacarter77  I am filling in for @grundlerart our regular MC.  Have you ever participated  in a twitter chat, or do you just watched?  My friend @artwithbailey created this friendly poster for our district chats on Tuesday nights.  Our #tag will be #pisdartchat on Thursday night for Art Educators.  The 45 minutes topic will be about Social Media in the Art Classroom.  Please consider joining us on Thursday.  I have been know to set my timer on my phone.  I am using TweetDeck to schedule the questions ahead of time too.  Check back this week on Thursday for the questions! 

Art Portfolios then  and now...... Discovery Education Resource for the Art Room I attended Board Builder training yesterday. I had no idea what it was as we logged in to our district's Discovery Education website.  I was blown away by the Board Builder section on this site. It is amazing. Not only can student's watch videos about our learning, but a student can make a digital Portfolio board and store the images in the Discovery cloud instead of on our district servers. The bonus, the kids can do it themselves.   First the kids logged in and set up their Portfolio Board. They could set the fonts, colors etc. The Fun Part!  I had them make a section for each piece of art work they have  completed so far this year.  They can also do this from home or on indoor recess days.  The second part involved using our new IPad mini's.  Some of my students also BYOD. (Bring their own device) They took ...