.

The beginning of the winter semester is always unpredictable. We miss days and have interruptions with holidays and college week. I decided to start off the semester with winter and Chinese new year themed projects.  I found this Chinese lesson on Instagram. I share my personal pictures and some some art lessons on my BethCarter77 site. Some teachers have a totally separate classroom site.  I don't, but I save those posts for my class twitter site.  Check out this awesome CNY site with worksheets and Videos too! Back to Instagram, I love Instagram and I love photos and the friends that I have made on IG.  I found Mr. DeWilde and this great Chinese New Year Lantern lesson in a feed of Art Teachers that post on Instagram.  He was also nice enough to share with me his paper sizes. Check him out! The red paper on the large lantern is 9 x 12 and the gold/yellow paper is 7 x 9. Fold it like a Hot dog, and make thick ...

And it is 70 degrees outside! School is out for two weeks and I am home today without a car. Its a good thing. I have gotten all the little things done and even have a clean house.  I am trying to get use to my new computer too.  I took down all of the fall displays before I left and added some winter themed art work. I put up this board with 3rd and 4th grade work inspired by  Paintbrush Rocket  and her friend  Painted Paper . The painted Alpine trees were a perfect one day lesson on a week of interruptions in 3rd grade. Thank you Laura for the great lesson.  I used two weeks with the 4th graders to created the Winter Bird lesson.  The kids painted and printed the 9x12 paper on the first week using cardboard and tempera paints. We also looked at the art of  Charley Harper .  On the second week they used oil pastels to create a bird. I also had shape tracers or they could use their device...

Remember the Alamo ? No not really! I am not from Texas and in 4th grade I took Indiana History... so learning about the culture of my now home state is really fun for all.  I came up with this lesson a few years ago after a TAEA conference host presented a lesson on creating the facade of the Alamo in Clay.  I tried the lesson with Air Dry clay, I had no kiln,  and it was a disaster.  I recreated the lesson using 36 gauge aluminum from Sax School Specialty. The student's did an observational drawing of the Alamo using pictures and technology. Since the structure is symmetrical I guided them with some simple contour drawing steps.  The manilla paper was 4.5 x 6 inches to utilize utilize the aluminum size.  I precut the metal on my paper cutter and taped it for them to the paper to avoid sharp edges.  They traced their original drawing with pen on to...

I am So grateful to have the week off to stop and enjoy Thanksgiving. I  reused some of our wedding props and chalk pens to make these today.  I love chalk pens.  You can wipe them off if you need too.  Hopefully you all will have time to rest, enjoy family, and reset for a busy three weeks  next month. 

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...

We are finally finishing up our Oil Pastel Sugar Skulls in 4th grade this week and learning about the Mexican Holiday Dia de los Muertos On week one I introduce the lesson with books and videos such as this one below. We used chrome books and ipads to learn to draw skulls using this awesome site:  http://www.art-is-fun.com/how-to-draw-skulls The student's drew the skull big on Tru Ray Black  that I cut into a 9 x 12 size of construction paper.  Good paper is the key to keep it from falling apart in the water at the end. They traced all pencil lines with a small piece of white hotel soap.   The lines appear gray.  Then they begin coloring all the white first with small circular strokes being careful not to go onto the soap line. It takes about two class periods to color. here is a picture of the small chunks of white hotel soap bars. Put the paper into a tray of water to wash away the soap. I dry ...