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As I posted previously , my older students in grades 3,4, and 5 are using the  Creatubbles Ipad app for the first time this year to create a digital portfolio. I recently relocated classrooms into a smaller setting and this seemed like the perfect time to implement this hot format of sharing art work and showing student growth. We jumped right into setting up our gallery's this week after our school district issued our student log in and passwords for each student in our schools.  This digital cloud is a new way for us to promote our program outside the walls of our school and it allows students to globally share their art work.  Creatubbles is not the only format available, but the format our school district chose  after testing a few last year. Each school in our district is participating in digital portfolios. I was invited to share my experience as well as two of my teaching buddies, Matt Grundler and Tracy Evans here in Plano Texas, by the a...

I moved classrooms and now it fees like I am on the HGTV Tiny Houses in my Tiny art room. What a good excuse to create Student Digital Portfolio's.  Our District has decided to use the Creatubbles app. We are going to be getting the student log in information and passwords any day now. I plan to have the students grades 3, 4 and 5 use this portfolio method this year. I will try to add on 2nd grade during the second semester.   I have 6 Art Ipads and can also check out Ipads from our library on the day's we might need more. Our student's are also able to BYOD to school. I allow students to bring their own device daily.  Many are now in the habit of taking pictures of their work or taking photos of a work in progress.  The Creatubble site is amazing. Students upload their work and have to enter a Title and Artist Statement for their work. My arty friend Tracy, recommended having the students that are first finishers write this on the back of...

I got a little crafty yesterday after seeing a crayon clock made by Jane on the Facebook Art Teacher's page.  She was nice enough to post the back of hers which  showed how to make this. The clock was from Walmart, $3 You need about 4 boxes of 24 crayons Hot glue and a cardboard circle to glue the crayons too. This is an inexpensive craft!  I used a cereal box to made a bigger cardboard shelf to glue the crayons on to.  Jane duck taped hers, I just hot glued mine. Jane also arranged her crayons in Rainbow order. I just wanted mine to be random. (kinda like me) Make your clock unique!  A few of my crayons melted from the hot glue so watch out! Here is the back I will hang it up next week in our new art space. Hope you are getting super excited to start the school year! 

I made this handy little charging station this summer for our devices. We were previously using the kitchen counter  and now it is all contained in one spot in our home office.  We had a hole that was unused in the corner of the desk and an old printer stand.. I only purchased a surge protector and velcro! I used the sticky backed velcro to attach the plug unit under the desk.  The power cord went through the hole in the the wall plug behind the desk. I used small clips to hold the end of the cord and keep it from falling down into the under space. It is pretty handy and keeps everything tidy! 

I am so jealous of all the fancy art rooms that I have seen popping up blogs and Facebook.  This is my new/ old art space that I taught in during Summer School. It is an old space, since I taught in this classroom 9 year ago. Our building is adding a SPED unit and my old space was in the wing that is being converted     It was big and open and now it is empty. I am going to stay positive and cross my fingers that we will get a new space in 2 years when our building is refreshed!  Our building is being painted this summer, so I only added a little decoration this summer. I am thinking of getting rid of some of the big chairs to help with space and using  Creatubbles this year to keep the art clutter contained.  I'll update this sight as I update the space over the next few weeks. I am hoping some cabinets were  installed and the sink was fixed along with a printer moved.  Stay posted!

We are winding down to the last 12 days of school and I have run short of time to glaze fire. Our state STAAR tests were moved to May this year so my schedule changed.  Sometime the oppsies turn out to be good problems.  I am cleaning out my cabinets since I have to downsize and move into a smaller room next door,  and I forgot that I ordered these amazing Sargent metallic paints in the fall.  They go on smooth and you don't need much when painting. They also dry super fast.  My 4th graders painted their bisque ware coil pottery in one class time and took it home today.  We actually did this project in two class periods using zip lock bags.  In class one, I introduced  Coil pottery and we looked at the work of Maria Martinez and her beautiful coil pottery.  The  4th graders cut a slab for the base and began rolling coils.  We slipped and scored but left the coil texture unli...

Here is my take on a Pinterest inspired Mother's Day Spring Bouquet that I found recently.... My 1st graders created a painted paper stem paper on 12 x 18 paper using tempera paint and paint scrapers. Who wants to use a boring piece of green paper?  I had different green paper's for them to choice from.  And on a 9 x 12 pink paper that I pre-folded for them in 6 squares,  they painted flowers using  Rose Colors. I had them paint an orange dot in the middle first  and then we painted the flowers  Painted Paper style. I also used Laura's lesson to paint these flowers in our hallway. Love them!  On day two we put the sculpture together.  The student's fan folded the green paper. This was harder than I thought. I stapled it at the top. They then added flower details with oil pastels and cut the flowers out. One of my super smart artist boys figured out that we need to taco fold the flowers...

My good friend Karen finally shared her award winning lesson with me.  It is a wonderful exploration into  non-Objective watercolor painting based on color theory.  I had to refresh my vocabulary while presenting this to my amazing 4th graders last week.  We explored the world of Tertiary or Intermediate colors. Here are the basic supplies  fine point sharpie, prang paints 90 lb cold press  watercolor paper, and a color wheel. I review with my students the primary and secondary colors with part of this video. We have so many new ELL student's and this was a great tutorial. After setting our table to paint, the students painted a ribbon color wheel.  We started with yellow, leaving a space a painting another amorphic shape of the secondary color orange. Using a wet brush they pulled the colors together to make the Tertiary color shape.  We used small color wheels to progress around the whee...