Maternity Leave

The past 2 months have been a whirlwind of excitement.  Last month I gave birth to my first child, a healthy baby boy, and am officially out on maternity leave until November!  
When I've been able to get a few minutes to myself, which has become a precious commodity these days, I have been keeping myself busy with some creative projects.  I'm going to try and post them until I start back and work and can return to posting my usual project pictures.  In the meantime, here's a wreath I made for my front door.  I realize that the colors I chose are Christmas ones, but I wanted the wreath to match the flowers in my flower boxes.

Here was the inspiration:

Wax begonia's, sweet potato vine, ornamental fern, and king coleus. 





Here's the wreath:

I used a minimal amount of hot glue, my door faces south and gets pretty intense sunlight for most of the day. I used hot glue to assemble the very first door wreath I made last year and it pretty much melted apart and was irreparable!  Now I either sew on the parts or use t-pins.   I can get away with a little hot glue but it has to be so sparse so it doesn't run and glob up on the wreath.  I got everything from Micheal's craft store and it cost me about $15, Make sure you either print or take a snapshot of the weekly coupon and use your teacher discount when you purchase anything from a Micheal's or A.C.Moore stores.  I stop there so often it's amazing they don't know me by know (plus it doesn't help that I have them both about a mile away from my house!)

Here are some of the steps I used to assemble it: 

The flowers had silver twist-tie like fasteners on the back so I used those to attach them to the wreath.  The silver flowers were old hair clips I recycled, and the strawberries I cut and stitched and then attached with a wee bit of hot glue.  Viola my Christmas-looking summer flower inspired wreath, lol! :)

And here is my best creation yet: my lil' boy!!!

Last Project Post of the School Year...Laurel Burch Cats and Dogs

I must've changed this project 4 times before finally settling on this as the final project. Initially I wanted the project to be a tissue paper collage with a black foam printed cat/dog drawing over it but upon realizing I didn't have any black printing ink (and not wanting to use tempera), I then decided to have the kids print in a color.  I tried it out first, thankfully, didn't like the fact that there was no contrast between the background and the print, and then changed the project again.

I decided to go with bubble wrap over the tissue paper to give the kids some type of exposure to the printing process and then gave them 6x9" paper to practice drawing cats or dogs in the style of Laurel Burch. After a session or two of practice drawings, I was so impressed at how cute they were coming out I had the kids use them as their final pictures.  The drawings were then cut and glued onto the background and voila the project was complete.  The overall size is 9x12", which is a little smaller than I usually have the kids work, but the results came out cute nonetheless.

 

Sunflowers in 4 Mediums

 This lesson was taken from the blog "Kid's Artist's".  It was originally posted as a 5th grade lesson done in 5 mediums, but I adapted it for my first and second graders in 4 mediums.  The paper is 9x24" folded in half, and then in quarters.  I had the kiddies use crayon, marker, watercolor, and oil pastel.  This was a great end of year tie-in to the planting they had done in their classrooms for our brand new school greenhouse using sunflower seeds. We also learned a little bit about van Gogh and his sunflower still-life paintings.

4th and 5th grade perspective cities

 

A special shout-out to the blog: "SmArt Class" for sharing this lesson and inspiring me to try it!  This ended up being the last project before my maternity leave and it was a great way to end the school year for my fourth and fifth graders.  The technical aspect of the project kept them engaged and the setup and cleanup was minimal.  The kids also really loved the idea of using the markers with water and a paintbrush as a kind of watercolor paint.  I really pushed them to make these as creative as possible, whether they were creating a fictional or realistic landscape, I wanted them to add as many personal details as possible.  Here's a few pictures from in progress works and finished ones. 

Clay Slab Owls 3rd grade

These owls were "easy peasy", as the kids said, to make.  From start to finish it took 3-45 minute periods. The first day was spent rolling out a slab circle, adding texture to the body using old marker caps, and then folding over the wings and head.  The second day I showed the students how to score and slip the clay to attach details like eyes, feathers, a beak, and anything else they wanted on their owl.  They could also use a wooden pin tool to draw on any other details.  Lastly, I had them put a hole in the top to string the owls for hanging and after bisque firing, we glazed them using a bunch of Amaco glazes. 

Just as a  side note, last year I used mostly Mayco Stroke and Coat and this year I tried a bunch of different Amaco glazes, overall I find them of pretty equal substance, but the Mayco is a smoother, easier to manage glaze. With the Amaco, although the colors were bright, some of the glazes clumped, settled, and didn't really maintain their consistency, making them hard to pour. 

My 3rd graders loved this project and were super excited to show their owls off to their parents at our May open house.  Next September I'm keeping them for a showcase to display for the start of the school year so I'll follow up with some pictures then!

1st Grade Robots

This lesson was taken from Deep Space Sparkle. Click HeRe to see her original project.
I LOVE this project.  I used 11x15" pieces of cardboard and when I ran out of that I used oak tag.  The cardboard works a little better as a backing but the oak tag is passable in a pinch.
On day 1 the kids did the background:  For it we used two primary colors and then cups dipped in white paint to create circular shaped stamps.
On day 2  For inspirationa and ideas for the children, I used painter and illustrator Eric Joyner, his robot and doughnut paintings are fabulous and really got the kids attention. After looking at a few of his paintings,  I put out up a bunch of boxes and cereal box pieces I had previously cut, and let the kids go to town.

On Day 3   I passed out Sax brand metallic paints in copper, silver, gold and brass and they painted their robots.  In some instances, the students were able to assemble, glue, and paint their robots in one period.

On the last day I gave out a bowl of tin foil pieces, buttons, google eyes, pipe cleaner pieces (from another lesson), foam shapes, and Sharpies and they added details to their robots.
Too cute!!

Ndebele Symmetrical Houses Grade 2

This project is based on the painted houses of  the Ndebele tribe of South Africa.

The project  took about 3-4 40 minute periods. 
To  make the houses the kids used 16x18" white paper that they folded in half and then cut to become a symmetrical house (or house-looking shape). 

I then had them use pattern reference sheets and draw a design on half of the house.  To make the design symmetrical, students trace their pencil drawings in /Sharpie and then folded the paper backwards so the marker would show up through the back.  Carbon paper was put in between the halves and traced onto the other side in pencil.  They traced the newly drawn side with Sharpie and then colored the whole house with Crayola paint pens.

 Initially I had wanted the project to be done in paint, but I realized very quickly that the designs the kids were making were way to small and intricate to be painted in.  I had the paint pens lying around from last year and so I gave them a try.

 The children seemed to like using them but after 5 classes of 20 children, over the course of 3 periods, the soft brush-like tips were smashed into oblivion and many of the markers had almost completely died out.  The paint pens are fun, but they're certainly not the most durable supply to color with!