Spring Art & Homemade Water Colour Test

Well here it is everybody!  I finally completed my homemade marker water colour test with our spring art that we did this past week.  Let's start from the beginning.  For my spring art this year I had my students draw their spring flower with pencil on 90 weight water colour paper (I cut it in half).  They then coloured their flower with oil pastels.  When this was done students painted over their flowers with water colours.  Before the paint dried we put coarse salt all over the paper which gives the background quite a neat looking texture.

 

I then decided to try the same art with my homemade water colour markers.  I have to admit I didn't think it was really going to look all that great, but I have to say that I am pretty impressed with the results. It is a bit lighter then I would have preferred but I believe that if I soak more markers in one jar maybe the colour might get more vibrant.  That will be an experiment for another day! FYI the coarse salt also seemed to work its magic on the marker water colour.   See the pictures below for the results:

     
             Water Colour Paint Used                                      Homemade Marker Water Colour Used

Happy spring!

Lauren :)

Pinterest Tested - Water Colours!

A sweet colleague of mine was recently visiting my classroom and noticed my students throwing out our dried out markers.  She told me to stop immediately.  She said that she read on Pinterest that you could make water colours very easily out of dried out markers and water.  Well since I am so frugal and love Pinterest I thought I NEED to try this.  I immediately hit up the sight and found the link.  I was a bit skeptical at first but my goodness gracious we made water colours!!!  And we are now addicted to making marker water colours!!

Here is the original link I found: http://amanda0480.blogspot.ca/2011/05/recycling-old-and-crusty.html

All I did was use one marker and I stuck it in a small amount of water in a baby food jar.  I left it for about 4 days and when the kids and I tried it out they worked like a charm!  The colours aren't as deep as food colouring or actual water colours but for the frugal teacher this is a pin win!  I am heading to Michaels this weekend to get some good quality water colour paper and will post pictures of our marker water colours this week!

Lauren :)

Fall Art and a Math Freebie

Hello Friends!

I need to start off this post by first saying that I love art.  I love teaching art, I love making art, I love looking at art.  I love everything about art!  So I am always excited to find new and exciting projects for my kids to do!  I also love fall.  I love the colours, the leaves falling, pumpkins, fall decor and pumpkin spice everything.  With my class in the fall I usually make sunflowers for our fall art project with oil pastels, but this year I decided to change it up!  Instead of making sunflowers out of oil pastels I switched the medium to chalk pastels and added a glue line!  On the first day we drew our sunflowers on black construction paper with pencil (we practiced first in our sketch books).  After sketching we took basic white glue and made a glue line over all of the pencil marks to outline our sunflower.  The next day when we got together we colored our sunflowers with chalk pastel.  Did we get a little messy with chalk pastels - absolutely! But what fun is art if you can't get a little messy sometimes!!! I think the kids did an amazing job!  They look absolutely beautiful on our bulletin board!

 

I whipped up a quick math freebie for you today.  You can download it at our Teachers Pay Teachers store.  It is called Line Me Up and just as the name sounds it is a one page sheet for students to cut out and order numbers from 0 to 100.  I hope some of you can find it useful!


Happy Tuesday!

Lauren

Can You SPOT The DOT? ...or believe it's already July 17th?

Well, I can't believe it's already mid July!!! I haven't posted on our blog in quite some time. The last few weeks of school were CrAzY busy and then to make life just a tad CraZiEr we decided to host our youngest daughter's family birthday the morning after school ended! (Seemed like a good idea at the time as we were accommodating family that was in town and family going out of town) Note to self: won't do this again next year! Needless to say, running around getting goody bag stuff, party supplies, presents, ordering balloons, making cupcakes all whilst whisking our girls off to soccer four nights a week, followed by evenings of finalizing, signing and stuffing report card envelopes, was a little chaotic! Anyway, summer holidays are here now and I am loving spending the days with my favourite two kids! I decided to post an activity that I have done in the past in my classroom and plan to use for a Back-to-School activity in September. It's a book art activity to do in response to Peter H. Reynolds' book, the dot.

My students LOVED this activity and were super creative with their pictures. Can you SPOT the DOT in the pictures below?



Have a great week! I am looking forward to more sunshine filled days this week! Enjoy the freebie!

~Jeanine

2D Shapes, Spring Art and a Freebie

Hey All,

Just wanted to keep you up to date with what was happening in my room last week.  We just finished up our 2D Shapes and 3D Objects unit.  If you are interested in what we did for our 2D Shapes unit, you can find the unit I used by clicking the picture below. 

In Writer's Workshop we have been busy with our story writing for the past few weeks.  Tomorrow we will be doing a spring rebus story.   I am sure the kids will have so much fun with it!  This past Friday afternoon the kids and I made spring plasticine art.  We created beautiful spring flower portraits.  It was a very step by step process.  We started with a 5x6 piece of cardboard.  The first instruction was to warm up the plasticine in their fingers and then spread it onto the cardboard.  After we finished the sky and soil we got to creating our flower.  I told the kids that the stem was like a little worm and the leaves were like eyes/teardrops.  For the flowers it was a very similar explanation as to the leaves.  The students had a choice as to what type of petal they were going to make and the colors they were going to use.  For this project I gave very small pieces of plasticine to the student to ensure that there was no waste and that their portraits did not start to overflow with plasticine.  I think the flowers turned out beautifully and it was a great way to end the day before a long weekend! 

I have to say I am very jealous of those of you who are off of school already or are off in the next week or two.  Jeanine and I still have five weeks left.  With that being said though I am most definitely positive that they are going to fly by with the many field trips and special activities planned.

Please enjoy a freebie from my 2D Shapes unit!

Have a great week!! :)

Lauren

Mother's Day and Birdhouse Ads!

As Lauren already mentioned, last week was a bit of a whirlwind! I am thankful that things have slowed down this week and we are back to our usual classroom routines. For Mother's Day, my class also created the mini My Mom is Excellent books that I posted on TPT. We also painted frames that held photos I had taken of my students on the playground. The frames looked super cute and sparkly when completed. During our Monday morning meeting, my students were excited to tell all about their mom's responses and reactions to their presents! I have included a couple of pictures of some finished books.

Last week we also did one of my favourite Spring activities for our bulletin board. I THINK I got the idea, years ago, from a Mailbox Magazine. My class LOVED this activity and had tons of fun creating their little masterpieces. We made birdhouses out of a variety of construction and coloured paper. (I supplied a variety of tracers for the kids to chose from.) My students got very creative and added lots of little details and features. Next, we looked at apartment/house ads on the internet to see how ads are written. Then my students had to get busy creating their own ads for their birdhouses. Next, we typed up the ads during our next scheduled computer time. Check out some of our adorable birdhouses and ads.

Mother's Day in Lauren's Room and What a Week!

Hey Everyone!

All I can say is WHAT a week!!! Sooo busy!  My kiddos and I were busy preparing for our spring musical Go Fish which was showcased this past Wednesday.  There were lots of practices, decorations to be put up,  dress rehearsals, and last minute things that needed to be done.  The kids and I were so wiped Thursday morning after all was said and done.  We then quickly had to switch gears and get to work on our Mother's Day presents.  No time to waste!

This year my class wrote cute little mini-books about why their Mom is excellent.  We used the Mother's Day Mini-Book that Jeanine created and which can be found at our Teachers Pay Teachers store.  Let me tell you - these books turned out beautifully!  I just know that the moms will love them!

I also found a cute idea on Pinterest that I thought the kids would love to make for their moms.   The idea can be found here: http://funhandprintart.blogspot.ca/2011/05/handprint-fingerprint-flowerpot-with.html   

You must check out this blog - it has the cutest ideas for hand and footprint art.

Our mother's day gifts wouldn't be complete without a card.  We were lucky enough to have an origami specialist come into our classroom about a week ago.  She helped us create the beautiful origami hearts that you see in the above picture.  We used these hearts as the cards for our moms.

It sure was a busy week in our classroom!  I am looking forward to getting back into routine and our regular schedule this week!

Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms out there! 

Lauren

Persuasive Writing, Earth Day & Doubles Math Facts

Hey Everybody!

Things have been really busy in my room for the past few weeks.  We have been going full force with persuasive writing and are just about to dive into story writing.  The things that my students are writing about in their persuasive pieces have been hilarious and heart warming all at the same time.  It is great to see all of my students so passionate about so many things.  We even had one little boy moved to tears in his persuasive letter.  It was precious!  We also have been really busy with earth day activities.  I found an amazing recycled art project on Pinterest that I could not resist.  The kids and I did it today and boy do our recycled flowers look beautiful on our bulletin board (pictures to come).  The activity can be found on the following blog: artiswhatiteach.blogspot.ca/2011/05/3rd-grade-recycled-daisies-and.html.  There are so many fantastic art ideas on this blog.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!  We also have gone out and cleaned up the school yard and written persuasive letters around the topic of taking care of our earth.

On another note, I have just put up a Delightful Doubles unit our Teachers Pay Teachers store.  I found that this year some of my little ones were just not getting doubles.  So I put together a package full of things that helped them to master these basic facts.  This doubles package includes:

-My Book of Doubles (a printable book for students to draw their own pictures of doubles facts to reinforce facts 1+1 up to 10+10)
-Doubles flash cards (with and without dot picture prompts)
-Doubles Memory math center game
-2 Doubles Connect 5 math games
-2 I Have, Who Has? activities
-3 doubles worksheets (matching, fill in the blanks, doubles addition with dot pictures)
-Suggestions on how to use each activity are included in this package

 Happy Wednesday everyone!!! Only two days to go!

 Lauren

Perfect Square Art and Map of My Heart

Well hello! This week in my class we have been busy wrapping up our shapes unit and starting a unit on mapping. For the end of our shapes unit I read the book Perfect Square by Michael Hall. It’s a super cute book about how a perfect square turns into something else by tearing, cutting, etc. I gave each of my students a square piece of solid coloured paper and they were challenged to use the entire square to create their masterpieces. My class loved it and some students were VERY creative. Below I have attached a couple of student samples of a cityscape and sinking Titanic.

To launch my mapping unit I read the book My Map Book by Sara Fanelli. It’s a great book with a colourful collection of labelled maps. There are a variety of maps included such as: Map of My Dog, Map of my Bedroom and Map of my Heart. After reading the story, my students all made maps of their hearts. My students loved this activity too. I have to admit, it made my day that I made the map! I have attached some student samples for you to see. I have also included a template of the page we used in class. Feel free to download and use in your classroom!

Have a great week!

~Jeanine