Bird's nests!

Fantastic first grade bird nests on branches!

Some stuff we collected from the park:

The nests we created from all of the sticks, grass, leaves, fun nature things, (and pieces of that strange brown paper that I have oodles of from my recent bridal shower gifts):

And eggs of course!

(Model magic painted with tempera.)

The backgrounds were collaged tree branches on watercolor resist.

 The result is a bird's eye view of a nest resting on a tree branch. 

I hot glued the eggs on to the nest and the nest on to the branch image. 

 Beautiful!

clay cookies

Happy Valentine's Day!

Kindergarten clay 'cookies' made out of model magic printed with rubber stamps for texture. 

We painted them with a mix of tempera and acrylic medium for a 'glaze' today. 

These plastic bowls worked perfectly for keeping

 a hold of them, labeling names, and sending them home. 

Peace-a-palooza

This is my fifth year starting out doing a lesson based on the International Day of Peace (Sept. 21) 

and tying it in with beginning of the year basics. 

I always teach about what symbols mean, what the word "peace" means, 

and how the peace sign came to be. 

I was actually published in Teach Boldly where I wrote a portion of a chapter 

about my first experience teaching this unit.

This year after showing a slide show on the peace sign, other peace symbols such as the dove and olive branch- and introducing works of Pablo Picasso and Rene Magritte-- I went back to basics with my new fifth graders. We reviewed color mixing with model magic. 

Then each student made their own peace sign, also including texture if they chose to do so.

Each student was responsible for creating an accompanying tag with their name and a sentence about how they define peace of what it means to them using thin marker and colored pencil. 

I hung them in the window, they looked awesome!

We are currently working on another related lesson that focuses on composition and overlapping. 

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Past lessons I have done include these below:

Primary colors mixed with a new take on Pinwheels for Peace. 

Rainbow colors of marker lines turned into paint- and then collaged onto the peace sign. 

Hands put together to form a large peace sign. 

One grade I had draw examples of peaceful and 

respectful behaviors to set examples for the other students. 

Attempt at Puppet making

To conclude my recycling unit with third grade (which I will post the rest of today) I wanted to do a clothing/fabric recycling project. 

I thought my third graders would get a lot out of three dimensional project and enjoy making puppets. 

It has taken a lot of patience and lugging around of materials but the kids are psyched and have learned a lot. 

Day 1: We began with a tongue depresser and styrofoam ball. 

I have very limited clay & model magic. The styrofoam let me use the least amount of clay and kept the head light. The only tools I gave them were a popsicle stick and a small pikey one side/flat on the other stick. The kids rolled a ball with the model magic then flattened it like a tortilla. They wrapped the flat clay around the head and covered a bit of the neck. They PINCHED to pull out the nose.

Then holding the popsicle stick horizontally they wedged open the mouth by wiggling it up and down a little bit and then pinching the corners of the mouth. 

Each student stuck on two google eyes and then smooshed the clay over a little to create eyelids and keep the eyes stuck. They could also pinch out two ears and push them back a bit. 

No hair was allowed.

Day 2: Each student masking taped a popsicle stick to create arms. Then cut out hands out of manilla colored paper and glue sticked them to the ends of the popsicle sticke.

Each student also received a rectangle piece of white fabric/muslin. They cut it in half and cut out a circle from the middle. Then we put some elmers glue on the tongue depresser and popsicle stick and wrapped some cotton around them for the puppet's "insides". And finally covered the puppet body in the fabric and glued it together.

The conclusion was what my students refer to as the "scary grandpa ghosts" BUT it gave us a good giggle and they truly comprehended the idea of building something from the inside out. 

Day 3: HAIR! 

We talked a lot about hair... how it grows out of the head, how it covers the back and sides of the head (even on boys), different types of hair, how bangs and ponytails work, etc. 

I had a variety of yarns available for the children to use and encouraged them to really experiment with unraveling it, cutting it, etc. 

(In my opinion this is one of the most fun parts of the puppet process!)

To glue: I had then dip the top of the head into the puddle of craft and spread it out with a popsicle stick like frosting a cupcake. It worked very well. 

Day 4 ( possibly 5 + 6....): Clothes! Oh my!

We are still working this out by the way. 

This was a big part of the recycling. 

Some of my students brought in clothes to recycle/transform into clothing. 

I cut up the garments to show them how much fabric there was. 

I pretty much gave the kids a few suggestions for strategies and then let them experiment, plan, and problem solve on their own here. 

We are still working out some kinks. But the kids are SO excited about them. 

Little Penguin Sculptures

wine corks- mat board scraps- orange straws- coffee filters- model magic- black acrylic

Hot gluing wine corks to 3 x 3 mat board scraps was the perfect base for these little penguins.
The kids could cover the cork in model magic and add feet to start.
Then they add a head, wings, and tail- stick a small orange straw cutting in the head for the beak.

When they dried- the kids tore up coffee filters to glue around the penguin for ice and snow and then painted the penguins with black acrylic.
The first graders were so in love with new little friends!