paper suggestions? please!

Does anyone have any suggestions for heavier white drawing paper that does not fight watercolor paint that was ordered this year?

My 60 & 80 lb.drawing/mixed-media paper really fights watercolor paint. I'm going to do another order but would love some suggestions of papers you recommend (please identify the distributor as well).

skin color crayon strategy

My students have been doing a lot of people drawing lately and I've been repeating my instructions for how to choose an appropriate crayon for the skin color. 

I made a poster of my steps since all of the grades are following the same strategy- thought I'd share it!

Fundred video resources

I am in the middle of doing the Fundred Dollar Bill Project with my fifth graders. They recently studied currency in social studies and I want to do a money design lesson with them to cross the social studies-art connection and also to round out our study of symbols. This lesson was a good bridge to my large money design lesson I'll start next week. At my new school I have access to a projector, reliable internet, AND youtube!!! So I decided to show a few videos to explain the project better, quickly, and concisely. These were the three links I ended up using and the kids found them really helpful. I debated showing a 2 minute video about lead poisoning but I couldn't find one I thought was appropriate and worthwhile enough so I just explained it a little bit more after the videos. I decided not to show Mel Chin's NAEA presentation because I thought I might lose the kids as they watched it- the Fox news cast though (who knew?) was actually very informative and showed Mel Chin.
For anyone else considering doing this project check out these videos - especially Ashby's!!

 -Ashby an audience capturing Maryland art teacher
-Fox News Cast of Paydirt/Fundred
-George Jackson Academy students

6-Colors of His Own

To start off this first grade lesson and ingrain my students' brains with the rainbow color order one more time- students used the stick on paper tape to create part of a rainbow. 

(If you've never used, it's great for the little ones especially.)

Then we read A Color of His Own and each student drew a 

chameleon at the bottom of the page with a place. 

The students colored in the chameleons in rainbow order to match their rainbows using twistables.

The final touch was painting with watercolor to fill in the rest of the rainbow. 

It was a great practice for beginning watercolor use as well. 

Cylinders are up!

 They are roughly 24"x24" squares.