Recycling Crayons is Fun!

Looking for a fun, easy, recycling project?  Emma spent time peeling crayons (she says it's relaxing) and collecting them in a large ziplock.  We then sprayed a mini muffin pan with cooking spray and preheated the oven to 350 degrees.  Emma and Jade had a great time breaking the crayons into smaller pieces.  I showed them how to pinch it with their thumbs to break easier.  They placed the smaller pieces in the muffin pan up to the tops.  It's fun to experiment with different colors together!  Then we "baked" our creations for 10 mins or until melted.  Let cool for about an hour until hard.  They slipped out of the pan easily and are ready to color!

I have also been working on re-staining   our deck and painting our very old, rod iron furniture in fun colors!  

Before:  

And after:

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer! What kind of fun artsy things have you been doing?  I'm excited for a TAB conference at the end of this month in Chicago!  It's so rewarding to be able to network with other art teachers!

Like my new poster for the art room?

Professional Development Today!

Today I'm spending the day embracing the first ever online conference specifically for art teachers through the Art of Education!  I've taken pages and pages of notes and have some new classroom readings to add to my summer read list.  At one point, there were over 500 art teachers from around the world logged onto this conference!  Wow!  Art teachers unite!

Spare Change Drive for OK!

In just under two weeks time, Pecatonica Elementary students and staff raised $357.65 to help aide in the recovery of Moore Public Schools in Moore, OK.  Great job everyone!

Spending the day at the Shedd Aquarium!

I knew my art students would be left in good hands with Mrs. Garcia as my substitute on Thursday.  I had the pleasure of using a personal day to visit the Shedd Aquarium with the second graders.  We had a wonderful time together! 

It was her first time to the Windy City!

Loved the jellies!

I love these kids!

Look out, Mrs. Wanke!

It's been an amazing school year!  I look forward to a new adventure this fall with TAB!

Announcing our winner from One of a Kind Gifts!

Kindergartner Breanna Huttenlocher was the lucky recipient of the art gift set from One of A Kind gifts!  Thank you to all the families that came out to vote!  Breanna couldn't wait to get home to, "make some art stuff" with her new supplies including a beautiful table-top easel!

Thank you again to One of a Kind Handcrafted Gifts for this opportunity to showcase Pecatonica Elementary students' artwork!

Kindergarten Loves Silly Sludge!

This week we are using up our almost empty glue bottles to make silly sludge!

The link for the recipe can be found here.  It starts out watery, but the more the kids work it, the
better it gets!

Miss Hoffman's class saw the silly sludge and even convinced me to make it with their class!


Only 9 more days of school!  What are you looking forward to the most this summer?

Pop Art and Wet Ones!

A few weeks ago, we received 3 cases of Wet Ones wipes from Teacherlists.com for FREE!  Third Graders used them as inspiration for our Pop Art unit and learned about Andy Warhol.  Did you know he had 25 cats all named Sam?

Check out the Animoto video I created about this project below!

Pop Art and Wet Ones

We also experimented with collage from the scrap box today!