Special Project Group First Meeting

We had a great first meeting with my 4th graders Special Project Group!  We discussed ways to save water and did a variety of activities.  We ended the hour with an un ordinary coloring sheet, which I think was the kids favorite part!

The app is called colAR mix.  The bird is free, but to get access to the other pages, it's a $2.99 fee.  Works best with leaving the background white.  The group was pretty impressed!  I look forward to our next meeting! 

Happy Peace Day!

For the third year, Pecatonica Elementary students participated in the International Peace Day!  During art last week, students created pinwheels and listened to The Peace Book by Todd Parr.

Here are all the pinwheels in the display case waiting to be "planted!"

This morning, all of the students planted their pinwheels in front of the school for "whirled" peace!

I even took a little video of the peaceful pinwheels spinning in the wind....

Ask your child what peace means to them tonight!  Their answer might surprise you!

Pinwheels for Peace and Cool FREE stuff!

The children have been hard at work on their couple of "have to" projects for me this week!  After watching the video of Todd Parr reading his book, The Peace Book, we decorated pinwheels.  On Friday, September 20th, we will plant our pinwheels in front of the school to celebrate the International Peace Day on the 21st!  The past two years, we have been featured on the 5 and 6 o'clock WREX 13 news!

Mr. Dale delivered us a box today that contained a bunch of FREE art supplies from Sargant Art Supplier!  We love free stuff! 

First Full Week!

We have had a great start to the school year in the Dragonfly Studio!  The kids are excited at the freedom to create and are eager to earn more studios to open!  I decided to have a modified choice for kindergarten classes at individual tables instead of the full studios.  

Students started making their Idea books  to travel and sketch or write artistic ideas in to bring to class and their portfolios, which will house W.O.W. projects until the art show in the spring.

We also had a wonderful Back to School

Party provided by our PTO on Tuesday evening. Our fabulous firefighters even came out and cooled off our kids on the hottest day of the year!

Hope everyone has a great 3 day weekend!

First Day of 2013-2014 school year!

Miss Erickson's class had the honor of the tinsel cutting ceremony for the Dragonfly Studio!

It was an exciting day inviting students to the new studio!  Lots of ohhs and ahhs could be heard upon entering the room.  We went over some expectations and opened the drawing studio!  Students were excited to draw what they did this summer and share.

Looking forward to a fabulous year!  Keep an eye out in next week's communicator for Artsonia permission slips and new art expectations for students.

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!