I have an idea...

Outside of my school, there is this area that is unused. It is a pentagon-ish shape surrounded by sidewalk and covered walkway. There are some bushes and trees growing there, as well as weeds. In different years, people have tried to plant flowers and other greenery, but unfortunately, it is very hard to find someone who can consistently take of the plants, so they always die. The grass grows really tall and the children run through the area in the morning. I was planning today for my 4th graders. I am planning a unit using the artist Joe Sam, who paints as well as creates sculptures.

Seeing his sculptures, it got me to thinking about turning this unused space into our own sculpture garden. We already have one sculpture there, the Chihuly inspired chandelier, which I keep putting off taking down.

So I am considering proposing this to my principal. I really want the related arts that we offer at Lakeview to be the main focus, since we are so often left out. I have been researching ideas, and have gotten some good ones, like this sculpture created from sports equipment

So what do you think? Any ideas or suggestions for possible sculptures?

Paper Pulp Ornaments

I don't know about you, but every year, my scrap paper box gets really full, too full in fact, and eventually I resort to throwing some away so that it doesn't overflow. Last year I came up with a great lesson that uses up lots of the scraps, keeping me from throwing it away. I had my kindergarteners create paper pulp ornaments.

We took the paper and separated it by color, and then ripped the paper into little pieces. Next, we soaked the paper in water overnight, and then ran it through a blender. Once it was pulped, we used cookie cutters as molds to create the ornaments. with the cookie cutters laying on a towel, the students piled the pulp into the middle, forming whatever patterns or designs they wanted. Next, we used sponges to press the pulp together and soak up as much water as we could. After poking a hole in the ornament, we put the still-wet pulp on the heater to dry overnight. You can add peppermint oil to to the pulp before the students use it if you would like. This helps in two ways. The first is obvious, it makes the ornament smell good, the second benefit of this is that it helps retard molding of the wet paper pulp if you need to store if for more than a few days.

I'm totally cheating!!!!

So, I have a confession to make... I love to create bulletin boards, but I hate cutting out letters for my boards, and refuse to spend money to buy punch out letters that I may use once. My school has an Ellison machine which punches out letters, but it is in another part of the building, and is sometimes a pain to get to, and we only have 2 font options to choose from, and they are each 4 inches big. Once in a while I can talk my friend Ted into cutting out letters for me, but not all of the time. So what did I do? I used some fundraiser money to buy a Cricut machine on clearance at Walmart. What is a Cricut machine? It is a handy machine that was created for scrapbooking.

With the purchase of a variety of cartridges you can cut out thousands of shapes and letters. Now the cartridges can be pretty expensive, but if you look for clearance sales or on ebay, you can get them pretty cheap.

I use the Cricut for bulletin boards and other signs that are needed around school. I can change the size of whatever I am cutting out from 1/4 of an inch to 5 1/2 inches. I have the smallest Cricut, but with the largest one, you can make pieces up to 23 1/2 inches. Here are some of the things I have created with the Cricut for the art show and bulletin board outside of my room. I used the snowflakes to make the border for the bulleting board.

Snow Day!

So we had a snow day here in Nashville. See? Snow.

So what did I do on this fabulous gift of a snow day? I spent it at school preparing for the first grade music program/art show that is scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday). I know, I'm horrible, and should be flogged for wasting a snow day, but I didn't want to lose a whole day of work time. I had a lot of work to do for this art show. Anyways, my first graders created chalk pastel snowmen, using glue to outline the snowmen and chalk to color them in. I sprayed the chalk pictures with 3 coats of hairspray, but for some reason it was still coming off on my hands, so I resorted to the last thing I would ever recommend for a child's art project...lamination. I never, ever laminate children's artwork, as you can really mess up the art, and with the amount of artwork that I deal with, I would go through thousands of dollars worth of lamination. But since this was chalk, and I didn't want their artwork damaged, I relented and spent an hour laminating their snowmen, and another hour cutting them out. After that, I hung them up in the hallway. What do you think?

Now for the kicker... I spent all day getting ready for the art show and guess what happened? They canceled school again tomorrow (Tuesday) so the music program/art show is canceled until further notice. Serves me right for wasting a snow day!

Crazy Fun!!!!

The beginning of the school year is always a stressful time, and being the secretary for my school's PTO just adds a little more responsibility to my already crowded plate. A couple of weeks ago, we had the Lakeview Design Center's PTO Fall Festival. We had a dunking booth, lots of games, and many baskets and other prizes to raffle off. One of the prizes was a chance to pie yours truly in the face. I think that my student had fun, don't you?

Chihuly Chandelier

Here in Nashville, we have been very lucky to have multiple Dale Chihuly installations to inspire our students with. My friends Ted, Tina, Daryl and I were in charge of the elementary art teachers inservice (at the beginning of the school year) and we planned the whole thing around the exhibits at the Frist Center and Cheekwood. One of the things that we did was to challenge the teachers to have their students create a Chihuly inspired instillation at their own school. My students have been very busy creating these installations. So far, my third and fourth graders have finished their chandelier/tower (well, at least one of them). Here is is hanging outside of the school from a tree. We created an armature out of chicken wire, and the students brought in hundreds of water bottles. The bottom and labels were cut off, and the students painted the inside of the bottles in the school colors. When dry, the students cut them into spirals and then the bottles were glued into the chicken wire, starting at the bottom. Finally, the top layer of bottles were cut and curled like flowers and added on. A wonderful parent came out and hung it in the tree for me.

Mural time!

Today I spent the day at school (it's a Saturday) with the Hands on Nashville crew, a group of volunteers. Together, the really perky and helpful volunteers helped pull up sod and weeds, planted 13 bushes, mulched around said bushes as well as almost all of the trees in the front of the school, touched up pain in the hallways and cafeteria, helped the principal clean the stage, took out trash and helped me paint a mural in the front hallway.

Last year we "changed" mascots... although can a lighthouse really be a mascot? Anyways, since we are a design center for character education and our motto was "Lakeview Design Center: Where Good Character Shines Through" the lighthouse was used as our symbol. Last year, however, teachers and students asked to change to some sort of animal. After suggestions and voting the lion was chosen, so now we are "Lakeview Design Center: Lions Today, Leaders Tomorrow". We painted over the lighthouse murals in the hallways, and this mural was painted today in place of one of them. What do you think?