Guess What!

So last month I had the same dream for three nights in a row. In the dream, I was busy going through all of the stuff that I have accumulated in my art room, sorting, organizing and packing. In the dream, my principal had told me that I was going to have to move classrooms. I woke up with to-do lists in my head, plans for what to pack first, what supplies are not needed for the rest of the year, what furniture I am taking, and what I am leaving, etc. I told my principal about my dream, and she laughed, saying that she would never have me move, after all, my room is an obnoxious lime green (painted that way so that no one else would want the room). I told one of my best friends about this, and she just laughed saying it was just a weird dream. I kept mentioning it over the month, and I think she started to get a little upset with me. She told me to STOP WORRYING!!!!! Yesterday, I walked into my principal's office to ask her a question and she said that she had been looking for me and that we needed to talk. Needless to say, she needs me to move classrooms, which means packing, sorting, and painting of new room. It will be interesting, as the new room is in one of the pods, and is a pentagon of sorts. Of course, I will take pictures of the new room when finished.

Illuminated Manuscripts

One of my favorite lessons to teach is Illuminated Manuscripts. If you are not familiar with illuminated manuscripts, this is a manuscript that is enhanced through the use of decorated initials. Technically, the term Illuminated Manuscript only applies to the decorations that have gold or silver paint applied to them, but now, this term applies to all decorated initials.

Now back to my classroom... I like to teach this lesson to many different grade levels. With the younger classes, it help with letter recognition, and with older students, it helps to reinforce the additions of details to their artwork. This year I decided to do this lesson with two different grade levels, first and fifth. Both grade levels worked with foil, the first grade with silver tooling foil, the fifth grade with a matte black foil. After designing their initial on a 6x6 inch piece of paper, they were given a piece of foil of the same size to transfer the design to (here is a hint though, there needs to be some form of padding under the foil, such as newspaper. If the foil is directly on a hard surface, the design can't be transferred to the foil. The foil needs to "bend" for the lines to be embossed into the surface). After transferring the design onto the foil, then the students added color. The first graders used colored sharpies to add color onto the silver foil, while the fifth graders used colored pencils to add color to the black foil. You should know that the black foil is much thinner, and therefore more likely to rip, and the only colored pencils that we are able to use were Prismacolors, as other brands would not show up on the foil.

Kindergarten Pout Pout Fish

My kindergarteners love the book The Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen.

The kindergarteners love it so much that they practically have the book memorized. Since they love the book so, I decided to incorporate this into their art show. The students created their own version of a pout pout fish using crayons. After they were finished, they placed tissue paper squares on top, and then brushed water over the tissue. Once the tissue paper was dry, the squares dropped off, leaving a "watercolor" like painting behind.

Check out those pout pout lips!