Turtle Time!

The third graders had their art show/music performance this week. I decided to not do something fall related, and went with mixed media turtles. The turtles are drawn with oil pastels, and then the background is painted with watercolors and plastic wrap. The cool designs that should have shown up in the backgrounds didn't really have time to form, because the students were so fascinated with the concept that they kept lifting it up to ooh and ahh. Oh well...

Wow... what a month or so!

I know, I haven't been blogging lately. It seems that for some reason, fall is a very busy time for me. I volunteered to make origami flowers for a friend's special occasion, as well as the decoration for the party (yes, even more folding... I love to make origami...I love to make origami...), a fun filled trip to New York where I went to the MoMA, the Met, and the Museum of Natural History. I actually got to see Starry Night... up close... I could have touched it...no, I could have licked it...but I didn't...mostly because the security guard was giving me the hairy eyeball. I was also put in charge of the concession stand at the schools annual Fall Festival, which meant that I had to spend the evening the night before the festival spinning 200+ bags of cotton candy (it really stinks to be the only person who knows how to run a cotton candy machine). I spent most of the night of the fall festival running the sno-cone machine. I went through about 60 lbs of ice. Then I had to finish grades before going home for close to a week for fall break. Once back from the break, I had to finish prepping artwork for the third grade music performance/art show. And I am working with an afterschool enrichment program, where I have a small art club on Mondays and Wednesdays. That started this week. I know... I'm complaining... and all of us teachers feel overwhelmed like this, and I chose to do a lot of it, but I just needed to get it off of my chest... there... I feel better... no really, I feel better... In fact, I feel well enough to leave you with this set of pictures...

Yes... when I went to New York, I decided that the poor lonely, abandoned dinosaur needed a trip too, so off he went to New York with me. Here you see him in the airplane, reading the inflight magazine. The next picture is of him looking out the hotel window at Brooklyn. The last picture is of him trying to sneak a bite of my friend's huge beef and guiness pie. It seriously was almost a foot across. My friend took a lot more pictures of Dean-o (the dino's new name) and will be posting them to his facebook page that she created. I'll let you know when the pics are up.