CHOCOLATE PAINT!

Yes.  You read that right.  Paint.  It has chocolate in it.  It smells like chocolate.  It looks like chocolate, and it has a cool texture when it dries.

I am so excited, y'all.  As I walked into the hallway last week, I smelled something delightful and fruity.  I asked my Kindergarten neighbors what the scent was, and they showed me the strawberries they were painting, using strawberry jello and red tempera paint.  They had the texture of strawberries and they smelled divine.  The kids were having such a great time, I decided to experiment for my yummy cupcake lesson....

 

To make the chocolate scented texture paint, I added a little bit of jell-o pudding powder to brown tempera paint.  I stirred it up and saved it in a baby food jar.  It sat all weekend in the jar and hasn't dried up or gotten smelly.  (Except for smelling like delicious pudding!  *drool*)  I would probably recommend using sugar free jell-o to avoid getting little visitors in your room, but I don't know how that would affect the texture.  The white spots on my test paper are vanilla pudding and white tempera.  They didn't smell like vanilla until they dried, so I considered the chocolate more successful.

 

Anyhow, I am planning to do my Cupcake Lesson on Wayne Thiebaud very soon, and I wanted to add another fun element to the paint.  Last year I had puffy paint made with shaving cream which we used for icing.  So I think this year I'll have them make the cupcake bottoms with the jello paint, and add the puffy icing for two different textures. 

 

 

Here is the paint in the jar so you can see the texture when it is wet.  I am thinking later on when we make texture/value collage papers, I will use a little scented paint!  Hooray for JELL-O!

 

UPDATE:  (December 2012)  After trying the chocolate paint method above, I've concluded that since it dries VERY hard, it would work best on thicker paper, or cardstock.  I've since switched to a mixture of shaving cream, elmer's glue, and jello pudding powder for fluffier results.  Also, something about adding the jello to the mixture kept the puffy paint fresh for an extra day.  Previously, the shaving cream/glue puff paint would only last in the ziploc bag for one day.

 

 

Storage Solutions

This year I am trying something new for storing my students' sketchbooks and portfolios.  I found these mobile drawer units at Wal-Mart for $18 each.  The drawers come all the way out, and they can be taken apart, so I am still playing with how tall I want each unit to be.  I am indulging my OCD and making them all the same color, since there were not enough color options to use my color coding.  My problem is that if I stack them on the floor, I will have to bend up and down all the time to get the folders out.  If I stack them double on the counters, I will have to reach up high and I will inevitably drop entire drawers on my head.  So I have tried to stack them as high as I can stand, and use as little counter space as possible.

This is the kind of math problem that keeps me awake at night.  Luckily, everything pops apart easily.

Do ya like my curtains?  I'm going with blue this year, since it's calming and makes the room seem bigger.  I took a shower curtain rod and hot glued it to the cinder block, and hung fabric shower curtains up!  They are the perfect size for my windows!

Sketchbooks 2.0

I have finally gotten my act together and I've made a sample sketchbook.  This is the type I will be using for Kindergarten and 1st grade.  It's small, and easy to make FOR the kids. 

I just made a plain old little book, with card stock for the cover.  I trimmed the copy paper inside to be 8.5 x 10.5 or thereabouts, just to make sure the cover hung over the edges a little bit.

Our workroom has one of these fascinating devices which I am honestly in love with at the moment.  It's called a saddle stapler.  I'd never heard of it until moments ago.  Apparently you can put the folded book over the arch and staple into the crease without bending the staple!

See it.  Love it.

I think it will be very easy to make a million of these for the littles, and I might even decide to make them for the big kids next year, if all goes well.  Right now the big kids are using their brad-folders with blank paper inside as their sketchbooks.  But I feel like those will be harder to use for drawing, since they won't lay flat.  Ideally, I would like to have all the books spiral bound but I suppose that's dreaming...since I don't have anybody to help me do that, and they would all be huge when we were done.

Even though I love my red Swingline stapler, it isn't really up to this task.

I'll let you know how things go!  My plan is to have all the sketchbooks made by the end of the next class rotation, and have all the kids ready to draw in them ASAP.  I want to start the year with a Zentangle lesson so they will all have some go-to art activity when they finish things or when I have a sub.



Sketchbooks

So every year I try to refine and perfect things I messed up the year before.  Don't we all?  Last year, due to the sheer numbers of kids I had, some of them never actually got the lovely "art journal" packets I made.  New kids came and went, and every time a new kid showed up, I had to run off another packet.  Our copier is in use all the time, and I never seemed to be able to get in there to get that done.  So my solution is this:  Blank pages!  Yes, instead of art journals with tons of....ok let's face it...they were worksheets...My kids will have a sketchbook.  This is where I'll have them do thumbnail sketches, and when they are finished with the day's work they can choose a sketchbook prompt from the board, or from a list I'll print off.  I anticipated confusion, but when I said the word "sketchbook" today for the first time, there were plenty of positive responses from the kiddos. 

Let it be known, I am not a big fan at all of free draw in my class.  The kids tend to waste paper, and leave a mess, and even rush through the project so that they can draw whatever they want.  That's not ok.  They're supposed to be doing their best work all the time,  right?

I usually take the recycled paper from the workroom and let the kids use the blank side for free draw.  This is what

my free draw center looks like pretty much every day.  Tiki Man is angry.

So I just hole punched a pile of white copier paper and had each kid take 10 pages for now, and put them in the brad folders they were supposed to bring to class.  Today I only had time to give one class a sketchbook prompt.  Some of them sat and thought for a long time about it.  I told them it's ok to write in your sketchbook instead of draw.  It's for saving ideas.  So if they are pictures or words, it doesn't matter.  Studies have shown that working consistently in a sketchbook can help improve literacy.  Seriously.  That's what I read.  Somewhere.  I wish I could link you. 

Now I need a nice, organized way to store them.  I had been using colored file boxes, but they are really too small and tore up easily.  I need some rubbermaids, or maybe a shelf system.  If you use sketchbooks with elementary kids, what do you do?  Do you give prompts, or let them just draw and collage freely?  I'd really like to know.  This is something I hope I can be consistently utilizing rather than free draw or busywork.

Have a great start to the year!

Broken Projector. Op Art!

So I'm spoiled.  I have a lovely projector in my classroom, a document camera, AND a Promethean board.  So whining about how my projector is on the fritz right now is not really very productive.  I must say though, that in the absence of the projector I've encorporated several new projects I wouldn't have done if I'd been able to move forward with my curriculum the way I'd planned.  Right now, 5th grade is working on Op Art.  I tried this with the same group of kids when they were in 3rd grade and they did fairly well with that version of the project, which was basically an ink blot, with "echo" lines around it, or if you speak Zentangle, we'll call them "auras."

Here's the version from two years ago.  I included Color Field Painting in the inspiration.  Basically we used a blob of watercolor, and a straw to blow the blob into drippy shapes.

I needed a lesson that would review a lot of key terms and concepts, and introduce a new one, which didn't require a lot of demo and slides on my part.  And I noticed as the next class came in, I didn't feel like demonstrating the exact same style of Op art.  So I mixed it up with three different projects, all having simliar objectives: to demonstrate Value, Movement/Rhythm, Pattern, and (illusion of) Form.

Here are the three different examples I ended up with.  So far the kiddos are into it, since it takes far less brain power than the previous block printing project.

DIY Wet Wipes

Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say.  I use baby wipes for cleaning tables, hands, faces, floor, whatever.  We go through a lot of them in the art room, but I try to use them sparingly.  The "Dirtiest Baby Wipe" contest works well for conserving wipes. 

On the kids' supply list that they get from their regular teachers is a pack of baby wipes that is supposed to come to me for use during the year.  I think I only put it on one grade level's list, because I don't have the storage for that many (over 800) packs of wipes each year.  But I ran out.  I have run out a couple times since August, actually.  But I usually send out an email and ask for anyone's leftovers, and they turn up randomly at my door the next day.  This time, no.  This time I was plumb out of wipes, AND also plumb out of paper towels in the little holders by the sinks.  The maintenance staff is supposed to refill those as I understand, but it doesn't always happen.  In my room that is a BAAAAD thing. 

So I searched Pinterest and found that you can use decent paper towels (the soft, durable kind) to make your own wet wipes.  It worked great!  I should give most of the credit to my fabulous colleague, whom I will refer to here as "Ms. Squash."  She's the one who figured out how to cut and store the wipes in a coffee can.  Here's what to do:

I dug into my emergency reserve of paper towel rolls, and pulled the cardboard tube out of the center.  Then we used my paper cutter to cut the entire roll in half.  This actually didn't work too well, but since I didn't have a serrated knife at school, it was the best I could do.  If you do this for yourself, at least try a box cutter or an X-acto or somethin'. 

Then I took an empty coffee container with a lid and in the bottom, made a slurry of water, liquid soap, and good old Germ-X.  I then put the halved paper towel roll (without the cardboard tube) into the coffee container, closed the lid, and turned it over.  The liquid soaked the paper towels, and when I opened the container, I was able to pull individual wipes out from the center of the roll just like the Clorox kind.  I tried it once with cheaper paper towels, and they kinda fell apart when they got wet.  I've been told that Viva is the best brand for doing this.  But we used Brawny Basic and they work just fine. 

Lastly, I used my grown up scissors to poke a hole in the lid of the coffee container, and cut out an X for the wipes to slide through.

Omigosh you guys, the paper towel roll cut in half is EXACTLY the right size for a regular coffee container.  The ladies in the teacher work room send me those coffee things all the time, and I use them for various things, but this is now my favorite use.

You could experiment with the amount of water to add to the can, but I found I needed a very small amount to make them damp, not wet.  :)

YAY!  This way I could even customize my liquid mix to include some lovely lavender castille soap, or a little bit of lysol or whatever.  Oh the JOY!