Eric Carle Inspired Art

We have a snow day today - yay!  So I'm posting a project I do at the beginning of the school year.  I use it with the Mixed-Up Chameleon, by Eric Carle - one of the first stories in our basal.  I show students video clips from Eric Carle's Official Site where he shows how he paints his own tissue paper and creates his pictures by making collages.

I don't use tissue paper with my students, because it would be a nightmare with 2nd graders!  I have them use tempera paint on regular copy paper.  I give them three cool colors and three warm colors and we paint as shown on Eric Carle's tutorial.

I then give my students a template of a chameleon (see below) that I section off into chunks to show them where to cut.  They cut up the chameleon into pieces and then lay them on the painted paper to trace and cut out.



Students then put the pieces they traced back together and glue onto a piece of construction paper.  This gives them a chameleon created in a similar manner to how Eric Carle creates his art work!



:-) Jenny



Tears Of Joy Performance

Have you had the opportunity to see a Tears of Joy performance at your school? It is truly an amazing experience. These are the most incredible puppet shows I've ever seen!  I have had the opportunity to see many of their performances over the years and am always impressed!

They travel to: Idaho (except Kootanai County), Oregon, California, Nevada, Tri Cities WA, and Portland Metro Area. 

Today they performed, "Malika, Queen of the Cats" at our school!  My daughter sat with me during the assembly.  I loved seeing how enthralled she was with the performance, even at 6 years old!  The overall message was kindness, and this provided a fabulous way to talk about being kind to others and how our words can be hurtful toward others.  A much needed message for my second grade girls!!!

Below are some pictures and a short video clip.  If you would like more information see the Tears of Joy Website!

Van Gogh Inspired Art Project

Our school has a parent led art program called Meet the Masters.  This year parents will be having students create Van Gogh inspired art work.  In preparation for this, Mrs. H and I decided to pre-teach a bit about Van Gogh. 

I found a great idea on Pinterest that was done by middle schoolers, see here.  Being that we teach second grade, we pulled blackline masters of different flowers off of the internet and had students color them with oil pastels.  I think it came out really cool and is brightening up our hallway.  We are in desperate need of something other than winter, cold, and overcast here!  A few bright colors does wonders!

 

 

Common Core Math Curriculum

Are you struggling with finding math curriculum that aligns with Common Core?  Join the club!  I have recently been introduced to engageNY and I am LOVING it!!!

This is offered (currently) for free - yes free!  I am downloading all of the modules for my grade level, just in case it's not free in the future!  I have to say that I am very impressed with what I have used so far.

There is a scripted teacher's guide (which I don't read verbatim) that is a great guide, work pages, exit tickets, homework, and assessments!  It sounds too good to be true - but it's not!!!

Below are a few pics of my kids enjoying one of the "hands on" activities!  One of the students actually said, "Are you crazy?" when I dumped 1,000 - yes 1,000 popsicle sticks on the floor!  Students had so much fun grouping them into tens, hundreds, and eventually counting to 1,000 by using groups of 100 :-)

 

 

Many of the lessons have "hands on activities" such as shown above.  I really enjoy the exit tickets, which are quick to check each day and give me the opportunity to correct any misunderstandings that may have occurred before they work on the homework that night!

 

 

To add the "Mom Factor" to Teacher and a Mom, here is a pic of my own sweet kiddos on Super Bowl Sunday!  We were so excited to FINALLY be, not only in the Super Bowl, but to be winners too!

 

 

 

 

 



Going Paleo!

This Teacher-Mom is officially F-A-T and is going Paleo in 2014!  All this research counts as teacher prep now that health has been added to our plates, right?

After a quick trip to Barnes and Noble (did you know you can use your teacher discount on cookbooks? I didn't until today!) I'm devouring Well Fed 2, by Melissa Joulwaa. I love her down to earth advice and sense of humor! The recipes look awesome too :-). Check out her blog:  The Clothes Make the Girl.




While at B &N, I also picked up Paleo Slow Cooking, by Chrissy Gowe...  because, well, it's more realistic than me dancing home, full of energy, and doing any "real" cooking!




I'm super determined to get some of this weight off and improve my overall eating habits. To jump start my diet I also registered for a New Year Nutritional e-Cleanse.  My brother and sister-in-law had great success with it last year!

Please feel free to share what workout and diet tricks are working for you!

Happy New Year!!!

Jingles the Elf

We have a visitor in our classroom again this year!  After much deliberation, our class finally voted on Jingles for our elf's name.  With Butterball and Rudolph as close runners up :-)  Mrs. H's class named their elf Ginger Sparkleton (perhaps Ginger had a previous, less respectable, career in the past?) Ha ha!

Jingles was up to no good last night...

 

 

It's taking much more planning with my 6 year old daughter here before and after school this year!  I have to get her out of my classroom before we go home to make all this happen!  But, we're all having fun!!!

 

 



Hedgehog Facts, Comprehension, and Salt Dough Art

I've been M.I.A. for about a year now!  I'm going to make a concerted effort to start posting regularly again!

We are at the end of our trimester and are a bit off of our regular schedule, so we dragged our basal story out for two weeks allowing us to do a bit extra.

We've been reading Hedgehog Bakes a Cake by Maryann Macdonald.  Yesterday we made little hedgehogs out of salt dough.  I took them home and baked them last night and today we painted them.  I got the idea and instructions here.  I used more of a skin tone color for the face, dark brown for the body, and gold for the tips of the spines.  Instead of using black pepper peas for the eyes and nose, we made them out of little dough balls and painted them black.  Here are some pictures:

Overall, I think they came out pretty cute.  A few looked more like hippos or other animals, but the kids had fun making them!

In addition to making the salt dough hedgehogs, we read about hedgehogs and worked on some non-fiction reading and comprehension strategies.  Click here for a copy of the reading passage and comprehension questions I created.