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Showing posts from August, 2018

New Year, New Projects

As always, I'm trying to find some new and different projects to try out. This year, I thought I would do something inspired by Ton Schulten the Dutch painter best known for his bright colorful landscapes. I decided that I didn't want to strictly copy his work, so I encouraged my students to experiment a bit and be looser with their paint. While his work is very geometric, I encouraged my students to focus on just making a nice color field painting to start and not worry about having straight edges. This allowed students to feel more free to experiment mixing colors giving their paintings a wider range of colors and more depth to the color. After letting their paintings dry, students went over the top of those color field paintings sketching first in pencil then outlining with marker or paint. So far the results are looking great and the kids are having fun. I have been doing this project with my first graders as a nice way to start the school year introducing concepts of abs

Starting a New School Year

This year, my room has undergone a number of transformations. My Home and School Organization was generous enough to replace my tables and stools. In addition to replacing my existing tables, they bought extra so we now have two tables set aside as flexible work stations. One of those is raised to the height of a standing desk for those kids who prefer to work studying up. My old supply table now sits by the sinks and it is a dedicated messy station for those kids who want to add a little ab ex to their project or when we are printmaking etc. Of course no such good fortune can happen without some bumps along the way. Initially after the order was approved, there was a miscommunication about who would actually place the order. Consequently we did not order any tables until July. At that point, School Specialty was no longer an option as end of summer is their busy season and the tables I had selected would not be available for about two months. Thankfully, I thought to check Amazon wh