Happy Earth Day!

To celebrate Earth Day with my first graders, we talked about the saying, “The Earth without Art is just Eh”. They loved it and thought it was hilarious saying, “Eh.” Silly kids. 🙂
So then we discussed some Earth Day facts and pretended to be the hippies at the original Earth Day. Then we got down to business and started painting on our newspaper. We drew a big circle and then used a crayon to write the quote around it. Then we painted our earth and if they finished that in time, they were allowed to paint the background with any colors they wanted.
They turned out colorful and great and they had a blast. Perfect. 🙂

Advertisement

Tissue Box Monsters

I made these fun monsters with a special Ed class and we had so much fun. The kids loved them and they were able to experience some things they had not worked with before. I’ve seen these called tattle monsters as well, where kids write down their “tattle” and put it in the box instead of telling the teacher. You could also make them into valentine boxes. Either way, they are fun and easy and a great way to recycle all those tissue boxes we go through.

Recycling With Art

I posted at the very beginning of the school year about a great lesson about Didier Triglia I had found on the smART teacher’s blog. I was so excited about working with the kids on this and when they saw my example sitting out in my room, they were pretty excited about it too. Well, because of multiple and many other lessons that were time sensitive or requested, I have only now gotten to the Didier Triglia lesson. Good news: the kids are still just as excited about it! 🙂
Day one we discussed Mr. Triglia and his art and recycling and found objects. I had pre-cut some old mat board into 6×9″ pieces. I passed out cans and we smashed (which they though was lots of fun???) and then they were to decide how they wanted to glue the can down before they started painting. Once that was decided, they painted their backgrounds and placed their cans on their boards for me to hot glue. I did most of these after class because I just couldn’t risk letting them burn themselves with the hot glue.

Next week we will paint the cans and then add the details with the “puff paint” in the squeezy bottles and glitter glue and maybe even some gems.
Stay tuned…
Update! A few finished products. They love it and have received many compliments from peers and teachers when they see them drying in the hallway. Now to figure out how to display them…

I love the DJ and the ninja!