Fall Artwork

When I found out that my class had no idea about primary, secondary, or complementary colours, I knew that our next Art lesson had to go back to the basics. We looked at the work of Michael Strouth, who uses complementary colours (mostly blue and orange) to create colourful landscapes. Below is an example of one of his pieces.

They had to use complementary colours in their landscape and draw a pattern on each mountain or section of grass that they drew. These could be stripes, dots, pumpkins, blades of grass, etc. They used vibrant colours of pastels to make their landscape. When they were finished, they outlined everything with black pencil crayon to make the colours and patterns more defined.

Now they brighten up the corridor above where the students hang their coats.

I accidentally discovered that the window frames were magnetic. Putting up art will be so much easier now! Their artwork won't fly off when the annoying sticky tack becomes unstuck and I can easily put up new art and change the artist tags because they are also magnetic! : ) Happy teacher, happy students. What more can you ask for?

Flower Pencils

( I feel bad for neglecting my blog, but I've been so busy with my students this year that I haven't had time! More posts are coming though!)

This post should really be titled 'How I lent my students pencils without them losing any all year!'

Last year, I decided that I wasn't going to keep handing out pencils to students who had forgotten them or lost them ... etc. I teach Language Arts to two groups in my room, so with the rotations, I often end up with students who forget their supplies in class. They can't easily go get them because there is another class in their room. The perfect solution was flower pencils.

When a student doesn't have a pencil, they can go grab a flower pencil from my desk and borrow it for the period. When they are done with it, it goes back in the flower 'vase'. I've never had a student leave with one because they are so bright and don't easily fit in their pencil case. As proof, here are my flower pencils from last year after being used for the whole year.

If you'd like to make your own set, just head on over to the dollar store, pick up some flowers and green tape. Once you take apart the flowers, just poke the sharp end of the pencil into the different pieces and then tape right under the leaves or flowers. The tape and the metal on the top of the pencils keeps the flowers in place. Finally, place them in a cup or flower pot and enjoy! It will brighten up your room and prevent your students from accidentally borrowing your pencils and then losing them.. .