Showing posts with label Watercolor and Salt Painting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Watercolor and Salt Painting. Show all posts

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Random Thoughts about my week - Five for Friday




{OK, I really, truly was writing this on Friday, but Firefox kept shutting down on me. I finally gave up when my daughter and a friend came home, but I was thinking about it and realized it was the way I was trying to add pictures. So here's try two, a day late.}

How was your week? How was your Friday?
My week seemed long. And my Friday started on a sad note. I was in a meeting this morning when I found out I didn't have the sub I had planned for so I could do DRA testing with my kids. {I don't have to tell you how much fun it is to make sub plans and then have no one come.} All through the day, my kids kept asking when the sub was coming. They just didn't understand why no one was coming. Crossing my fingers and hoping for Monday.

 But here are some good things:

1. Watercolor and Salt paintings - I wrote about this earlier, but now I have pictures! This project went along with our story Half Chicken. Half Chicken only has half of everything, that's why most of the chickens only have 1 leg. Anyway, we drew the chickens on one day, then watercolor painted the chickens on the next. After they had painted, the kids sprinkled some salt on their painting. Most of them didn't work out as well as I had hoped. I don't think their chickens were wet enough for the salt to suck up part of the liquid to make a textured look. Next year. The next day they added backgrounds. I let them do whatever they wanted on the colors because the illustrations in the book were pretty bold.




 2. Dinosaurs - I'm taking part of Deanna Jump's dinosaur unit and adding some of my own things and books that I have available. Of course my kids are enjoying this. And I've made some learning charts. I should say, we've made some learning charts. {This idea is from the Teaching with Intention book.} After almost everything we've done, I've had the kids write on a sticky note and we've added the sticky note to a chart. {As usual, pictures to come, I guess, since I didn't take any.}


3. Subtraction - I've used Math Coach's Corner's Regrouping unit and Hooray! in my low math group, almost everybody "gets" it! I think I'm down to 3 or 4, and quite frankly, that's 3 or 4 out of the whole 2nd grade (since we've grouped them by level). This is such a hard concept - I didn't realize until I started trying to teach it!

4.  I hope this isn't too silly - but I think the end of the year is getting to me. The behaviors - ack! Anyway, I've made a conscious decision to try to enjoy my students the last couple days. To laugh with them. To take a minute to notice something. To put a hand on a shoulder.

5. Happy Anniversary to us! I was thinking this morning, my hub-bub and I have made it through lots of thicks and lots of thins - and we still enjoy each other. To celebrate - a nice lunch out and the movie 42. Looking forward to spending the day with him.


I'm linking up at:

fiveforfriday

Have a great weekend - Sara



Friday, April 12, 2013

Five for Friday - 4/12


Yahoo, it's 5 for Friday time - I'm linking up - ON Friday! Wow!! 

If you want to "play" - link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching.


fiveforfriday

1. It's Friday! Yeah. Friday's are my recess day, and even as I put on my (brown colored so they don't look too much like sneakers) New Balances, I knew my feet were going to hurt today. Does anybody else have this problem? What do you do? I'm thinking of investing in some thick socks. I looked on Zappos.com (where I buy a lot of my shoes) and there are some socks for $80!!!! I really want to met the person who buys $80 socks. 

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I'm very happy it's Friday and I can rest my tootsies. Well, really the bottoms of my feet are what hurt, but anyway. 

2. Mega support from a parent. Sometimes I've been afraid to contact a parent because I'm afraid it won't do any good. I have a kiddo that's having some difficulties, and Dad has emailed me two days in a row, wanting to know specifics. Thank You!  

3. I did running records this past week. My school is really focusing on fluency and wpm this year. I have 13 kids reading at 92 wpm, where they are supposed to be by the end of the year, with another 3 or 4 that are just a bit short of that. So that's a yahoo and yeah!

4. I finally got to do my Salt Paintings. {This is a year after I found the idea, but OK.} And pooh, forgot a picture. Maybe Monday - I need to put a note on my phone reminder. Anyway, they turned out pretty cool looking, and it always surprises me how much the kids enjoy art projects. This is the example picture. Wait til you see some of mine :)




5.  My daughter and I were home alone last night, so we splurged and had Applebee's - steaks for each of us, and watched "Hart of Dixie on Netflix. It's such a fun show. And I love watching without having to go through commercials.

Ah, my dear reader friend - Happy Friday to you! I hope you have a terrific weekend!
Sara

Saturday, March 17, 2012

End of Spring Break :(

How has this happened? It is Saturday - end of Spring Break. The good part is I've really restrained from doing school work. Yea me! The bad news is - I don't want to go back. I love staying in my jammies until noon, piddling around the house, getting little things done. 
 Ok, next week - what am I doing? A couple ideas - I'm glad I was looking at this, because I remembered I wanted to do the Splash idea from Denise (at Sunny Days in Second Grade) for our next story. 
We'll have some time on Friday and I want to do something fun connected to our story. The story is "Half-Chicken" about a chicken that becomes a weather vane. I saw some weather vane ideas, and I may do that - but you gotta have pencils and pushpins, and oh, brother I hardly have any more school money.  Well, what do you know? While I was looking up a link for the weather vane, I found this site that has all sorts of wind science ideas - and some that might even be easy to implement :) And then when I was looking at that, I realized I had some printouts already printed to make a pinwheel - which of course, I'll still need pencils and pushpins for. Oh well.
And while wandering around, just trying to find some different art projects, I stumbled on to Art Projects for Kids and this Watercolor and Salt Painting of a rooster.  God is good :) She even tells how to draw the rooster. Yea!
Have a good weekend - I'm off to relax - and work on my Christmas album - March already and I haven't even done Christmas 2011.