Cray Cray for Crayons

I usually prefer oil pastels over crayons, but have found a new love for these colorful and wonderful friends! 

Today as we watched these videos I was taken back to my first box of 64 crayons with the built in sharpener...can you smell them!?

Bunbun remembers when he first learned how to write his name using a crayon! It was a literary and visual masterpiece!

K-2nd have been learning overlapping, so we drew and overlapped crayons for 2 class periods until they had totally filled their page with overlapping crayons!

Then we made the smiling box! We started with the letters. Students drew the word Crayola very large across the top of the smiley, the drew a "follow the leader" line around the stick letters to make a bubble letter. Then we learned about value and colored each letter from light to dark using these three oil pastels

Then they glued the crayons on the back of a pre cut smile shape

 2nd Grade

 Kindergarten

These are some fun videos we watched today to get us excited about CRAYONS!!! 

Have you seen this arm?

 The Rainbow Loom is all the rage....and this art teacher couldn't be happier! In my 11 years of teaching, I have seen alot of fads, like the Silly Bandz a few years back...

Slap bracelets!

...and these that you might have had back in the day!

However, I feel like the bracelet fad has come full circle to the days when we would spend our time making hundreds of knots and figuring out the coolest fattest bracelets we could make! It was CREATIVE and required fine motor skills and concentration...that did not involve a Wii, Ipad, or PS4, we didn't even have YOUTUBE tutorials!!

I remember the kids on my street would all share string, and tie their strings to their toes while creating their bracelet masterpieces together!

We followed patterns, and LEARNED from our friends, then turned around and TAUGHT others (communication skills!) 

 

 The Rainbow loom is very technical and requires concentration and skill! I bought one for my daughter and could not figure it out. After spending a few unsuccessful hours on YouTube, I ended up getting a tutorial from a very talented fourth grader, Ainsley, at my school! This is her "cool knit kit" (b I still can't do it btw...I have tried...no bueno)

She even made me a RAINBOW Loom Rainbow UNICORN!!! How cool is that!!!

In this article about the Waldorf education it says

Teachers say knitting teaches skills children need to be good readers. The process of knitting is like threading a story. Kids are learning focus and concentration. They’re gaining fine-motor skills, needed for writing. They’re seeing patterns. They’re moving from left to right, the same way you read. They’re gaining confidence.

(Linda Lutton/Front and Center)

Puppets crocheted by third graders at the Chicago Waldorf School.

“I think I’m really good at it,” says 7-year-old Julia Scott. “I can go really fast. And I can do it without looking.” As she knits, she tells herself a little story to narrate the complicated movements of her fingers, the yarn, and the needles:  “In the front door, around the back, peek out the window—out jumps Jack!”

Teacher Claude Driscoll says the goal of the little rhyme is to create a picture in kids’ minds of what is happening as they form each stitch.  And, she says, creating a mental picture is a skill used all the time in reading.

Amazing article

I am happy that my students are "knitting" on their rainbow looms and would love to have one for each student in my classroom and let the students teach the class!! Oh, and if you are one of my students and you are reading this, Bun Bun said he wants some bracelets, who's going to hook that up?? 

Brio Art Contest

Last night we had an Art Contest Reception at Brio Tuscan Grille. It was such a nice evening and the kids were SO excited! ALL the fifth graders did a fabulous job on their artwork! Thanks to Brio for hosting such a beautiful event for us!