BOO! Easy Halloween Art that will WOW your kids!!!

It's almost Halloween!!!!  I am loving the beautiful fall colours here in Ontario.  Reds, oranges, yellows, and greens.  Here is a little art project I did with my Gr. 2's to get us into the Halloween spirit (pun 100% intended!).  I saw the idea on Pinterest here and just had to try it myself!!!  I'm not sure if this is how it was done originally, but I've given you the step-by-step of how I did it with my kids below.  Have fun!

Materials:

- 12 x 18" cartridge paper (or other good white paper)
- white liquid tempera and blue tempera paint
- metal pie plate for each table group
- haunted house foam cutouts from Dollarama (1 per student)
- black sharpie marker

Method: Discuss value (lightness or darkness of a surface) with students.  It is one of the 7 elements of art.

- Squirt a large amount of white tempera paint into each group's dish.
- Have students paint a white full moon shape slightly away from the upper corner of the page.
- Add 1 or 2 drops of blue tempera to each dish. Have students mix it up so it is entirely blended, go around the white moon with the slightly tinted blue paint. Instruct students to overlap the moon slightly so the lines get blended.
- Add 1 or 2 more drops of paint. Students mix. Paint a larger circle around the first one. Encourage students to paint thick bands of colour. At this point, the colour bands should now be more of a "u" shape.
- Repeat process of adding drops of blue to the white paint until students have covered their page.
- Glue foam haunted house cutouts onto page (we used glue sticks).
- Colour in windows with white pencil crayon.
-Model how to draw trees beginning with a "Y" shape using sharpie.
-Remind students that odd numbers look better than even numbers in art (e.g., 1, 3, 5 or 7 trees rather than 2, 4, 6, or 8).

The Bat Cave!

Hi everyone!

I'm coming at you today with a little DIY I did for my classroom.  This year I'm changing things up and going with a superhero theme.  I think my Gr. 2's are going to love it!  My "Star of the Week" this year is now going to be the "Superhero of the Week" and one of the special privileges he/she will enjoy is getting to read in my new super-duper Bat cave!

Here's how I made it!

You will need:

- large cardboard box (I used an appliance box)
- yard bags or paper lunch bags
- spray adhesive (you can buy this from Michaels or Home Depot)
- spray paint

**My box did not have a bottom on it.  If you are using a regular cardboard box you can choose to cut the flaps off the bottom if you want or leave them on.

1.  Cut an arched opening on one side of your box.

2.  Rip up your lawn bags into large-ish pieces.  I separated the layers of the bags to make it a bit easier to crumple them up and glue them on.

3.  Crumple up a piece of paper bag into a ball.  Slightly uncrumple it (is this even a word?).

4.  Spray a bit of adhesive onto the cardboard box.  This stuff works best when it is slightly tacky so you don't have to spray a lot.  Attach your uncrumpled ball so it resembles a rough rock by pressing down on the paper bag and shaping it with your hands.

5.  Cover the top and sides of the box with crumpled paper bag pieces.  I chose to leave the back uncovered so I could put it up against a wall.

6.  Spray paint (or leave it as is).  I used a mix of grey and dark brown.

Add a pillow inside, a batman sign and voila!  You've got your very own Bat Cave!

The MOST special place for your special star of the week!

For visual learners like me - here are the step-by-step pics!

I don't have a pencil Mrs. Palleschi!!!

Sound familiar????  I think I've probably gone through about 4 boxes of pencils this year!  I think I've finally come up with a solution for keeping track of them while teaching responsibility at the same time!  I took a simple cardboard box and taped it shut.  Then I poked holes (evenly spaced) in one side of the box with a sharp tool I found in my classroom.  I have 20 students, so I made 20 holes.  A screwdriver would probably work well. Then I used one of our NEW pencils to create the size holes I needed in my box.  I wrapped it up with cute wrapping paper and re-poked the holes through the paper.  Voila!!!!  A cute, simple storage solution for our pencils.

Management of my new pencil system is simple.  Students pick up their pencil in the morning (each student has their own student number which corresponds to the numbers I put on the pencils).  They are responsible for keeping their pencil in a safe place all day.  We had a conversation about where a good place to keep them would be.  At the end of the day, students must put their pencil back in the correct hole in the pencil holder (great problem solving since I did not put numbers on the actual pencil holder) as a ticket to leave!  So far so good!  I may have told them they have to sleep at school if they lose their pencil.