baker's clay and dot painting

Eleven kids today. They enjoyed the dot painting, so that was good!
When they finished, some of them put together this puzzle of the US.

dot paintings

Ten kids in class today. Not every art project is a hit with the kids, and this one wasn't their favorite. We did aboriginal dot paintings, and most of them didn't have the patience to paint dot by dot with a piece of raw spaghetti. But first, they painted their clay birds from last week, then they drew the birds and painted them in dots.

thursday

M. volunteers with Mundo Lindo for her community service credits.

Twelve kids today. Birds, dinosaurs, snakes, ducks, turtles and whales were created.

Bakers Clay Tuesday

Just 7 kids today, it was a school holiday. We made Baker's Dough and them formed various animal and creative shapes. The kids mixed the dough themselves, a first 'cooking' experience for some of them.

Here's the recipe:

Baker’s Clay

Materials and preparation: The following recipe will make one batch of dough which is ample for four students working for about one hour.
4 cups flour

1 cup salt

1 ½ cups water
Mix the flour and salt. Add water. Knead the dough until smooth. It might take up to 5 minutes of kneading to get the flour, salt and water properly mixed. This dough is not elastic, like bread dough. It should be soft, but still firm, and be able to hold the shape of a good mound. It doesn’t like to be kneaded too much.

When your object is done, it should not be more than 1 to 1 ½ inches thick as it will take too long to dry or bake. Bake at 300 degrees for about an hour, depending on the thickness of the piece.

Once baked hard (they should not show the mark of your fingernail or give way when you press on them), you can paint with watercolor or acrylic. Don’t use too much water in your paint or it will soften the outer surface.

Press

Mundo Lindo was in today's North County Times.

thursday textile design patterns

Eleven kids today. This time we did the small organic/geometric designs first and it worked very well. They drew, used marker, then watercolored their designs. We had a hair dryer to blow them dry, then we made 4 color copies of their designs. The arranged them and glued them down. We had some really gorgeous designs!

5th grader orchids

We had 9 kids in class today.

5th grader did this.

tuesday

I brought in a bunch of artificial flowers to draw from.

Tuesday

We drew flowers in the Mackintosh style, with oil pastels and watercolor.

visiting corn snakes

Two of the kids brought in their corn snakes today. I'd never held a snake before!

thursday block prints

Eleven kids today. A little chaotic. They made valentine cards for their friends and teachers too.

block printing tuesday

Eight kids today. We used ballpoint pens to 'carve' into sheets of styrofoam. Printed with tempera paint onto construction paper. Valentines and reptiles were the themes.

thursday homes

Nine kids today. One of the houses is a tree house, with a yarn ladder, a yarn swing (with a purple lemur in it) and a wide screen tv. He didn't have time to complete the sleeping bag and satellite dish!