Final Week of ExploreMore Art

My last week in Gifted/Talented Art was much different from the previous 2 weeks. These were 30 minute blocks and I had all the kids in the program, ranging from 5-14. We didn't know beforehand that the students were that old, so I had to replan all my lessons for my oldest class after Day 1 because I was so embarrassed asking 14 year olds to watercolor (although they enjoyed it!)

Here are a few looks at some of the things that we did this week: 

Monday: We watercolored our background and glued down sand for the beach. BOY! Was this messy!! I don't think NKU was very happy with me after that class. 

Tuesday: Little kids- We learned about Andy Warhol, then drew beach umbrellas and colored them Andy style! 

Tuesday: Older kids- charcoal sketching

Wednesday: Older kids- Canvas and Acrylic painting, they loved it! I was envious that I wasn't painting a beach scene too! Their creativity really showed here because I just told them to paint something summery. I got lots of different results. 

(side note) Wednesday with the little ones, we painted with sponges, but I didn't want to post a picture of that because you can find it here: More Gifted and Talented

Thursday: We made beach plates! The kids painted the background with sponge paintbrushes, then I made clay (dough) out of salt, flour, water, and alum. Sorry I couldn't get any action shots, but I literally had an inch of dough caked onto my fingers ALL day today! 

It's been a great 3 weeks and I am so glad that I got to spend this time with these special little kiddos. These three weeks helped me remember the importance of Art in the classroom. 

Tori's Teacher Tips

My blog for the day is featured over on Tori's Teacher Tips! Every Tuesday, she will be featuring another blogger to do a little guest blog about teacher tips! She chose my Guided Reading outline as her first Teacher Tip! 

Included:

Outline of the 5 groups

Freebie organizer for planning

Suggestions for Leveled Readers

Fry 1000 Words Pack

Head on over and enjoy! 

A Pick-Me-Up

I was very happy and grateful to receive the 'One Lovely Blog' Award from Brittany at Stickers and Stamps,   Hillary from Little Miss Bartee, and Candace from 005 Watkins' Way. Thanks girls for checking out my blog and following me! Now its my turn to pass this on to 15 other Bloggers that I am following. 

1. Follow the person that gave you the award
2. Link back to the person that gave you the award
3. Pass the award on to 15 new bloggers

I am giving One Lovely Blog Award to the following bloggers:

Spend a Day in Second Grade

A Cupcake for the Teacher

2nd Grade Stuff

Lory Evan's Page

Plant Press

Pocket Full of Kinders

Criss Cross Applesauce

Swimming into Second

Sharing Kindergarten

Ms. Fultz's Blog

Queen of the First Grade Jungle

Mrs. Bainbridge's Class

Cole's Little Pups

A Year of Many Firsts

Positively Learning

FREEBIE for all you TPT Nerds out there!

If you're as intricate as I am about mapping out goals and achieving them like me, you may find use in this. 

Enjoy my freebie!!

The First of MANY Summer Crafts

Hey guys! 

I know you've likely seen this pin floating around. 

I feel absolutely horrible, but I cannot find the original link of where the pin came from. When I repinned it into my Classroom Board, the link just goes to a blank website. Either way, it inspired me to do my first summer craft project!! 

Materials Needed:

Scrapbook paper

Owl Body template

Owl eye template

Owl beak template

Scissors

Mod Podge

Laminator

So, I gathered a huge pile of things on my living room floor and got to work last night! 

TEACHER'S. WORST. NIGHTMARE. My poor blue scrapbook paper owls got wrapped up in my laminator and never came back out... 

BUT!! I got to buy a new and improved laminator!! I'm keeping my Walmart receipt (just in case). Knock on wood!!

 Finished product:

They ended up great and I can't wait to decorate my door with these cute little owls. I can't get into school until mid-July (wet wax), so I'll have to suffer until then. 

Teacher Discounts Linky

My blog friend over at A+ Firsties is having a Linky Party. She wants teachers to link up where they can use their ID for a discount!! 

My favorite places to cash in my discount is  NY and Company  and Half Price Books.

BUT!! Check out this website! 

http://www.bradsdeals.com/blog/2010/08/10/teacher-discounts/

I always check for discounts there before I shop!!

Go check out more deals:

http://aplusfirsties.blogspot.com/2012/06/teacher-discounts-linky.html

Most Memorable Moment

I decided to participate in my first Linky Party. Heidi from My (Not So) Elementary Life was having a very fun linky party, so I decided to join. While its hard to rack my brains for all the fun, memorable things from last year, I think I can settle for an entertaining story ya'll may enjoy.

So every morning, my school has loads of buses come in. I teach in a very rural area so these buses are coming from far and wide in my county. From 730-815, we wait on students to get off the buses. Some students come in at 730, some buses don't get in until 815, so we give them work to do and keep them busy.

Well, one morning, my Kindergarteners decided they want to sing This Old Man, which I was fine with. However, I had an extremely loud little boy named Ethan who often would get carried away and get overly excited, so he is screaming the song. I finally couldn't take it anymore, so I turned from my desk to say "Ethan" to get him to quiet down, however, Ethan was in the middle of screaming  "This old man, he played one, he played....".

Somehow, this threw me off, and instead of turning around and saying his name, I turned around and shouted "Knick Knack"... in front my of all my Kindergarteners, in front of my assistant (who absolutely could not control her laughter). 

Needless to say, my kids had a good, long laugh at me (and I may have joined in... a lot). 

Rainbow Fish Art

Friday was Week 1's kids last day in Art, so we did four different Art centers.

We started by reading Rainbow Fish to the Rescue by Marcus Pfiester.

I grouped the students into four different groups.

1- Tissue paper fish

2- Underwater fish scene (using painting techniques we learned on Eric Carle day)

3- Make a paper plate fish, then fingerpaint.

4- Make a fish out of a CD and jewels.

They ended up really cute! 

 Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

More Gifted/Talented

This week has been a lot of fun. Yes, I do miss being in my apartment or by the pool (who am I kidding- I've been on TPT all summer), but this really is a great experience. Here are a few lessons we have done this week that I think some of ya'll might enjoy. 


I worked on teaching painting styles that we saw in Eric Carle books. We did our ocean backgrounds with many different paint tools, then used different media to glue scenery into the paintings.

 Of course I had to do an owl day! We read Owl Babies and Owl Moon and made a few owl crafts. I was really excited about the cotton ball white acrylic painting. 

 (Above, you can NEVER go wrong with making gooey substances. 2 cups glue + 1 cup liquid starch = 20 minutes of entertainment.

(left) Hard to see, but we made pom pom shooters. Top half of cups, bottom half of balloons, lightweight objects to shoot across the room .We made a graph of our findings. (Medium sized pom poms won). 

 We did the carnation experiment on plant day! They haven't done the best job. Usually in Kindergarten, the petals start turning the day of, but they aren't this time around. Word to the wise- use enough food coloring. Nothing more upsetting than disappointed kids expecting pink flowers the next day. 

And as an added bonus, there were leftover flowers and Water Balls from Thursday's lesson so I made home and made myself a pretty water ball arrangement (after I played with them for an hour). I do advise you to try those water balls!! They are the neatest things! 

After all this teaching, I'm still going home and cranking away at making things for TPT and my second grade year. Check out my TPT Store and see the progress I've made so far! 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Jessica-Tobin

First Couple Days of Summer Teaching

I have had a great amount of fun teaching these last two days so far. Sometimes, its rather fun to just do Arts and Crafts all day without following strict standards! 

  Students using Watercolor, crayons, markers, colored pencil, and chalk to make Wild Things! (above and to right)

Science class- learned about volcanoes. After we did the volcano vinegar/baking soda/red sugar test, they made tear art volcanoes! (above)

(to right) After reading The Princess and the Pea, discussing fairy tales and making a web map of things found in fairy tales, students used sponges, chalk, and acrylic paint to create castles. 




Can't wait for the next three days' lessons! 

Behavior Chart

I am so excited today! I made my first craft from my TPT creations. Instead of doing all the other countless things on my to-do list such as lesson plans for tomorrow... I decide to make this instead!

Behavior Owl Chart

Behavior Owl Chart

I had a custom request for this to revert it back to the seven steps, adding in Teacher Choice and Great Job/Good Day. She also wanted polka dots, so if you wanted that option, here is the link. 

Behavior Chart 2

Explore More- Art

Yesterday I posted about my science class for Explore More and today I wanted to share with you my ideas for my Art class. 

My ExploreMore art class is called CreARTivity through Litertaure, which will involve the children making artwork that compares to the illustrators or making artwork that relates to the literature's plot/characters.

My plans so far: 

-Monday- Fairy Tales- Cinderella, create a castle with chalk and rectangular sponges for the brick

-Tuesday- Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are- oil pastels and paint to create their own poster sized monster

-Wednesday- Dr. Seuss's One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish- fish bodies cut out on cardboard with notches along edges, students paint fish, then wrap yarn around notches to form star patterns along its body

-Thursday- Eric Carle's Mister Seahorse- painting seahorses and other sea creatures with various forms of tools (rollers, brushes, combs, etc.)

-Friday- Martin Waddel's Owl Babies- tearing construction paper into small pieces and creating a chalk/construction paper owl

I'm excited to post pictures over the next few weeks! 

While they are doing these projects, I've created a journal for the students to write their thoughts and ideas in. 

My Art & Literature Journal

My Art & Literature Journal

Explore More- Science

Last summer, I was taking graduate school classes for Gifted and Talented Master's Degree. One of my classes required I teach two summer classes for a gifted/talented program at Northern Kentucky University. The program is called Explore More and it is a load of fun. Last summer, I taught "Wonders of the World" and "Gobs of Goo".

This summer, the professor asked me to come back and offered to pay me to teach classes! I couldn't be more excited about them. This summer, I will be teaching two classes for the next three weeks: "Who Wants to be a Scientist?" and "CreARTivity through Literature". 

Today I will talk about my Science class!
I have four lessons planned so far and I searched around Pinterest and TPT for different science experiment ideas.

-Start with an anchor chart about what makes someone a scientist.
-Experiment 1: Baking Soda/Vinegar Glitter explosion
-Experiment 2: Marshmallow Shooters (experimenting with weight and length something will fly)
-Experiment 3: Penny Cleaning (using soap, water, and salt/vinegar)
-Experiment 4: Carnations in Food Coloring
-Experiment 5: Undecided- HELP!!

Each day, we will be using our Science journals to write about what we did and what we learned. 

My Science Journal

My Science Journal

First Day of TPT

I've got my Teachers Pay Teachers store up and running! I have been living to make activities for second grade for my use and other teacher uses. I've included a few Reading/Math games as well as some organizational binder covers. I'm a binder queen! I've saved all my Kindergarten binders just in case I move back down to Kindergarten one day, and I have filled an entire cabinet in my second grade classroom with these K binders. Oops!


Check out my TPT Store:
Jessica Tobin's Store


Freebies for today:

Fact or Opinion Ocean game

I Have/Who Has Coins

Welcome

Hello all! Thanks for visiting my blog. I have been a Kindergarten teacher for the past three years, so this will be my first year as a Second Grade teacher. 
This blog will document my journey through my first year of second grade. 

This year will be incredibly different from my Kindergarten teachings. My administration has instructed me to really focus on student comprehension and thinking skills. I have decided to spend this summer reading some texts. 

Some research I am doing to ready myself for second grade: