Fun Art Project for Day of the Dead

One of my favorite art lessons that was always a hit was my Day of the Dead skull design. Students loved it since it incorporated Hispanic heritage of some students and others loved it because drawing skulls was encouraged! I have had a lot of success with this lesson with a wide variety of age groups as well from late elementary to early high school with minor modifications.

This lesson incorporates history since students learn about the Day of the Dead from information packets included in the lesson and math since their skull is symmetrically balanced.

The lesson includes written and illustrated directions and gives alternatives for different materials so it can have a wide degree of difficulty. I've also found that students who have a lot of experience with art spend time making complicated skull designs while students that are just starting still have success with basic skull shapes.

Check it out in my shop if you're interested!

Five Egg Experiments

With the spring and Easter coming up, I thought I would share some egg-citing ways to use eggs as teaching devices in your classroom. Here are five egg related experiments you could try!

1. Make a naked egg! 

Learn how to remove the shell of the egg following these instructions. A naked egg has such an unusual shape that students have never seen before!

2. Make an egg geode.

Mimic a geode using the shell of an egg and other simple ingredients such as salt. The process looks easy and the results look great!

3. Learn about air pressure using eggs.

See how air pressure reacts with eggs as an egg gets sucked through a small hole. This would be a fun activity to have kids make predictions before seeing what actually happens and learning why.

4. Teach dental health!

 

Eberhert's Explorers has a great experiment that teaches dental health using eggs by soaking them in soda. This is a great lesson for those reluctant tooth brushing students and a great way to practice dental hygiene.

 5.  Practice problem solving skills.

This Spangler Science video has a great idea that could be used to build creative problem solving and critical thinking skills. This video asks the question of how to separate the yolk from the white without touching it. Providing students with a lot of different materials to use and experiment with could be a fun problem solving activity! The video of course does show an easy solution.

Have fun if you decide to try any of these ideas!

Five Ways to Celebrate Chinese New Year in Your Classroom

One of my favorite activities in my classroom is to do activities and projects that study another area of the world. Even though those are my favorite kind of lesson, my students have always seemed to love them as well.

Since Chinese New Year is coming up, I thought I would come up with some activities that you can do in your classroom to celebrate Chinese New Year.

1. Try some Chinese calligraphy! 

Print out some basic Chinese characters and let students try their hand at writing Chinese characters. You don't need special supplies - markers or watercolor paint and brushes work fine. Check out some of the Chinese characters at this website to get started.

For a language arts link, you could have students translate spelling words, write poems and write some words in Chinese characters or have them write characters that represent themselves.

2. Create Chinese lanterns.

Create beautiful Chinese lanterns. I have a watercolor lesson plan that can help you create beautiful Chinese lanterns in my TPT store. It includes everything you need such as informational sheets about Chinese New Year, step by step directions, a rubric, template and more!

3. Learn about the Chinese zodiac.

One thing that was always a hit in every classroom I've taught was when my students got to read information about their zodiac sign. It's fun to read things about yourself, even if you don't believe it. There are many writing prompts that would be fun for students that they could write about after reading about the Chinese zodiac. For a math tie in, you could have students calculate when each zodiac sign will come around again in the future. Check out some information on the Chinese zodiac here.

4. Check out some Chinese proverbs.

Proverbs can be used as discussion or journaling starting points. Check out some Chinese proverbs with your students. If you are reading a book in class or discussing a time in history, try to find a proverb that relates. Students could also take their turn at writing bits of wisdom.

5. Play a Chinese game!

I love playing games in class and tangrams is a great game that combines both math and art. You can have students easily make their own tangrams set. (I have done this before in class and it is quite easy - just be sure to use thicker paper for stability.) Then, either print out or post different puzzles to try. I would start with an easy puzzle to encourage students and try more difficult puzzles later.


I hope this gives you some ideas on how to celebrate Chinese New Year in your classroom. Remember, the official day is on 1/31/2014 and this year is the year of the horse!

What To Do with Halloween Candy Besides Eat It

Happy Halloween!  I hope you all are having fun despite the crazy buzz of excitement and sugar rushes that come with this holiday.  Today I'm posting a fun way to use up some of your students candy besides consume it.  CandyExperiments has simple science experiments you can do with some of the excessive treats that kids collect.  Here are five of my favorite experiments...

1) Chocolate Bloom--students expose their chocolate bars to different temperatures and see what happens when the ingredients start to separate.

2) Life Saver Sparks--students eat life savers in the dark in front of a mirror and watch what happens.

3) Candy Bar Bath--students test candy bars to see which sink and which float.  Then they predict why.

4) Harvesting S's and M's--students pull the letters off of Skittles and M&M's.

5) Hidden Sugars--students learn to read labels and, hopefully, rethink some of their food choices.

This could be done in class or sent home as an experiment.  I doubt many parents would mind seeing the candy being used for the sake of education instead of tooth decay!

Have fun.  Be safe.  Let us know if you try it and how it goes.  We'd love to hear your feedback.

Fabulous Freebies: Cinco de Mayo!

Today is Cinco de Mayo! In honor of this fun holiday, here are some fabulous freebies you can use in your classroom this week to help celebrate Cinco de Mayo & Mexican culture. I have found in my classroom that many students love to celebrate the holidays of various cultures around the world.

Check out this Crafts for Kids page to find fun Cinco de Mayo related activities including a Mexican song, printable money worksheets, coloring pages, elementary literacy worksheets and more. There is a big variety of Cinco de Mayo items that are easy to print.

Kaboose has more than ten easy craft ideas for Cinco de Mayo. Most can be made with simple materials that are available in most classrooms. Some of the crafts are sound making and could be incorporated into a music lesson!

Making Learning Fun has learning printables for literacy and math that are geared towards early elementary students. The ideas are easy to click on and print and contain simple, clear graphics.

Find crossword puzzles, vocabulary fill in the blank sheets and more at About.com's Cinco de Mayo printables page. Click on the image of the activity to easily print it. The puzzles and fill in the blank sheets are perfect for older students to learn about Cinco de Mayo and Mexican history.


Thanks for checking out our freebies & have a great Cinco de Mayo!

Ways to Grow Plants in the Classroom

Spring is the perfect time to start growing or keeping plants in your classroom. Studies have shown that sometimes just having plants around makes an environment more welcoming and calming. An article by Jonah Lehrer even shows that having plants around helped people improve their attention and overcome challenges better!

Need a creative way to get started? Here are 15 creative ways you can grow plants in your classroom to add educational moments and greenery at the same time.

1. Grow a plan inside a biodegradable ice cream cone that can be easily transplanted into the ground!

2. Regrow a celery stalk and you will never have to buy more!

3. Grow a plan inside another! This example uses seeds from inside a pumpkin to grow a new plant!

4. Grow a plant inside a CD case to make it easy to see & label all parts!

5. Demonstrate how a plant will find a light source by growing a plant inside a maze.

6. Regrow a potato plant from a potato.

7. Grow the tops of carrots and find more fun ideas at this site.

8. Reuse & recycle! Find out 18 foods you can regrow from scraps! You could try different ones and see which grow fastest or easiest.

9. Make a miniature greenhouse for your plants.

10. Once you have a plant, water plants with different types of water. Microwaved water had a very interest effect in this experiment!

11. Make a terrarium in your classroom.

12. Start a sock garden by walking around your school in old socks!

13. Experiment to see if gravity can affect the growth of roots using radishes.

14. Plant a seed each day to compare the growth of the plant over time!

15. For the ambitious, start a school garden. Dosomething.org has an easy how to start guide.

Fabulous Freebies: Educational Freebies for St. Patrick's Day!

Your luck might've grown this St. Patrick's Day with the use of these free lessons and activities for your classroom! I hope you find some useful selections for your classroom here.

If you like your students to experiment, try this water density experiment described on the We Made That blog. It looks like an easy and fun way to create a rainbow in your classroom.

MrDonn.org has a huge list of St. Patty's Day freebies for teachers and students. Included is a list with free, downloadable PowerPoints and links to a great hodgepodge of ideas and more for a variety of age levels. Be aware that the St. Patrick's Day worksheets are linked to paid, not free items.

Check out this free "I have, who has" game template. It is blank so you can add your own vocabulary or subject area and adjust it to your students' difficulty level. It is nicely designed and easy to download.

For more than 250 ideas, check out this St. Patrick's Day pin board on Pinterest. It contains a ton of cute ideas, classroom crafts, lessons, activities and more. Some lessons may cost money but most ideas on this board are freebies.

Kinder Art has a collection of fun, artistic ideas for St. Patrick's Day for your imaginative and creative students. The art ideas go from simple suggestions such as a heart shaped shamrock drawing tutorial to a Matisse inspired shamrock project.

About.com has a great selection of experiments you can conduct for St. Patrick's Day in your classroom including creating green fire or turning pennies into gold coins. Kinesthetic learners would love these hands on activities!

Favorite Creative Based Websites for Teachers

I love using the internet to inspire creative ideas and find unique lesson plans and classroom ideas. Here are some of my favorite sites that inspire my creative and help me plan hands on, artistic lessons for my students.

Most of you have probably already discovered Pinterest but since it is one of my favorite sites for creative ideas, it is at the top of my list. Pinterest is a wonderful place to share creative ideas and find new ones. Following other teachers with similar classes helps me get great ideas and I have gotten many compliments on lessons that I have used that were inspired by Pinterest. If you haven't used Pinterest yet, I highly recommend you check it out!

I also love the art lessons available on Dick Blick's art website. Although the lessons are intended to advertise the products they sell, you can use what you have available to you in your classroom and substitute materials as needed for most projects. If you teach social studies and need a lesson to tie into a particular culture, there are wonderful resources for that on the site as well. I love that many of the art lessons also have video instructions that are very clear and make it easy to follow along.

Artsonia bills itself as the "world's largest kids' art museum" and that statement isn't too much of an exaggeration! On Artsonia you can post your students' artwork online for free. As you continue to add artwork to your site, students develop an online art portfolio. You can either use students' first names or have your students create user names for the site. Also, if parents or guardians love their child's artwork they may wish to purchase it on a t-shirt or some other item as well. If this happens, your school will get 15% of the proceeds! It is very easy to use and although it can be a little time consuming, it is very rewarding and I have gotten many compliments when using it. Students also love seeing how many people have viewed their artwork!

If you have not tried Discovery School's Puzzlemaker, that is an easy way to make learning fun in your classroom. They have many different puzzles you can customize and use in your classroom. I have used them many times and my students have enjoyed the results. The puzzles are great for reviewing vocabulary or for giving to fast finishing students as well.

I hope you enjoy some of the creative ideas that can be found in the websites above and hope you discover something new!

Sensory Stimulation Through Art

This semester I am working on helping students who benefit from having extra stimulation through their senses. Teaching in a school with 100% special education students, this is something many of our students can benefit from. However, I think at any school there are students whom you might have noticed like to touch everything they look at or who love the messy projects & experiments just a little more than the rest of the class. These students can benefit from and enjoy some extra sensory stimulation.

How do you get students thinking about their senses? In my sensory stimulation group students listed the five senses and each week we discuss with them what senses they will experience with the activity we have planned. We try to come up with different ideas each week that hit different senses. Here are some ideas we have tried so far.

One week we made our own silly putty using this recipe from Wiki-How. The students had a lot of fun mixing up the glue and liquid starch and kneading it until it became silly putty. We also encouraged them to use their silly putty in class when they were stressed or upset like they would a stress ball. If you have students that need an outlet for their emotions in class, this would be a great activity for them to try.

We also made this microwavable puffy paint from Melissagoodsell's blog. If you don't have self rising flour you can make your own by mixing 1 cup of regular flour with about 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder (we added a little extra to make our paint extra puffy!) and 1/4 teaspoons of salt. This activity also used our sense of smell since we could smell the paint after it was done cooking in the microwave!

Today my students experimented by microwaving a bar of Ivory soap to create foam. It only took about 30 seconds and the soap seemed to explode out causing a huge pile of foam to form. They had fun after it cooled playing and shaping it with their hands. We also experimented with what happened when they added water or cooking previously cooked pieces again. Read about all the scientific concepts this demonstrates in the link above!

I hope you have a chance to stimulate your students' senses with some fun experiments & activities! For more sensory activity suggestions, check out my sensory pin board on my Pinterest page.

Fabulous Friday Freebies: FREE Valentine's Day Lessons & Resources

With Valentine's Day in a few short weeks, I thought I would put together some free educational resources for you to use with a fun holiday theme.

Here is my FREE Early/Fast Finishers Valentine's Day Drawing Packet. It contains ten drawing activities that are perfect for fast or early finishers to complete and also contains educational material such as artist information. All students need to complete these drawing activities are a pencil and something to add color such as markers or crayons. Please leave feedback if you enjoy this free packet!

If you enjoy doing science experiments with your students, here is a lesson on how to create Borax crystal hearts! It looks simple and easy to do with just a few ingredients.

 Teachhub.com has a great list of Valentine's Day lesson ideas for all subject areas and grade levels. I loved their idea of having students write valentines between two characters, ideas, or historical figures. This could easily be used in just about any subject area and grade level!

YouTube has video of the History of Valentine's Day available. It is a short but interesting four minute video that could help your students learn about the history of Valentine's Day. Be aware that there is at least one work of art shown in the video that contains mild nudity.  

The NEA has a list of 10 free Valentine's Day lesson resources that vary from grades K-12. There are  lots of links to helpful resources & PDF files that you can print and use in your classroom.

Mixing Math With Fabulous 3-D Snowflake Making - Tutorial

 Each year my school has a special Christmas/winter party and celebrates the upcoming break with a big meal and talent show. My art room is charged with a special duty during this time which is to decorate for the big event. One request for decorations is always snowflakes. There is a lot of learning you can incorporate while having fun with your students making snowflakes, including some math!

Here is one of my favorite 3-D snowflake patterns with a how to step by step instructions. Below each photo and instructions are some suggestions of ways you can incorporate math into the snowflake making. I have made these snowflakes with elementary, middle, and high school age students and all are always impressed with the result. Have fun making these with students!

Materials needed:

- 6 or 8 sheets of white paper per student. I usually use 6 sheets of plain white copy paper per student.
- 1 pair of scissors per student. If you have the fancy edge scissors, those can be a bonus!
- Scotch tape
- Stapler - you can also make this with all tape but I find it easier to finish with a stapler.


1. Give each student 6 sheets of paper or have them work with a partner and give each student three. Choose one piece of paper to start with. Fold the bottom of the paper to meet the right or left side as you prepare to cut the paper into a square.

Math:
What shape did you just fold? 
What type of triangle did you make?
What are the angles on the triangles?


2. Using scissors, cut off the extra flap of paper.

Math:
What shape did you make after cutting off the extra flap of paper?
What angles are in a square?
What two shapes make up the square paper?


3. Leave the paper folded in half into a triangle. You will need to make six incisions on your paper starting from the folded edge of the triangle. Those incisions are marked in red on the paper below. Make sure your cuts do not touch each other or your snowflake piece will fall apart!

Math:
Identify the parallel lines on your snowflake piece.
How many parallel lines do you see total?
Measure the lines and record your findings from smallest to largest.
Are the shapes you created considered triangles? Why or why not?


4. Open your triangle into a square. It should look like this.

Math:
What angles do the lines make?
Where are the lines intersected?

5. Using your fingers, pull the two innermost square corners together. Use a small piece of tape to secure these.

6. Turn your paper over. Pull the next two smallest square corners together and secure them to this side of the paper.

7. Turn your paper over again and repeat this process with the third smallest square corners.

8. Flip your paper over a final time and secure the last two corners. Your piece should look like this. Repeat steps 1-8 with the remaining sheets of paper.

Math:

Is this figure symmetrical? Why or why not?

Does this figure still have symmetrical lines?

9. After you have 6 pieces completed, you can begin to assemble your snowflake. Line two of your pieces up together. You will staple these pieces in two areas marked with the red X below to secure them. Staple the two middle sides and the top corners together.

10. Add a third piece to the two you have already stapled and secure it in the same areas as the previous two. Your piece should look like this.

11. Staple the remaining three snowflake pieces in the same manner so you have two halves to your snowflake. After the two halves are complete, attach the two halves stapling at the same points on each side until your snowflake is secure. Enjoy your fabulous 3-D snowflake!

If you have any suggestions on extra ways to incorporate math into this lesson, please share your ideas below!