Back to School Sale

My store is having a sale- Tpt is having a sitewide sale! Save upto 25% off ! Please remember those needed art projects! Click on my link to get to my store! www.teacherspayteachers.com/store/Gena-Mcwilliams

Back to School with Shapes

I saw on facebook that many of you are beginning math teaching shapes. Art also uses shapes to create patterns and to create interest. There are two kinds of shapes in art: geometric and natural. I have several art projects based on shapes in art that will help review identification of geometric and natural shapes. Here's the link to one: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/All-About-Shapes-Art-Projects-871403

And here is another link: www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Lines-Shapes-and-Patterns-for-back-to-school-770453

Summer Art Lessons

Once again it's Camp GaGa for me with my grand kids. Last year my grandson was the creative one. We spent a good week making and painting a rocketship from a large cardboard box. This year he needs to catch up on his reading so I have begun reading Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass to him and his sister. We watched Tim Burton'sAlice in Wonderland  a few weeks ago and he just loved it! Our plan is to read a chapter a day but he is also to work on his sight words and read a book out loud to me.
 My grand daughter is the creative one this year. All I had to do to day was cover the kitchen table with newpaper and set out glitter glue pens, metallic markers, paint brush markers, coffee filters, and chenille stems. She wanted to make her Mama a bouquet of flowers. She went into my pantry and found an old glass canister to use for the vase ( She had previously used all of my mason jars to make water candles- her own invention). She remembered my directions from a year ago and proceeded without my help.
For easy directions to make paper flowers click on this link:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/All-Occasion-Paper-Coffee-Filter-Flowers-1868162

Preschool Children, Painting, and Watercolors

How many of you have bought those cool watercolors in the box for your young children? Who remembers painting watercolors with the metal Prang watercolors? We can still buy the Prang watercolors but they will stain clothes. Crayola has better watercolors for young children and Sargeants can be found also.

Did anyone have a classroom teacher say not to mix the colors? I know they do and I understand why they say it. If the children aren’t taught good brush handling skills, they will dip the bush into every single solitary color in the watercolor box. What happens? The colors are no longer clean but muddy or even black!  If the children are taught how to use the brush, eventually good brush painting skills will be a habit.

I found the best way for me to teach good brush painting skills was at the beginning of the school year. I would give the children a dry brush and a cup of water and a sponge. We would practice dipping the brush into the water and drying it on the sponge. Next we would pretend paint in the air, dip in the water, swish the brush to clean, dry it on the sponge, and pretend to dip the brush in the paint.

After practicing we would then paint with our watercolors. The following is a photograph of my granddaughter painting with her watercolors. She is mixing her colors on her watercolor paper.

This photo is her painting almost finished!

Another method for teaching children not to mix up the colors is by teaching them how to make colors through the color wheel. I will post more on this subject again. Mizz Mac

For more of Mizz Mac’s lessons or projects, check out her store on www.teacherspayteachers.com/store/Gena-Mcwilliams.

Teachers Pay Teachers Sale

SALE!!! 20% off my whole store beginning tomorrow February 24- February 26th- TPT takes an extra 10% off on Wednesday February 25th!
www.teacherspayteachers.com/store/Gena-Mcwilliams

All About Shapes Art

Have your children talked about shapes this week? My grandchildren have. When I picked them up from school on Friday, my grandson (kindergarten age) started a game. He would give us checks if we could find geometric shapes.  Challenge on! His little sister and I found circle tires, square and rectangle signs and windows, and circle wreaths and signs on doors all the way home. The hardest shape to find was the triangle. I finally found some on top of the square tower at Vineville Baptist church. That was quite a fun way to reinforce his learning.

Another way to reinforce is through art. Art has two flat shapes-geometric and natural. 3-d shapes are called form. The sphere, cylinder, and cubes are drawn illusions of 3-d but that’s getting too technical. Try my shapes projects when using art to reinforce identifying shapes. Here is the link to my All about Shapes project: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Mizz-Macs-All-About-Shapes-871403. 

  I like to use Edward Hopper’s paintings as examples of how artists use shapes in their artwork. Here’s a link to his “Seven A.M.” painting: http://www.edwardhopper.net/seven-am.jsp.

Creating art by first practicing line making and shape making takes away any drawing fears.  Mizz Mac

Mizz Mac’s art projects can be found in her store on www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Gena-Mcwilliams.

 

Back to School Sale!!

Back To School Sale!! My store is 20% off plus 10% from TPT!! Grab up art projects for the year!!
Here is the link to my store:
www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Gena-Mcwilliams

TPT and Back to School

TPT has taken down the freebie page I wrote about in the last posting. I have been working hard to rework some of my back to school ice breakers. I have added photographs of examples and have kept the prices at $1.50. Here are some of them with links:http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Drawing-with-Beginners-398360

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Back-to-School-Line-Designs-for-Beginners-781986

Mizz Mac's tips for buying art easels for children's art

Mizz Mac is back with a few tips for parents or grandparents about buying art easels for children. The first easel we bought for our grandchildren was plastic with a white marker board on one wide and dry chalk board on the other. The drawing surfaces were quite small and tray underneath wasn't designed to hold much. There was only a plastic clip to hold one sheet of paper. This easel was fine when my granddaughter took up painting but when my grandson decided it was time for him to start drawing, they couldn't draw on one side and paint on the other without getting frustrated. We decided to buy another easel. We bought two instead. The easels are taller and have adjustable height. One side has a dry erase white board and the other side is dry chalk board. The surfaces are larger and the easels are angled a bit with a nice tray to hold art supplies. The dry erase surfaces are erasable with paper towels. Crayola has dry erase markers and dry erase crayons and large crayon shaped colored chalk on the market. I personally saw these products at Kmart.

By the way, having two easels for two artists is working out great! They are both drawing quite well and are not getting frustrated with each other. 

Here is a picture of my grandson’s drawing: 

(he is in a rocket ship blasting off to the moon!)

A Georgia Peachy Blog

The peaches are flowing in Middle Georgia! Our peach farms are packing their products to ship out! Did you know the Peach Festival cooked the world's largest peach cobbler this past weekend? Here is my grandmother's favorite recipe: 

Now all good Southern cooks are dump cooks which means we use approximately the right amount of ingredients and then change things as we see fit. My grandmother cooked with a gas stove that had no temperature control so check on the cobbler after 30 minutes cooking time! And don't forget to add a dollop of vanilla ice cream! 

Here's another Peachy tidbit- have you heard of the Eat A Peach album by the Allman Brothers? The Allman Brothers were brought to Macon, Georgia in the early 70's by their manager, Phil Walden of Capricorn Records. (Phil was my cousin's high school sweetheart and loved pulling my pigtails!) Before they got big and famous, the Allman Brothers would jam on Sunday afternoons in Central City Park. Wonderful Peachy Music!!

 Grab up your own basketful  of  Peachy free items from our blogs and enter our giveaway!

My Peachie freebie for you:http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Mizz-Macs-Print-a-Peach-1279210

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An InLinkz Link-up