Flowers

I found this idea on Pinterest and it led me to The Inspired Classroom blog. There are great ideas on this blog.
My class just finished up a unit on Plant Life. Before the test my students did these flip books. On the front they colored in a flower (which I drew and photo copied), labeled the parts, and cut them into sections. When they finished this they defined what each part does for the plant behind the flaps.

Bird Paintings

When I first started teaching I was hired to teach elementary art. This wasn't my strongest area, but I could do it. A friend of mine gave me the best book when she found out what I was teaching: "Drawing With Children" by Mona Brooks. I had heard of Mona Brooks in an art class I took at TMC, but it was a brief conversation. I didn't realize that she had so many plans for teaching children how to draw. This book is wonderful!
Mona Brooks uses basic shapes and lines to get students started in drawing. Then she gives great step by step instructions on how to draw different things: parrots, lions, still life, etc.
My 3rd grade students loved drawing their parrots. And I love that all of them are different! Once we finished drawing them we painted them with watercolors. This proved to be a little harder than planned and one of my students did have a meltdown, but all of the results were beautiful.

Glue Pictures

I love teaching art. When I was first hired at the school I am currently working at I taught elementary and jr. high art. Even though it was tricky at times I really liked teaching art. I love finding new ideas and trying them out. Some of them work and some of them don't, but hey that's life! When I first found out I was going to be teaching art 3 1/2 years ago I found this book. First of all I need to say that I love Usborne Books! This book in particular has so many great ideas! I completely recommend it for teaching art in the classroom. As you can see there are a few sticky notes in it.

One of the best ideas I found in it was "glue pictures." It takes a few days, but it is worth it!

1. The students create a picture using elmer's glue on cardstock or cardboard. You want the glue to be thick so that when it dries it stays bumpy. 
2. Once the glue is completely dried paint over it with gold paint. It is ok if the paint isn't overly thick on the paper. Let the paint dry overnight. 
3. Finally rub brown shoe polish over the entire picture. This gives the picture an antique look. They are beautiful. 

My students did this during February. I asked each one of them to do some design using hearts. They are currently looking beautiful in the windows of my classroom. 

Current Read Aloud

New read aloud book in my classroom. It is a little tricky for my third graders to understand, but I make sure we talk about it as we read. 

I love the Narnia Series!!

Valentine's Day

Found a similar idea on Pinterest. 

Our memory verse this week was 1 John 4:9. 

We had a great talk about how God loves us!

The students thought of ways they could show God's love to others. I requested they list 2 ways and most of them did more. It was great to see their desire to show God's love! 

They are hanging from the ceiling in my classroom!

Flower Bulletin Board

We are just finishing up a unit on plants. This is the bulletin board I put up for the unit. 

One of my students helped me put it together. 

Snowglobes

We made this before Christmas but left them up in the window thru January. 

I traced out the shape of the black base and blue inside. 

The students cut them out. 

Each student was given white, brown, black, red, orange, and green paint, a q-tip, and a tooth pick. 

I instructed the students that they had to have at least 1 snowman. 

I love how creative these third graders were! Birds, bunnies, and SF Giants hats. 

Multiplication

       I decided this year that my 3rd grade students needed to start working on multiplication facts early on. For the first several months of school we had "Multiplication Mondays." Most of the students really looked forward to this time. I took the unit on multiplication and spread it out over every Monday. I found this helpful because it gave the students a good amount of time to learn each math fact family.
       At this point many of the students are slowing down in how much they practice their multiplication. About 1/3rd of the class has finished x1-x12. I'm so proud of them. Each of them received a gift certificate for Baskin Robbins. I make a big deal about it. I want to make sure they know how proud I am of them. Those who are finished have moved on to division facts. Woo Hoo!!