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.

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. 

Cricut

My cricut paper cutter is my favorite decorating tool. Unfortunately they aren't cheap. But they are a great investment. 

If you can't afford one then find a friend who has one! 

It is a must. 

I have the small one, but a I have friends with larger ones. They are nice and let me borrow it when I need to cut out something larger. 

Even with my smaller cricut I'm able to cut out 5 inch letters for my bulletin boards. 

The letters and airplane are done with a cricut. 

I laminated the letters so that I can use them again next year. 

I'm told that they best time to get them is on Black Friday. 

I'm hoping to get a bigger one then. 

Local Geography

Our local water agency was passing out this poster of our local river. I love that it is a cartoon representation of the Russian River. And it helps my students know more about their local geography. 

Who knows maybe your water agency would have something like this too. Couldn't hurt to check!

Easy/Practically Free Bulletin Board

Last year my co-teacher and I had a Road Trip theme. I love having a travel theme. My favorite part of a travel theme is collecting post cards. My 3rd grade students jumped at the challenge last year. We had so many post cards, over 100. Our largest bulletin board was dedicated to the postcards we collected. In the center I had a map of the United States and I cut out "Road Trip USA" using my cricut paper cutter.
Students asked friends and family to send postcards. A few of my students had grandparents who were retired and did a lot of traveling. We got some great postcards. As we got postcards the students stuck a straight pin in the state where the postcard came from. We made a few goals throughout the year as we gathered postcards. Our last goal was to get at least 1 postcard from each state. We didn't quite get there, but we had fun trying. At the end of the year we counted how many postcards we had from each state.