Pencil Sharpener review!

Are you always looking for new and improved ways to keep your art room pencils sharpened? I have tried high-end (and low-end) electric ones which  are loud and never seem to outlast their expense, and for the last two years have been using hand-held, but those are far from perfect too. I read another blog post about this sharpener from www.classroomfriendlysupplies.com and was intrigued by the way the writer described it as "different", so I went to the site to check it out and saw that the company will send a free sharpener to bloggers who meet the criteria. I was excited to get my package and give it a try, soon to realize I had no idea how to work it. Fortunately the website has instructions and videos, and soon I had sharpened the most perfect pencil point I have ever seen!

It is a manual, portable hand-crank sharpener with a table clamp to use if you like, although it doesn't hold it super tight. Here's how it works : first, pull out the metal plate on the front and squeeze the tabs on the top and insert the pencil. Next, let go of the pencil - the tabs hold it in place perfectly centered - and crank until the resistance stops. The metal plate has pushed back to its original place now and you can squeeze the tabs again to release the pencil. If you put an already sharp pencil in, it won't engage. I haven't used it with kids yet because I'm on spring break, but I think they are going to be excited about the sharpness they can achieve with this sharpener. The only negative I have to say about it is that the table clamp is a little weak, but as long as you hold if down with your hand you are good, and I see that they are developing a permanent mount you can buy soon. 

If it works well with the kids, I will be getting another one for next year - stay tuned for a follow up! Definitely check it out! Here is a video link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0jqUe91Ovs and here is a shot of the available colors and prices. Thank you ClassroomFriendlySupplies.com for the sharpener - I'll be back for more.

Winter weather, Spring plans

Here in metro Atlanta, we are in our second round of severe winter weather days - school is out and snuggling is in! I am one of those people that wants to hibernate if the temp drops below 50 degrees - but I've had enough hibernating at this point and am now getting excited about planning my spring projects!

We make several varieties of clay containers in the spring and I have been wanting to, for several years now, get some plants in those pots before they go home. I decided to do a sampling of succulent cuttings, as they don't need water more than once a week, and also because they are just so beautiful. So... I ordered a set of cuttings from Etsy and they came in the mail, just perfect and adorable - see here!

 

I also bought a seed packet of sedum to start, but I am going to let the kids plant those seeds after we get past this winter stuff.

In a stroke of luck that reassured me I was on the right path, I had happened upon two bags of cactus soil on major markdown at Target the week before - what luck, and they just happened to be in a random area where I was shopping. I just LOVE Target clearance.

Next, I had a variety of ceramic pots, but no holes in the bottoms, so luckily I had some plastic cups and tubs saved that were perfect to poke a drainage hole in and pop into my ceramic pots.

So here they are, so cute and hopefully they will thrive so that I can use this method with my students. Rooting the cuttings seems easy - just use the right soil, water it, place the cutting on top, water again weekly, and give them plenty of light. Fingers crossed!

Sadly, my 3 month old puppy Peanut got a hold of this one already - RIP

I am also preparing for upcoming stitchery projects, which everybody loves! I brought home a bunch of embroidery hoops and fabric to load this week, so there's that to look forward to.

The dogs follow me around, so they decided to start eating breakfast as I started my project. This is Peanut the Barefoot Contessa and Daisy - Dexter is still snoozing.

I also want to say a great big (and slightly belated - the snow slowed me down!) THANK YOU to all the families, friends, and colleagues who took the time to vote and say nice things about this blog in the Art Ed Blog of the Year contest - I am proud to announce we placed 6th among some amazing blogs and it is the third year to be in the top 10! I feel very honored, and lucky to be a part of this group of art educators.

 

Valentine Monoprints, 2nd grade

 This is a fun one-day printmaking project, although we will spend a second session retouching our smudgey prints with a little oil pastel. Printmaking is an indirect method of creating an image, often in multiples, and we learned that adding the prefix "mono" meant that our prints would be single and unique. It has a certain quality that can't be achieved through direct drawing/painting, and I just adore it. We used laminating film ends for our printing plates, after collecting plenty of ends by keeping a collection box by the laminator! I traced rectangles on each one with a sharpie to maintain the border, and we brushed the tempera inside. We used Q-tips, forks, Popsicle sticks and paint scrapers by Roylco to create our textures, lines and shapes. We each printed two white and two red, rotating to different tables. Clean up involved a spray bottle of water and a good paper towel wipe down, so the plastic plates would be ready for the next day's use.

Count on at least one smudgey print, but everyone got at least one great one. Some even figured out how to do the backwards writing! Such fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plarn!

No, it's not an expletive... It's a free and environmentally friendly weaving fiber - plastic yarn! This is the first I've heard of it, and pardon my ignorance if it's a common thing and I am behind the times, but I find this very exciting. Anyway, I know that the art teachers in my county will be doing weavings this semester, and many of you across the country (and world!) love weaving, so I thought I'd share this technique for making plarn found on Crochet Dynamite/Pinterest http://www.crochetdynamite.com/2013/01/how-to-make-plarn.html

If you are an experienced plarn-user, let me know what techniques work best for you - I need tips.

Students: make this! Lots and lots of it! Bring it to class and we will get started soon. I plan on trying this out tomorrow during my snow day. And let's be real, "plarn" is just plain fun to say. :)

Kinder Pop!

The definition of Pop Art that I use in my elementary classroom is "to turn an ordinary something into an extraordinary something." Everyday subjects like food, sneakers, or even the alphabet can go from boring to exciting by making them big and colorful. Another way we can make it exciting is to repeat our shapes again and again. We really had a ball making these Jasper Johns inspired, multi-layered, painted & printed, alphabet pop paintings.

First, we stuck on foam alphabet stickers, all around the page. Great deals on these at the dollar store. Then we reviewed our mixing of secondary colors from the previous lesson, this time with tempera. They looooved that part. We threw in a few shapes and numbers too while painting, because it was one of those experimental moments with lots of ooohs and aaahs.

Next, we added white to our mixing trays to learn how tints are made, and began filling the page with as many tints as we could make. It's important with this step to remind them to tap their rinsed brush on the sponge, so dirty water doesn't go into their mixtures. "Rinse, tap, dip."

Last is the best part - stamp printing with our new sponge stampers from Roylco, which are amazing. Very sturdy sponge material and a thick cut to prevent shape distortion when little hands are stamping. I can tell these will last a while. This set has generously sized capitals and lower case, although we only used the lowers here because our paper size was not too big.

 

Good stuff -  I would call these letters extraordinary!

Get the Good Stuff!

The Dixon Ticonderoga Company is promoting their quality school and art supplies this back-to-school season by asking art teacher bloggers to put their products to the test. I was happy to welcome these donations into our classroom and will share with you what we have found, now that we have had the joy of opening, unpacking, and sampling a box of free art supplies. 

First off, everyone knows that the Ticonderoga pencil is about as high quality as you can get. They arrived pre-sharpened, a deal breaker for me if they are not, and have a latex-free eraser that withstands some serious use. The competitor pencil erasers wouldn't have lasted a day in my room.

The Prang watercolors are removable from the case, which is great for painting with a selected color scheme, and the brush is well made. The colors are nice and bold, and my professional artist friend Sherry says they are her favorite travel watercolor set, and her studio mates agree. Prang's box seems a little sturdier than the competitor set as well.

This is my first time trying out the Prang markers and I was a bit skeptical after only using a competing brand for many years, but you can see here in the comparison photo that the ink coverage is very smooth and vibrant. I like that the tops are all white, which can make cleanup go a little quicker, and the only thing I can say I missed while using the Prang markers is that the tip shape doesn't really allow for thick line coverage, but there is a slight thickness difference from tip to angle.

The colored pencils were quite impressive, even before unpacking them. They had a nice weight, a triangular form for staying in place on the table, and a sharpener is included. The thick lead puts down smooth, saturated color and they don't feel fragile, like the competitor pencil. They seem as though they would last a long time.

I will continue to review these products as we begin our lessons this year, and share results on how they are holding up. I wanted to go ahead and post what I've found so far during the back-to-school campaign, and so far I am impressed with what I've seen from all four of these products. Thanks Dixon for sharing your products with my class!