My Turn at the Easel

Looking at my photo disk, I am surprised to see so many dragon photos. There are more dragon lessons that I did not even photograph. Chinese New Year coincided with the third grade study of China this year so there were lots of opportunities for the dragon as subject matter.

Preschoolers made Chinese dragon masks, which all together looked like one big dragon costume.

Third graders made Chinese brush paintings of dragons and foil repousse dragons, for which I have no photos. Ugh.

This dragon puppet was a “door knob lesson.” That means you think of the lesson as you are shutting the door after they arrive. I had a lesson prepared other than this, but when 3/4 of the class was missing because of testing, I had to think of something fast. This was it.

Art Club kids made clay animals and many chose dragons.

Kindergarten dragons. Those red tree-like things are firecrackers.

A third grade teacher asked me to help her think of something she could hang in the hall outside of her classroom. Since they were studying Ancient China, I had her kids work in groups to create dragon murals. These are 5′ - 6′ long. I suggested that she cut these off of the background and mount them on another paper, or paint the background.

I think I am “dragoned” out now.

The preschool printing lesson I did last week was successful, so I created a video and uploaded it to TeacherTube and YouTube.

Preschool Art - Bubblewrap Prints  on TeacherTube

Preschool Art - Bubblewrap Prints on YouTube

Scherenschnitte 8 x 10

I realized one day this week that I felt normal again after two weeks of feeling crumby. And normal felt AMAZING

Today was warm. I felt good. We rode our bikes 16 miles. Just perfect.