Yee haw. I made it. To Fort Worth

Well Mr. E and I (paper me) made it down to Fort Worth. It has been an adventure so for. I can't wait to show you all the pictures and to tell you all about it.
Thanks so much Mr E.

Rock Star Status.

So you all know that I was a guest writer. So I shared that with my Assistant Principal. He told me I hit rock star status and that I should demand m&m departed into colors. So I told a 4th grade teacher that. And guess what I got today. That's right. I am a rock star.

Honesty: One Square at a Time...

As you all know, I am a guest writer for Core Essentials. They sent me a few words based on Character Education and wanted me to utilize them in my classroom throughout my lessons and post the results on my blog.
One of the words was Honesty. After talking with my 4th grade students, we decided that a self-portrait is one of the most honest things that can be created in Art. When creating a self-portrait, you really have to be honest with yourself because there is no changing what you look like.
And, as it turns out, it just so happens that my librarian has a really great book on Chuck Close (for those of you who may not know, he is known for doing portraits and self-portraits).  The book is titled Chuck Close: Face Book.  My students and I looked at his book for our inspiration.
We started our project using a grid system. They used 9"x12" white paper and a ruler and made a 1-inch grid and outlined it with a Sharpie. Then they started to draw their self-portraits. I had them create a line drawing of their face.  Then, I asked the students to be honest with themselves and think about the things that are important to them in their daily lives. I asked them to turn each grid square into a letter that would make up a word (I asked that the examples they used not be materialistic items).
Unfortunately, this project has taken a little longer then I thought, so I am posting a couple of the best examples so far, and when the portraits are finished, I will post them again.

I am going to be a guest writer.

Hello everyone a few weeks ago I got an email asking me to be an guest writer at http://www.coreessentials.org/. They have different words character words for each month. They asked it i would have any art lessons that would work with there upcoming words. So I am working on that and will be posting some soon. So please stay tuned in to the mess. Over and out Mr. R.

Double bubble

Cupcake battle update. Well here is one of January cupcake this month they had to use bubblegum.

Look at the pretty lights

Well my 2nd graders were learning about Antarctica. So we made some great looking penguins using texture to make there bodies. And for the background using some chalk pastels to make aurora australis which are the southern lights. My second graders liked using the chalk and watching the video on the southern lights

Honk honk. Who's hungry

Ok everyone a little info about me. Well as you might know I like to cook and I like to try different foods out. One thing I like to do in the summer time is to go food trucking. We have a good number of food trucks in my area. So I though it would be really cool to try and bring that to a project. A few years ago I did the Missouri state soda can design project. And my fourth grader have to study the Missouri state symbols. So we took the same concept as the soda can and applied it to food trucks. First of all my students didn't know that we had food trucks where we lived so know they are on the lookout for them. Plus they thought it was cool that they were going to get make a 3d food truck. Here are a few pictures. I might try to post a few more when we get them done.