American Artists - Maria Martinez

We are currently studying American History and we have added Great American Artists for Kids as our art program for the school year. It has been a great addition, I truly love Kohl's art books. This week's artist was Maria Martinez.

J worked on a notebook page about Martinez's life and works of art. This will be added to her art notebook that we have been keeping for the past two years.

Martinez was a pottery maker so the art project was to make a pinch pot bowl. J worked the clay into snakes and then into spirals and added them to her bowl.

She pushed them together to connect them. This was not a fun project for her, she felt like it was difficult.

And the project turnout was not as expected. This is what happens when you pick up your bowl, thinking it was dry and it wasn't. The bowl came apart. She was so disappointed. But a lesson was learned here:) We may try this one again so she can get better results. We will see.

Jedi Faces Darth!

Just had to share what's been going on in my household lately....

Jedi and Darth...have a great day.

Tot Tuesday

Sometimes while I am working with Kaleb, my J will take some time and play with Riley. Today, she was playing dolls with him.

J had to put the doll's hair up in a pony tail because he didn't like the way it felt. But he had fun carrying the baby around.

Everyone Loves Underpants!

Everyone loves underpants! Aliens, dinosaurs, bears, and especially pirates. This past week, I thought we would do a unit on underpants. We would read even possible book from own own personal library as well as the public library on underpants. Kaleb had a blast, it was definitely up his alley....burping, farting, underpants....haha.

For every book that we read about underpants, I had Kaleb color or decorate a pair to go along with the book. These pants will be made into an underwear banner.

We talked about nouns using this free printable that I found from Crazy Kids Learning (link below). I drew a simple alien shape and we sorted the nouns and glued them to our alien.

He turned out pretty cute! We hung it up on our school room closet door.

Kaleb then painted some mini aliens to put in his spaceship. These aliens came from Somewhat Simple (link below).

He made a spaceship from a paper plate - an idea that came from Danielle's Place (link below). Each of my kids made one of these - we have a whole fleet of spaceships flying around our schoolroom filled with aliens in their underwear! They saved the earth, you know?

Kaleb also colored a dinosaur with interchangeable underwear. He thought this was super funny! Different pairs of underwear for the dinosaur. I am thinking about making this magnetic for my younger tot, Riley. He would like it, for sure.

Who doesn't like underpants? We had a ton of fun reading all of the underwear books and making our underwear banner. It was a silly unit for Kaleb. We are moving on to a chapter book for a new challenge next week. See you soon.

Links

Aliens Love Underpants - the books have their own site with games, videos, and printables.

Danielle's Place - has some super cute alien crafts for the book. You have to be a member for the patterns but most are easy to replicate.

Shannon's Book Nook - has the free printable for Dinosaurs Love Underpants, super cute.

Hello Wild Things - has the free underwear printable if you want to design your own.

Boy Teacher Mama - has a few ideas for the book as well.

Rubber Boots and Elf Shoes - has a neat idea for using underpants and play dough.

Somewhat Simple - has a free printable alien pack.

Adventures and Play - has a cute idea for feeding the alien, can adapt to anything your child needs to review.

Stir the Wonder - has an idea for a moon dust writing tray.

Mini Monets and Mommies - has an idea for alien slime.

Adventures and Play - has another cute idea for a felt board for the book.

Sharing Kindergarten - has another free printable underwear template to go along with the books.

Crazy Kids Learning - has the free printable noun sort page that we used for our alien poster.





SaveSave

Jedi Reading - AD Family with free printable

Jedi Reading is a new reading incentive program that I created using one of the things my kindergartner loves - Star Wars. Kaleb was not quite ready to use our reading curriculum but he already knew the letters and letter sounds. I did not want to lose that so I decided to focus on word families.

Kaleb worked on a word sort between AP words and AD words. He read each of the cards and glued them in the correct columns.  This free printable came from Kinder Cartwheels (link below).

He matched each of the words and them stamped the words.

I brought out a Leap Frog word maker for him to try out. He made AD words and tried them out.

He stamped his AD words. He seems to ask for this stamping activity every week.

Kaleb is reading each AD word and then covering it with a chip. This free printable is included with my Jedi Reading set. I use these cards for our word wall as well.

He worked on an AD mini book. I found this free printable from Camping Teacher (link below).

He played a dice game that I created. Roll the die and write the word. I placed this sheet in a cover so he could use it all week.

He also played cover the word on the Death Star. I had intended to use the glass marbles but I couldn't find them. So we used counting chips instead. This is another of my free printables in the Jedi pack. Have an awesome weekend.

Download Jedi Reading Pack - AD Family HERE.

Links

Camping Teacher - the free printable AD flip book came from her TPT store.

Kinder Cartwheels - has the free printable word sort.

Lori Evans - has the free printable AD pages.

American Artists - Horace Pippin

It has been awhile since our last American Artist post but we finally got back to our art studies. We are currently using Great American Artists for Kids as our spine to complement our American History studies. This week's artist was Horace Pippin. It was great timing since Horace Pippin was an artist during the first World War. He drew and wrote about his everyday life as a soldier in a journal. We are currently reading and learning about the World Wars so it was nice to add this artist to our studies.

After reading about the artist and looking at his work, J fills out an artist notebook page for her art notebook. She adds the dates he was alive and a photo, if possible.

She then writes an artist card for our artist wall that we currently have displayed. It had artists and composers that we have studied, although the artists currently outnumber the composers. I hope to resume our composer studies next year.

Because Pippin was an artist who kept a journal during the World War, J wanted to create a journal page as well. She chose to make a page for the attack on Pearl Harbor. She composed it on the dry-erase board and I helped her fix the mistakes. Then she wrote it on a notebook page and added her drawing of the bombing.

This art project will be added to her art notebook. I love when our subjects crossover - art and history. Love it! Have an awesome day.

A Flock of Birds

Recently, we took some time and worked on a few art projects that have been on my list for some time. I found a few things I wanted to accomplish and thought it would be a great mid week break - to do some art:)

We worked on some marble painting. I kept a box lid after our move and it helped to keep the marbles in the box. Kaleb liked making roads with his marbles.

Riley painted with the dabbers - he loved this and wore purple paint all day. Now, all he wants to do is paint!

My DH made this at Christmas to hang our stockings on and my Mom suggested we keep it out all year long. It was plain for awhile until I finally figured what I wanted to do to it. The kids made flamingoes several different ways - marble painting, paint dabbing, tissue paper and feathers and I added them to this tree of sorts.

It turned out cute. It reads "Stand Tall" and sits in my living room. I truly wanted to add a pink strand of lights (making it a mini night light) but they are proving harder to find since it isn't Christmas. What do you think, Ma? Did we do it justice? I thought she would appreciate the irony....flamingoes and our home state - haha.

Then, J and Kaleb worked on making simple birds for my front window. This window is so big and bare that I thought I would try something different.

We made birds-on-a-wire for the window. I like it. No more feeling like I have to decorate it for each season or month, now I am just going to leave the birds (for now, until I find something else I want to try). So we made a flock of birds to decorate the house. Not too bad for a mid-week art project.