Lesson for week before thanksgiving

Oh November you strange month you. Well I guess you are not strange...its just all the holidays in you that makes you strange. This is our only full week of school this month. All of next week is non school days for the students thanks to conferences and Thanksgiving. On the plus side we have made excellent progress on our owl projects. All of 3rd grade has completed their owl collages. Two out of three 4th grade classes have painted their owls in the foliage. 5th grade has done their owl drawings and are ready to paint. Best of all, both the students and staff are feeling good about the kids work. I'm telling you...owls are always a hit.

So this week:
Kinder- I lost track of time so we will stick with our concentric circle turkey as we are working on shape right now and I found the site this came from Preschool daze


1st grade made their corn for their harvest collages and their gourds so all we have to do is cut out all the pieces, pumpkin, corn, gourd and create our composition with them and add some silk fall leaves.

2nd grade: hum, thanks to holidays one class is done and ready for a new project while the other classes still need to finish their texture owls and leaves.
Cas-2 finish texture owls
Cul-2 finish texture owls
Pru-2 has big moon paintings from a Halloween project that fell through. I want to take the big moon as the background and do the scarecrow drawing from Art Projects For Kids, have the kids cut out the scarecrow and glue it on the moon so we get a little perspective going on and we can hopefully use up some of the bag of raffia I was just given. I figure the drawing will take up the 20 min long class session and the painting will take up the 30 min class session


3rd grade: Just did some really fun owl collages/mixed media with my old stash of scrapbook paper. About this time each year I have the kids do a simplified black glue landscape. In the past I have done the one from artsonia (basically this project...not sure where this photo is from, you know the project)
with black paper and oil pastel or chalk pastel. This year I'm going to let the kids choose....two tables will have oil pastels, two tables will have chalk pastels and two tables will have tempera paint.
we will sketch and black glue during our 20 min class and then add color during our 35 min class. Am I crazy for letting them choose their media? Possibly. Am I so low on oil pastels and chalk pastels that I don't have enough for a entire class at a time? YES. I may rethink this later and have everyone paint.

4th grade: Brady still needs to paint their owls, everyone else is done with their owls
J-4 and C-4....torn between two projects also from Art Projects for Kids (can you tell I was cursing her site for projects?) The first one would hit up a ton of 4th grade standards (Oregon has no specific elementary art standards aside from make art, look at art and learn about artist so I use California standards for lack of better idea)
This project works on proportion, figure drawing, positive and negative space and can use complementary colors in the background.
(I'm sure we will end up doing this)

However, I want to do this entomology project sometime soon! I need to find out what grade level studies bugs and then decided if they are old enough to make the little box the bug goes into. You could draw so many types of bugs! From moths to stink bugs to stick bugs!
maybe after Thanksgiving break I will have the 4th and 5th graders make them. They could do a little research on their bug/insect and make a label like in a museum (always trying to squeeze in some writing)

5th grade: both classes need to paint their owls. My twice a week class is going to get started on the 5th grade clay project which is scissor birds (I wish I knew where I got this lesson/photos from so I could give them credit!!) I've had these photos on my laptop for several years and finally feel confident enough to try the project. We will start by making the collage version and then after break we will make the clay version.