Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving all. Sadly I am very sick yet again and am stuck in bed instead of at the family Thanksgiving lunch. I made it three weeks between illnesses this time. That is a week longer than between the prior colds. Still, I fell like I have been sick non-stop this year.

Monday and Tuesday of this week we had conferences. I am part of the area style conferences with the other middle school teachers and I got a good number of people to stop by this year. Last year only four families stopped to talk to me. This year about 15 of 16 stopped by. Maybe by next year I'll be in the 20's or 30's.

During the last week of school we pushed hard to finish up our November projects.
5th grade continues to work on their India unit and are enthusiastic about our general theme of Elephants.

4th and 3rd grade managed to get their tree themed art works done in time for their choir concert and they were well received. It was nice to be acknowledged during the concert as part of the school's art program. Some parents seemed really excited to see their students work. Although some didn't really seem to care. Can't win them all I guess.

2nd and some third grade classes got to make torn paper collage owls with googly eyes and fun foam beaks. They were a big hit.

1st is trudging along with their scarecrow in the field paintings and collage. This project is taking WAY too long and I am just going to glue them together for the kids so we can move on. Three weeks is too long on a 1st grade project.

Kinder got the chance to try sponge painting to paint turkey outlines and ended up making some really cute and unique turkey art. Painting with 75 kids in less than 90 min was really stressful for me and I ended up having to get a few 8th graders to help me out.

The big surprise for me was that the trimester is ending on Thursday of next week! We are using a different state testing schedule this year and so our trimesters have been altered....opps they forgot to tell the electives teachers! I don't really think it makes sense to switch classes for two weeks before winter break and then have two weeks off. I feel like that is going to leave a odd chunk of time.

The really sad part is that we will have to skip several of our Egypt projects so that we can be done by next Thursday. There will be no canopic jars or sarcophagus's this year. I still have kids working on their Egyptian profiles, although others have made it through the reprosue and printmaking part of the "three Egyptian symbols" project. I told the kids that if they get their profiles and "three symbols" done than they can mummify their hands with plaster strips. The 6th graders are most interested in the plaster hands and the 7th and 8th graders were, "whatever". We will cast hands on Wednesday so that on Thursday we will spend the day painting our hands and cartouches and saying good buy.

The third part of the "three symbols" project is to make a paper casting. In 5th grade I did paper casting on plaster that had a design that I made imprinted into it. I'm going crazy tyring to figure out how we got the images into the plasters. I have tried using modeling clay but I not getting great results...obviously there is an easier way but I just can't remember it! I have a few more ideas of how to make the plaster cast and when I get it figured out I will post directions.