Salt dough art project

For one of my art projects that I am doing, I  made salt dough hand print ornaments of my children. I let my 4 year old daughter help me make the dough, and she loved it. Then I put her hand print on one, and my 18 month sons hand print on one.  I put a hole at the top to put a ribbon through it, so you can hang them up. I painted my sons red and my daughters purple, because that's her favorite color. I'm going to write their names on them and put the year.

If I was to do this in the classroom it would be for a younger grade, like kindergarten. I would let the help me make the dough, and decorate it anyway that they want too. I would have them paint their own name on it, for handwriting, and put the date on it. Then that parents would have a keepsake.


Here is a picture of my first coat of paint and no writing yet.

Trade Fair

This week we had a trade fair in our Social Studies class. I had no idea what to bring. Sydney said to bring baked goods, clothes that we are planning on giving away, or just anything that we have around the house. I didn't have anything around the house. I was going to bake brownies, but I never made it to the store to get the brownie ingredients. So when I stopped and got my coffee in the morning I just bought some red velvet cookies. In class we then traded out items for other items. I ended up with some shot glasses for my husbands shot glass collection.

I think that this would be a really good project to do in my elementary classroom. We would be studying the history of trading, money, and supply and demand. It would be a in dept project, and I would give my students and their parents plenty of time to come up with an item for the trade fair. Also for the few students who may not be able to bring anything in, I would have baked goods for them to trade with. I believe that this would be a really fun way to get my students actually involved in my class and in social studies. I think that they would have a lot of fun with this project.

Art Projects

This week in art we picked four different art projects to complete in four weeks. I am going to be doing multimedia, landscape perspective, salt dough, and collage. I am very excited about these
projects, but also very scared and nervous. I don't feel very creative, but I would like to be. I am going to work very hard on these projects, and really try my best. I have been researching these topics and trying to come up with different ideas for each one.  Also we finished our mask. I did decided to put eyes in the mask, and I also put a red ribbon through it. We had to write a caption for it. I just wrote that my favorite color is red, that is why the whole mask is red. I am drawn to all things red, that is why I did the mask this way. By far this is one of the hardest classes that I have taken.

"Paper Clips"

In social studies we watched the movie "Paper Clips." It's a really good documentary about a middle school that wants to teach tolerance and acceptance to it's students. They decided to study the holocaust, and one of the students asked what 6 million looked and no one knew. So they decided to collect 6 million paper clips in honor of the victims of the holocaust. The story went national and in the end they collected over 29 million paper clips. Actual holocaust survivors got involved and shared their very touching and heartbreaking stories. In the end they put 11 million paper clips in a train cart that actually shipped people to the concentration camps. They made a really nice memorial at the school. They decided on 11 million for the 6 million Jews, and 5 million other people that they killed for other reasons.  It was a really touching movie that really makes you think about different things. I would really like to show this movie and teach about this if I ever teach in an upper elementary school. This movie teaches you that hate is not the way, and you shouldn't hate a single group of people. Hate can lead to extreme pain and suffering for millions of people for no reason. This movie teaches students that history is really about people of history and how certain events affect our lives.

Cultural Masks

In art we made mask that represent us culturally. I had no idea what to make, still don't. I am not artistic at all, which I really am trying to work on. So I just cut folder in a  "face" shape. It was a red color, but red is my favorite color, so I just painted it red. Then I added red glitter glue, and red sequins. It doesn't represent me culturally, at all. I still don't know how I would have done that. It shows something that I like, the color red, and I don't think that it looks so bad. I didn't cut out any eye holes in it, yet. I may do that or I may not. I'm not sure about that. Art is something that I really need to work on, so that I can be the best teacher possible. I do believe that the best teachers, bring a lot of different ideas and projects into their classrooms. Students really enjoy doing different things, and still learn from them.

Culture Backpack

In Social Studies we also wrote 5 or more things on the board that described our life up to 4th or 5th grade. I wrote that my mom was a stay at home mom, dad was a factory worker, who worked a lot. Even though he worked a lot, I don't remember him missing anything. He was very involved in all of our lives. I have really great parents. They are still married, this year will be 28 years. I have 3 brothers, 1 older and 2 younger. My two younger brothers are twins. My older brother is a "foster" brother. My parents didn't have the money to adopt him. We have had to deal with his birth family through the years. I moved in Kindergarten, bigger house, same school. Then again in 6th grade. I went from an elementary school to a Jr. High in the middle of the school year. That was the most traumatic experience of my childhood. I would say if that was the worse thing to happen to me, I had a really good childhood. I had a really great childhood, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Nothing bad happened, and my parents always put us first.

5 Artifacts in Class

This week in Social Studies we had to bring five artifacts that we felt best describes or symbolized us culturally. At first I had no idea what to bring in. This activity was really hard for me. I don't know if what I brought in really described me culturally, but they described what is most important to me. I brought in a current picture of my wonderful family. A five generation picture that we got taken a few months before my great grandma passed away. This picture really means a lot to me, because I wasn't the only great grandchild who had a baby, but I was the only one who took the time to get a five generation picture. It was my dad's grandma, so in the picture was my great grandma, my grandma, my dad, my baby girl when she was only 3 or 4 months old, and myself. I really treasure this picture. I also brought in a quilt that my great grandma made. I didn't get it until after her death. My grandma keeps handing them out, whenever a great grandchild has a baby, so now I have two of them. I brought in a wedding picture of my husband and myself, which is in a very nice picture frame from my aunt. The last artifact that I had was my wedding ring. Being happily married is very important to me. I believe that it is the foundation to my family. Plus my husband is my best friend, and the most important person in my life. We have been together for almost 9 years, and married for over 7. I wouldn't be who I am today without my family. All of my artifacts all have the common theme of family and marriage. That's what best describes me.