Well, now that our Monochromatic Selifes are finished and we are impatiently waiting for that art teacher to hang them up (can I contract out for that? I'm buried under cute and colorful self-portraits!), it's time for us all to move on to our next masterpiece: Texture Relief Dots for Dot Day! Each of my grade levels, kindergarten thru fourth grade, we are creating a dot-based work of art inspired by Peter H. Reynold's The Dot. We're doing all new Dot Day projects this year...if you like to check out all the Dot projects we've done over the years, check here. This year, for second grade, I decided to give one of my most popular blog posts a reboot and focus on texture. Filming my lessons over the weekend means I have a shorter weekend...but a much smoother week. I am loving this new method. I actually feel like the kids are learning so much more as I don't forget valuable vocabulary and information. I just hope I have the stamina to keep it up! I also enjoy sharing them with you. Please feel free to use in your art rooms. For this project, we used the following: * 8" Cardboard Circles purchased from Amazon * 3M Spray Adhesive * $1 a can matte spray paint from Home Depot. Be sure and get the cheap stuff, it rubs off the best. * The finest of steel wool, 000 * Textured items like leaves, burlap, twine, lace, etc. * Aluminum foil. I found boxes of sheets of foil that worked really well because it was the perfect size. It is then and may tear so tell the kids to be careful. Before the kids arrived, I sprayed each of their circles with the adhesive. This way, they were ready to start applying their textured items. When finished, they brought them to me. I sprayed again, added the foil and sent them to their seat to rub the foil and reveal the texture. Once it was rubbed, the kids trimmed off the excess and folded it underneath. That took up all of our 30 minutes of art class. I took all of the circles outside today and spray painted them black. The kids watched the bit of video about burnishing. We definitely did have some small holes and tears happen. A thicker foil might have helped but it would have given us a less detailed texture design. I mean... How cool is that? After the burnishing was complete and our hands were washed, we chatted some more about texture and the difference between real and implied. This was such a fun and quick lesson that gave us beautiful results. I really like how they look on their messy mats, we just might have to frame them out that way! I'm interested to know what other textures y'all might recommend we use in the future. I'd love to add more to this fun project!