Hey, sweet friends! I hope your week was a wonderful one...mine started out so super amazing as I had a visitor all the way from Australia! Thank you so much, Belinda for hanging out with me and my students. They LOVED having you as much as I did! Nearly all of my students were painting this week, from kindergarten through third grade. This was great because it meant low prep for me (aside from the initial painting prep which, as you know, is time consuming!). I love painting and I love teaching painting with my students. In fact, you can find out all about our supplies, set up and routines here! And, in case you are wondering, yes, my kids did draw all over this dress! Actually, they drew self portraits in the frames that was printed on this fabric and then I stitched it into a dress. You can find out more here. My third graders spent two art classes painting these large Chinet plates for their circle loom weaving project. On the first day, we reviewed painting routines and created concentric circles. On the second day, we painted patterns on our plates. These make me so stinkin' happy! I cannot wait to weave with these guys tomorrow! My latest new favorite thing: lidded ice cube trays. I found mine on the Walmart website but they are available in lots of places. The reason I love them: they gonna keep my paints from drying out. I've tried egg cartons and regular ice cube trays...but the paint always dries. Hoping these prove to be the solution. Since we are all painting, I thought wearing this dress would be the safest bet! Loved chatting with the kids about how I created it. Details here. My third graders are killlin' it with these plates and I'm so excited! I talk a lot about craftmanship in my art room...and you can read about that here. Kindergarten hopping on the Kandinsky train with these smaller cardboard circles they are painting for Dot Day. We totally didn't make the Dot Day deadline...and that's okay with me. These are so sweet! So I'm doing something crazy: I'm doing two different weaving lessons with my third graders! While one group is circle loom weaving, another is tree weaving. Before we could paint a landscape on our plates, we had to create two landscape painting sketches. These turned out so stinkin' pretty! Proper blog post on these to come...they will def be framed and featured in the halls soon! My first graders completed their HUGE 14" dots this week! I adapted a lesson that I shared here. On the reverse, we'll be doing something different than the blog post...I'll keep you posted. We will be hanging these like mobiles and I'm so stoked to see them up! Another day of painting, another painted dress by me. After creating their two small painting sketches, my third graders had to pick their favorite to paint on their plate. I'll keep you posted on how their tree weaving goes! YOU GUYS. LIKE, WHY?! I got a ton of questions on painting with children this week. So I did a blog post and have a podcast dropping later this week on this very topic! Check out my new art teacherin' tool belt! Chrissie makes them CUSTOM to your interests! I love mine. You can find out more about Chrissie and her designs here. FINALLY getting our Getting to Know You sculptures up. I meant to go in to school on Sunday and knock it out...no dice. Did y'all celebrate Dot Day? We did...we just didn't get everything up in time. Or AT ALL...and that's okay. I'm excited to see everything complete and on display. I cannot wait to share with you my sweet second grader's embroidery lesson. Stay tuned!