Art Studio & Surfer Girl Word Sort Freebie!

So yesterday I started teaching our district's Art Studio. It's a class that has 2 different sessions (younger & older elementary). The objective of this class is to have students explore all the different art mediums, and to learn the elements of art. And so we began with this book:

Those of you not familiar with this book, it is an autobiography of Tomie dePaola and his first experience with an art teacher/lesson. The idea in the book, is for students to be able to create their art how they want, and not have to follow step-by-step instructions.

Here's what the kiddos came up with...

This was done at the sketching station.

They collaged their own sketch books.

We also read The Dot and the students created a mural stamping dots.

At the watercoloring station, they learned different techniques of watercolor.

Now for the Freebie! I've been searching and searching for just the right clip art because I had this Surfer Girl idea. I couldn't find it, until yesterday while on Pinterest, someone pinned My Cute Graphics free clip art, and voila!! Click on the picture below to download.

Enjoy!

3 Corners -- An R-Controlled Word Review Game

Next week is testing, so we've been hitting the review road heavily the last couple of weeks. A fun game to play with your little darlin's is called 3 Corners. This game is easily adaptable for just about any concept. We played it to review R-Controlled words. So here's how to play...in one corner you post "ar" in another corner, post "or" and in the third corner post "er," "ir," and "ur." I give my students 5 seconds to find a corner they want. Once they are all in a corner, you call out a word, for example "corn." The students check themselves to see what corner they are in. If anyone is in the "or" corner, they have to go sit down. My students wanted to keep playing and playing. What I like about this game is that it gets the students moving around, they have to self check to see if are out or not. Yeah, I know, you'll have those students who will just follow the crowd, but overall it's a great way to review. And for those little strugglers, they can gain some confidence if they are just following the crowd.