Let the bowl making commence!

 

I can't believe that it has already been a year since our first Empty Bowls Dinner here at High Shoals Elementary but it has! So, here I sit, exhausted from a day of bowl making with my sweet students. We will host our 2nd Annual Empty Bowls dinner on Friday, November 16th. The kids are excited to begin the preparations and with a year under their belts, they know what to do and how to help. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Empty Bowls Dinners; they are events planned to raise money for organizations that feed the hungry. When a guest comes to our dinner, they get to take a student made bowl with them as a reminder of those less fortunate. Our kids have really embraced this service project and even though they would love to keep the bowls they make for them selves, they know that this project is about helping others. It's a great lesson for all students to experience and I'm proud to be a part of it. The students are working in pairs pounding out their slab and we are draping them over plastic bowl molds to take their shape. The Athens paper wrote a nice article about the event. Thanks to Pinterest, I saw a great idea for using hot glue to make patterned rolling pins. I love Pinterest almost as much as I love my glue gun :)

Fall display and my deep love and effection for textured painted papers

It's Fall y'all! I recently created a Fall themed display in our hall way to celebrate the new season and also our upcoming Fall Fest here at High Shoals Elementary. I made the "art" part and our PTO added the flair with straw bails and pumpkins and the banner. I always use my "kid power", as one of the moms called it once, to get big jobs done. I would much rather see kid made work in the halls than my own, so we spent a Friday in my class working on all the parts to this display. All the classes that came to me on that day contributed in some way; whether is was making painted papers or using those painted papers to create leaves and kids. I used a similar technique to make this display (which is the most viewed post on my blog). Here are photos of my "kid power" at work!

        They were having just a little bit of fun.

       This paper was so gorgeous, I just wanted to keep it!

  The kids love it when I come and just squirt a big ol' glob of paint for them to spread.

   All of the characters were made by teams of students that planned and created them.

   When I think of Fall, I think of playing in a big pile of leaves, don't you?