The Art Room is Haunted

Well, did that get your attention? Good. Actually, I am not a believer in ghosts, but I am a believer in ghost-themed Halloween art! Here are some of my students’ latest projects. We did a lot of art this month and it was hard to narrow down which pieces to show. Settle in, because it’s a collection!

My Kindergarten students made three Halloween art projects this month. I told them they could add details, and they delivered!

Yes, my lashes are real...

Hieroglyphic pumpkin...

 The lesser-known punk rock graffiti pumpkin:

First grade has been busy with two different collage creations: Jack-o-lanterns and Spooky Night Scenes. I love it when a student brings something from their own life into their art. Jorge added glasses to his jack-o-lantern (below, right), that look like his glasses.

Second grade made collages by tracing their handprints to create ghosts, and adding details to their night scenes.

Not your garden variety ghost. This one has major personality.

Third grade created Haunted house scenes with watercolor painted skies, which contributes to a moody look.

Isn't this sky fantastic? Moody and stormy and expressive.

Fourth graders have been making haunted pumpkin patch drawings. Kids this age have great imaginations. Some are so passionate about the details that I feared they still would be working on Halloween art at Thanksgiving. Luckily, they completed their art in time, no doubt inspired by my encouragment to "Finish this now--or else!" 

Fifth grade made haunted house scenes, adding visual texture to their skies, and I love the effect. This is similar to third grade’s scenes, but with skies done in marker. After the paint water flood caused by third grade, I suddenly recalled how very messy it is to paint with kids and I felt the universe telling me to have fifth grade color their skies with markers. (Alternate title for this post: I Survived A Paint Project with Third Graders.)

Seventh grade created 3-D haunted houses. It was fun to do something more sculptural, and I like how the houses look. They folded, glued, cut, and added extra touches to create these scenes. One seventh grader started putting glue onto the wall, but that didn’t qualify as an “extra touch” in my book. So much personality, these teens have…  

Sixth grade is doing a new project I will share next month, but I also have a few more still life scenes from our September project to share. These kiddos were not finished with their still life drawings when I posted in September, so consider this Part 2 for that project.

8^th graders also had a few late submissions with their still life drawings, and they’re too good not to share: 

It’s been fun to share my students’ spooky art with you but I must go. Halloween is approaching fast, and my cauldron needs stirring…

Skunk in the Bunk

She’s been sprayed!

She is our sweet dog, Bella, and she had a skunk encounter tonight. Technically, the skunk was not in any bunks. But the skunk smell wafted throughout several rooms of the house, including bedrooms, so I’m justifying the title of this post that way. Also, it’s my blog and I can name posts what I want! (PS: I’ve earned it after the skunk drama.)

We adopted Bella almost three years ago from a rescue organization. She came already named (a new name chosen by the organization). I wanted to name her something funny like “Spike” or “Jaws” but I didn’t want to give her a third name to learn, so Bella remained her name. But I digress.

In our nearly three years together we have not had a skunk situation. We live a few blocks from canyons, so maybe we should count our lucky stars that she hasn’t been sprayed before now. But all that changed in an instant. Around seven pm I let Bella out for her nightly run around the backyard. Suddenly, she’s racing back toward me and I instantly smell that unmistakable stench of skunk. She’s rubbing her face against the ground again and again, and I realize she’s been sprayed in the face and is trying to rub away the pain. I call for help from my middle kiddo, technically the owner of the dog, and Google “Skunk spray to a dog’s face.” The article recommends putting a wet cloth to the dog’s face or eyes. Right. Have you met this dog? She doesn’t do anything I want her to, so my comical attempts to wet her face are met with racing in circles, running outside (toward the skunk?!), and general disobedience. It’s like negotiating with a two-year-old. Not possible.

We decide to spray Bella down outside with the garden hose, mindful to steer clear of the gigantic spider spinning a web nearby (the one I almost walked into a few days ago. It’s at face level, naturally). Bella loves the hose, so this helps not only with getting the skunk oil out of her eyes but hopefully off her fur, too.

I take a one minute break to text my nextdoor neighbors for advice, since their dog recently was sprayed by a skunk. Wonderful neighbors they are, they deliver skunk shampoo within a few minutes.

We move our party from the yard to the bathroom. We start giving her a sponge bath, being careful not to get the shampoo in her eyes, which are already red and irritated. She is happily bribed to be washed since there are two cooked hamburgers in a plastic bag on the edge of the sink. The burgers were already on the sink, if you must know. That’s where I always keep hamburgers. Don’t you? Okay, truthfully they were in the fridge but I was happy that I had them cooked and ready to go—because when you are having a SSS (skunk stench situation) you don’t pause to cook burgers. At least I don’t.

As we were cleaning the dog, and laughing about this strange turn of events, it occurred to me that a combination hamburger stand/dog wash station has untapped potential. No one has capitalized on this yet. (If someone reading this ends up building one, I insist on being paid at least twenty dollars for the idea.) “Skunk ‘n' Grub” could be its name. Although, it doesn’t have to be only about skunk spray emergencies—it could be just for routine dog washes. Maybe “Suds ‘n' Grub.” If you’re vegetarian you could go to its sister franchise, “Suds ‘n' Spuds,” for delicious fries made from happy potatoes, grown in organic soil under majestic blue Idaho skies. $14.99 buys your dog a wash/dry and you all the tasty fries you can eat.

Anyway, we washed the dog and her eyes seemed a lot better. Bella shook the water from her coat several times during our rinse down, so now I don’t need to take the bath I’d planned. In related news, our bathroom floor looks a lot shinier than it was yesterday. And Bella’s coat is also shinier than it was yesterday. We used the blow drier on her a little bit, and brushed her fur while it dried. For her spa treatments, she lay regally on several towels, pleased to have not one but two humans doting on her. (As it should be, I could hear her thinking.) 

Her eyes were red from the spray but she is happily sleeping now. 

The timing of tonight’s Surprise Shower is amusing for two reasons. First: I actually pondered taking Bella to the DIY dog wash place today. She was overdue for a wash. But I had lots of art to grade and decided to put off the trip another day or two. Now I’ve saved myself a trip if Bella’s home bath takes care of the skunky residue. Truthfully, timing is rarely on my side. I’ve often washed my car the day before it rains. In keeping with this trend, a skunk spraying would happen a few hours after I’d taken the dog to be washed. This particular episode marks a change from how things often work in my crazy world (“Sarah’s Shenanigans,” as my friend Nicole aptly named them). I’m not saying I’m thrilled about the spraying, but timing was somehow on my side. This one time.

The other interesting piece of timing is that Hubby is on a work trip. My mom always joked that disasters happened only when my dad was out of town, so we are keeping the family tradition alive. But seriously, if there is a silver lining in all this (besides the clean bathroom floor, blog post inspiration, and idea for Suds ‘n' Grub), it’s this: if Hubby had been here, I would have yelled for help and he would have helped immediately. But because he wasn’t here, I handled it on my own. I used to doubt whether I could handle unexpected trouble. I used to think other people had better ideas about how to handle problems. Luckily, over time my confidence has grown. I think some of us often underestimate ourselves. Obviously, this wasn’t a dire situation like carrying an injured person off of Half Dome and performing emergency surgery on the way down with nothing but a few safety pins and a flashlight. But these unexpected situations are a good reminder to me that I can handle things I haven’t encountered before. I wish I’d spent less time second-guessing myself over the years. Still, I’m proving to myself that I can handle the unanticipated.

So that is the tale of a lifted skunk tail, and the trouble that followed. It’s not a fairy tale, but it does have a happy ending in that Bella survived her skunk encounter and we did, too. After her bath, she soon returned to her happy self, snoozing in her favorite spot. I’ll check with the vet tomorrow to see if there is anything else we need to do. As for me, I have a dozen towels to wash, but that’s okay. And on the plus side, the lingering smell of skunk in the house distracts one’s eye from all the dusty surfaces! 

Ready, Set, Art!

Sharpen your colored pencils, folks—it’s art time!

School started a month ago and my superstar art students have been hard at work/fun, creating projects.

My Kindergarten students are a delightful group. They have so many questions, so much enthusiasm. They love to share, and they give me things they drew, like this drawing by Jake.

He presented this to me after we drew jack-o-lanterns. It could be a happy face, it could be a jack-o-lantern, it could be a self-portrait, it could be a drawing of me (I’m flattered!), or it could be a portrait of Mr. T, complete with mohawk. Who’s to say? Art is in the eye of the beholder.

Anyway, Kindergarten began the school year by coloring butterflies. It felt like a good project because the kids could personalize their butterflies, and practice their cutting and gluing skills. Some are still four, and I have to give props to my young friends for what they made. Scissors are complicated when you are only four or five. I love this wiggly, energetic group of kiddos.

My first and second grade students also made butterfly art, but theirs are a bit different. I created butterflies from paper plates (you know I love a good deal, and paper plates are inexpensive and a fun twist on a flat piece of paper). If you want to try this at home, you will need 1.5 paper plates per butterfly. You’ll also need a stapler (or hot glue), a pipe cleaner/fuzzy stick and markers. You cut the paper plate in half to make the upper wings, and cut a plate into quarters for the bottom wings. Staple them together and watch them fly!

2nd grade

I wanted to hang the butterflies from the art room ceiling, like a colorful canopy of wings, but the fire marshal inspected the school last week and we are not allowed to hang anything from the ceiling. (How are we supposed to be artists if we can’t hang fun things from the ceiling? Sigh. I guess I’ll have to think of a different way to display these beautiful creatures. Maybe outside somewhere…)

My third, fourth and fifth graders have been drawing shapes and practicing shading. I asked them to make a variety of shapes on their papers and to try blending one color into another, within a shape. They were asked to blend colors on at least three shapes, but some kids shaded a lot more than three. The trick to blending is to do layers. Put your darker color on one side of the shape. Put your lighter color on the opposite side. In the middle, layer the lighter color first, and go over it with the darker color (but not at full strength). Try to make a soft blend. Some of the kids loved this project, others did not, but they all tried, and so I have promoted them from Beginning Blenders to Gradation Graduates.

Sixth and eighth graders created still life drawings with origami borders. The items in their still lives were everyday items (literally ones I had at home already, plus a few I bought at the 99 Cent Store). Art doesn’t need to be super fancy—just sketching an everyday object is a good way to learn how to draw things realistically. I asked the kids to put their items on a piece of origami, almost like a placemat, and to create an origami border around the edge of their paper to frame their work. I love origami paper for its wonderful patterns. There is so much you can do with it. It’s not just for making cranes!

In my next post I may include a few more still lifes. Some students did not finish this project before I needed to put this post together. It will be worth the wait, I promise. 

My seventh graders used metallic origami paper to create collages on construction paper. I told them they could pick their subject matter, which is always fun for kids. There were lots of meme references. I love that the kids came up with so many different subjects. Here are a few of them:

And so we are wrapping up our first month back at school. My voice is a little bit raw and my feet hurt, but my heart is happy to see all these creative kids use their imaginations.

‘Til next time, be safe, be healthy, and I’ll be back again soon with some silly and spooky Halloween art.