Look what I found at the school bake sale! This awesome small ceramic storage container is actually a disposable cupcake box.
The box is holding 24 painted ceramic penguins. Each figurine fits into a cupcake well. The wings and flippers fit into little grooves around the well. The pieces are really secured in there!
These disposable cupcake boxes make great storage!
The ceramic-filled cupcake box is heavy. I added a piece of masonite underneath as a tray.
Disposable bakery cupcake holder is great for organizing and storage.
Now the pieces are safely stored until the art show.
I just learned about a fabulous free resource – the Digital Comic Museum. You can download complete vintage comic books for free! Most are from the comic book Golden Age (1930s-40s) and all are in the public domain and copyright free. Majority are US comics with a handful of Canadian and Australian/New Zealand titles.
This is a fabulous resource for SO MANY LESSON PLANS in art, art history, design, illustration, graphic arts, U.S. history, propaganda and communications at every level from upper elementary through college.
(Note: if you read Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & ClayYOU MUST CHECK OUT THIS SITE! It is a like a visual companion to the novel).
I read about the DCM on Free Technology for Teachers. If you are a blogger or a teacher, please check out their site for lots of great resources.
Stop the presses! I just discovered a FABULOUS source for online children’s picture books. TumbleBooks, available online for free through some Public Libraries in the U.S.
Some libraries require viewers to hold a library card, but some do not.
WANT TO TRY IT OUT? Google ‘Tumblebooks free’ or try my steps below.
STEP 1:
Start by clicking here and CLICK ON ‘Tumblebooks’ or this icon
The three books are available as a ready-made playlist running 17 minutes. Project and go!
Go to your local library’s website and see if they offer Tumblebooks. Some school districts offer it as well – check out the school library’s website. Tumblebooks has some iPad books for kids as well (note: I was unable to read Tumblebooks on my iPhone).
Enjoy!! Leave a comment if this works for you. Do you have a favorite Tumblebook?
How about a cool, retro how-to-draw book? You can read What to Draw and How to Draw It online. The second graders loved drawing owls using the illustrations in this book.
Using Sharpies, students draw the outline of the fish as a step-by-step. I tell students to draw a large ‘rainbow’ for the back, ‘smile’ for the belly, and triangle for the tail. We divide the body with a few vertical lines.
Kinds of Lines
Each section is filled with a different kind of line. We use
spirals
diagonal
wavy
zig zag
vertical
horizontal
dotted
dashed
Add SECRET (white crayon) lines
Now for the SECRET! Use the white crayon to add more lines around and in-between your black lines (the white lines are hard to see and therefore ‘secret’). For best results, encourage students to press hard with the white crayon. Tell students you will tell them the secret when we paint the fish.
Day 2: Paint
Paint with purple, blue and green watercolors. Listen to the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ as the SECRET lines pop out from the watercolor. It is OK for colors to overlap (the cool colors mix beautifully).
by Marcus Pfister (or 
).