Kovescence of the Mind: crafts

Showing posts with label crafts. Show all posts

Our school just cut our elementary art elective, but we have a growing middle and high school art program. I just stared teaching photography to my journalism students with some amazing results. Craftivities, like the ones we did for Frankenstein, have always been a big hit with my high school kids.

So what is my point in all of this?

Art is good for students, and art enhances learning.

In addition the play-therapy of coloring has begun to take on new meaning in the adult world with the advent of adult coloring books.

The combination of art as a tool to engage students in learning and coloring as a stress-relief therapy for my seniors entering their last semester of high school led me to an interesting idea.

Class-sized coloring sheets.

This Disney's The Sword in the Stone coloring sheet I received as free reward through my Disney Rewards Club. We just finished read T.H. White's book The Once and Future King as an intro to our Arthurian Legend Unit, so this sheet seemed perfect for my class while they watched the Disney movie as a reward for all finishing part I of the novel.

At first I was just going to print a copy of the page for every student. However, when I opened to print it, I remembered that last year my coworker and I printed a Pinterest image of The Hulk on multiple sheets of paper to make it poster-sized. So, I did it with this page and here is how:

1)Save your coloring sheet as a pdf if it isn't already

2) Open your pdf with Adobe

3) On the print menu change the settings

4) Select Poster Printing

5) Tile Scale: Set this to somewhere between 200 and 400 depending on how many pages you want the image on. The dotted lines on the preview image show the borders of the pages that will print.

6) Set Overlap to between .25 and .5 to create a border to overlap the images when they are printed and assembled.

7) Click back and forth between Tile Scale and Set Overlap to display the pages printing on the preview.

8) Print

9) Have students color their portion of the image

10) Cut the white margin off on of each side and lay out on table or floor to piece the image together.

11) Tape together and display

My classroom art is held to my whiteboard by these great pushpin magnets from Ava's Office Solutions and will be available for purchase on Amazon soon.

I have received a complimentary game to review.

The opinions here are 100% mine! This post contains affiliate links.

As a teacher and a female member of our species, I adore Pinterest and find it so useful at home and at work, so I am linking up for the Pinterest Pick 3 from Pawsitively Teaching.

There are so many creative images I pin in a month that it makes it difficult to select just three for this post. Click on the images to get to the Pin to save it for yourself.

I don't know about you but being able to easily search and organize my pins makes my lesson planning smoother. Pin4Ever is my greatest online discover in the last month. It only works with Firefox browser, but it will revolutionize your Pinning. It allowed me to back up my pins to my laptop and search and delete over 100 duplicate pins from my boards.

It took me a couple of hours to clean my boards up, but it was so much easier with this product. I my account get hacked a year or so ago, and I lost a couple of boards, so the back up feature of Pin4Ever provides peace of mind.

The change in temperature in my classroom makes layers a MUST, but too many accessories get in the way when I am teaching, so I love cowl scarves. As a knitter I make my own and make them as gifts too. That is why I was so excited to find this cute new pattern for beginner knitters.

Purl stitches are something I only recently learned to do, so this was perfect practice. Isn't it adorable?

What teacher or woman for that matter doesn't love bags? These simple 10-minute bags are great for pencils, makeup, purses, gym bags...really they are good for anything. I am thinking my teacher's aid needs a couple as a thank you at the end of the year.

Be sure to follow me for more great pins.

Visit Sarah's profile on Pinterest.

Check out all the other picks

An InLinkz Link-up

I am so glad I have started linking up again with Monday Made It because I actually got some projects done last week.

My first Made It is for my classroom. We are under construction, and I can't get in my room to set up, so I am making stuff at home for when I can get back in my room.

I snagged 4 small canvases from my daughter's collection. Yes, I asked her first. I drew different line patterns on each one, and painted them in my classroom colors: purple and green.

I'm not nearly the artist some people are, but they turned out cute. Then I ordered my first foll of vinyl for my Cricut. Why did I not buy this stuff years ago???? I cut READ out and stuck them on the canvases.

I haven't used my Cricut in probably a year, so here is a to a whole new set of projects with it!

I had some ribbon left from the classroom make over last year, so I added that to each canvas. They will hang on the wall in the new reading corner I am setting up in the fall.

My second Made It is for my house. I recently took down the old (from my childhood) fish curtain in our bathroom; the window is frosted but I wanted a curtain

I bought a yard of fabric and made a curtain for our bathroom. It amazes me how two pictures taken at the same time in the same room have such different coloring.

This past week I made a new freebie for my store.

I just added to my Teachers Pay Teacher Store that is just for bloggers and/or TPT Sellers. Any blogger could use this set of forms as I made the Excel and Google Doc Versions editable, so you can personalize it for your social media.

One version even has the growth formulas to show you what your increase in followers was from one month to the next.

There five versions of this document included in this file. Each digital sheet has enough space for two years worth of data, but you can always open a new blank copy. The PDF has space for 18 months worth of data.

PDF version on four pages to print out for those of you who would like to do it by hand.
An Excel version of the basic blog and seller statistics that can be edited to fit your needs.
A Google Sheets version of the basic blog and seller statistics that will open in your Google Drive and can be edited.
An Excel version of the blog and seller statistics that includes formulas to calculate growth each month.
A Google Sheets version of the blog and seller statistics that includes formulas to calculate growth each month and will open in your Google Drive and can be edited.

Be sure grab it now as I don't know how long it will be free. Don't forget to leave some LOVE afterwards.

I made my entire store on sale!

See some more great Monday Made It:

Sadly this is my first Monday Made It of summer vacation, which is more than half over.

I spent some time of Etsy this past week; well, I wasted some time anyways. I found a ton of super cute pencil bags. I decided to try my hand at one.

I stumbled upon this little gem of a website in the process and wasted another hour or so.

Amber's Pencil Case Tutorial was exactly what I wanted to make.

I used her tutorial on box corners since it has been some time since I did these.

The pig one is for my oldest for back to school.

I've made three so far and got zippers yesterday to make two more. Then my dear friend's daughter bought fabric and zipper for me to make her one.

Maybe I should give one away...thoughts?

I have started a YouTube Channel. I have recorded two of my Periscopes and posted them.

I am still working on getting the focus and sound right.

The first one is my unboxing from my Oriental Trading Company Blogger Program Box.

The second one is a walk through of what is in my student data binder.

I made my oldest clean her room and made her a window seat from a tall, skinny bookshelf we cleaned off when we pulled books out for my classroom.

It looked pretty bad at first, but she got rid of four garbage bags of stuff. I moved all the YA novels out of her room, so I can take them to school, which freed up a lot of space. She doesn't have much in the way of clothes left, so back to school shopping will be fun.

I'd say it was a fairly genius use of the book shelf that was bought for me when I was her age. I am getting some bins this week to go under it, and we will make her a cushion too.

Lastly I made a new game (an am giving it and a map away)

My classroom is a place where maps are used and created on a regular basis; there is just something about them that make my students and I happy. We create them and use them on a daily basis.

I hate folding maps in my car and can never get them back the way they first were in the package. Scrunch Map solves that problem. These maps are made of a coated fabric that is tear and water resistant. What more could you ask for in a product for your classroom?

This game is currently free on my Teachers Pay Teachers store, so be sure to stop and grab it. I used the Scrunch Map and some glass stones from the craft store.

A sample card

You can enter to win a Scrunch Map of your own

from Round World.

“This review is based strictly on my opinion. Others may have a different opinion or experience with the product listed above. I was provided the sample free of charge by the company or PR agency and I provided my honest opinion. No other type of compensation was received for this review.”

So much time to Pinterest on vacation, so many pins to choose from.

I decided to go holiday themed for the Fourth of July.

First we did some decorating for the holiday weekend.

This was super easy. All you need is a sieve, flour, and cardboard.

Cut a big star or two out of your cardboard. I could have used an old box, but I had just dropped our recycling off at the transfer station. Lay your stencil out on the grass where you want it. Sprinkle some flour into the sieve and shake.

Beware of doing this on windy days as the flour will blow around and leave white streaks. Also lift your stencil up as flat as possible to avoid a Pintrest Fail like the bottom right photo.