Art with Mrs. O'Neill

  CRAYONS!CRAYONS!CRAYONS! It's time to go through supplies and close up for the summer, so what do you do with all those old crayons?  I usually sort through and re-use all the unbroken crayons. However, this year I have too many left over! So, I am bringing them home to recycle into new crayons! I've tried this before and my students loved using the crayons I made... Here is a great way to do it: -Peel all your unwanted crayons. (This is the worst part, my daughter helps and we get pretty creative with it and have crayon peeling races or see how many different ways we can peel them, like a banana, etc...) -Break them into small pieces and I I use a silicon muffin or candy mold.(silicon is easier to pop crayons out) I like the star because it gives you points to color with. I use mine just for crayons, because it makes a mess out of your baking pan. -Melt them on about 200-250  -Remove, wait til cool  -And, Viola! you have new "cool" shaped crayons to use. You can

I've been enjoying Inservice with my fellow Clarksville Elementary art teachers for the last few days, here are some great tissue paper masks we have been making. This was super easy to do, and I can't wait to try it with my students! You pre-cut tissue paper strips then apply glue into a mask form and do about 3 layers of glue and tissue. We chose to do either warm, cool, or neutral colors. After the masks were dry we popped them out of the forms, glued them to a construction paper background and added embellishments.

I have only been at Rossview Elementary a short while, and am thoroughly enjoying making art with the students. We recently had a great "Arts in the school night" to celebrate Youth Art Month. The entire school works together to make art about different cultures around the world. Each grade level divides into continents and studies the art and culture of the people from that place. All of the teachers did an amazing job displaying student art work!  PRE-K & KINDERGARTEN Australia Students made Aboriginal Dot Paintings of a Kangaroo. They also created x-ray fish and learned that the native aboriginal people believe that by showing the insides of an animal you are showing the animals true feelings.  Aboriginal Dot Paintings FIRST GRADE Europe & Antarctica Students painted whales and made torn paper penguins and also drew penguins for their Antarctica display. We also created "Rose windows" and they made several creative projects in their classrooms f