I have been getting a lot of emails about links to my templates not working anymore.... a lot of emails. It's nice to know that you are still out there using the projects on this blog. :)  Evidently Google Drive made a change on July 21st of this year to with regards to privacy and the unauthrorized use of documents and images. This changed access to my templates and I wasn't on the ball enough to realize what was going on. There is no way for me to change it but I can grant you access if you request permission using the screen that shows up when you try to access the t ..read more

I planned on coming up with new projects staying at home but I think like many out there I have been just holding my breath with everything going on. However I wanted to remind everyone of some old projects of mine that are easy to do at home in preparation for Easter and Spring. I have been working everyday on my Pysanky, I'll share some photos in a bit but you can decorate eggs easily at home with just a few supplies you already own. These are eggs decorated by a Kindergarten class. MATERIALS REQUIRED: - eggs, I know these may be hard to come by now but even just 1 per child, i ..read more

This is just a short post to remind you about this great project. Grade 1 started their Penguin file folder books yesterday.  It occurred to me that these little books are not utilized enough. The students were so excited to be creating their own book. Using disk tempera paint we painted the front, back and pockets of the book, using the ideas I posted earlier the books are just adapted to be about Penguins instead of Polar Bears. The Grade 1 teacher had stockpiled pre cut bookmarks, tabs, info sheets from previous books.  This made it so easy to create a new one ..read more

This is my take on the Christmas Tree Truck design that is still quite popular this year. I came up with this ornament for Christmas Craft Day so it's a fairly easy one to put together. MATERIALS REQUIRED: - pattern template - corrugated cardboard scrap - red and grey (black and white) acrylic paint - red felt - black felt - red buttons - wooden coffee stir stick - white craft foam - sticky gem - grey glitter paper - garland ties (garland pipe cleaners) - tacky glue - fine sharpie pen - string for hanging PROCEDURE: Using the pattern for the truck body cut one out ..read more

I wanted a new Christmas art project for the bulletin board so this is what I came up with. Grade 1 completed them today. MATERIALS REQUIRED: - white heavier paper for painting background, you also can cheat and just use light blue construction paper - white sketch paper - light blue, white, red, and green liquid tempera or acrylic paint - corrugated cardboard - white and black oil pastel - black paper scraps - white paper strips, I ran mine thru the paper shredder - white glue - gold and silver sequins - red buttons - golden/or silver stars PROCEDURE ..read more

Every year I try to come up with a new art project for Remembrance Day. This is the one we did this year. This was with Grade 1 and it worked very well. MATERIALS REQUIRED: - paper for painting, we used watercolour for background and regular white paper for our poppies - disk tempera paint in blue, yellow, and red - oil pastels - black and grey crayons  - scissors and glue - masking tape - black paper, black buttons and poppy seeds - printed paper with our remembrance day words PROCEDURE: I prepped art boards for all the students.  I taped ..read more

I'm off to Montreal but as I was packing my art supplies I thought I would do a post about my sketchbooks. I use a lot of sketchbooks, some I make some I buy. But I always add a few things that make it work better for me and I thought I would share my sketchbook hacks. First thing I add is a ribbon bookmark, very few sketchbooks have this feature at least not the ones with the paper I like. This is very easy to add, just turn to the back of your sketchbook, cut a ribbon about 4-5 inches longer than your sketchbook, and then tape into place.  I use packing t ..read more

Welcome back to school everyone! I have been seeing a lot of these flower letters lately but wasn't sure how successful it would be as a school project. So I came up with an art hack to make it a bit easier.  Click on image to see larger. MATERIALS & SUPPLIES REQUIRED: - good painting paper, more about this in a minute - disk tempera paint - smallish paint brushes - letters cut out with a cricut, Ellison machine, or just old fashioned template - glue - pencil PROCEDURE: The paper I am using is this white construction paper by SunWorks.  I really like i ..read more