Holiday Greetings from the DZ Art Room

Wow! The holiday season is right here. It's amazing to realize Hanukkah is already over and Christmas will be this coming Tuesday. Whatever holiday you celebrate, I'm sending you the best of wishes for your holidays and the coming New Year!

Sometimes the holidays can be stressful with children underfoot. My children are all grown, but I remember needing a welcome break during the school holidays. Check out the art activities for families at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. They even have Art at Home activities available for download.

Hands on Houston at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft on January 5th is all about making mini accordion books. This activity is free and guaranteed to be fun.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science is a family favorite with my grandkids. I particularly love the Cockrell Butterfly Center.

Your students will be coming back to school to a truly joyous time in the art room! The kiln is finally in and fully functional. You can look forward to clay bowls and more!

We should have some student-made bowls ready for the Houston Food Bank's Empty Bowls in May. This event benefits the Houston Food Bank. It's a great way to do community service work.

The Clay and Crafts Club making polymer clay beads.

I'm looking forward to the Spring Semester with lots of great artwork to come. Until then, Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings and Happy New Year. 

Time Flies When You're Having Fun!

It has been a while since I posted. I hate when time gets away from me, but here we are.

Dias de los Muertos was almost a month ago. All of the fourth and fifth grade students' work was displayed at Lawndale Art Center. Our exhibit was beautiful!

I am currently inputting all of the fourth and fifth grade students' names into Artsonia. If you haven't received a permission slip for Artsonia yet you'll be receiving one before the Winter Holidays. If you received one, but  misplaced it, don't worry. I'll be sending out permission forms to everyone who hasn't returned one.

Currently the Pre-K through First Grade students are working on creating a book. We read two books by Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Mixed Up Chameleon. You can watch a video of Eric Carle talking about the Very Hungry Caterpillar or let him read the book to you. We are going to create a book in each of the classes, so keep your eyes and ears open for news.

Second and Third Graders will be drawing self-portraits and painting them over the next couple of weeks. We'll be using mirrors to draw our self-portraits. Once the drawings are finished we'll be using watercolor to paint them and black marker to for definition.

Fourth and Fifth Graders will be working on contour drawing. We'll be drawing familiar objects, so our first drawing will be one of our shoes. We'll use contour drawing to create our Rodeo Art this year. Students will be drawing a still life of boots and other Western gear.

The kiln is up and working! If you click on the word kiln you'll be able to see a kiln like ours. We are looking forward to creating lots of awesome clay artworks.

Please contact me, Jean King, if you have any questions about what we are doing in the DZ Art Room. My planning and conference time is 7:45 to 8:30 Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday.