the man who walked between the towers

Great Artwork! Great Story! Kids love it!

"In 1974, as the World Trade Center was being completed, a young French aerialist, Philippe Petit, threw a tightrope between the towers and spent almost an hour walking, dancing, and performing tricks a quarter of a mile in the sky.

The towers are gone, but their memory, as well as the space between them, are celebrated in this award-winning masterpiece."

Art Project teaching one point perspective will be posted soon!

we're back, and so are the kids!

Today was the mark of our first full week of school! And the kids are back with their great and unique personalities! In my K4 class today we were cutting, and I was going around to the different kids helping them. When I got to one of my little boys, he was holding his scissors wrong. So as I was showing him how to do it, he said I was just like his mom. How sweet! I could just see her helping him with crafts and projects. It's wonderful to know parents are still involved with their children's activities at home. He continued on to say that I had hair just like his mom's too! So I asked, "Oh, she has pretty hair?". He looked up to me with huge eyes and said, "Oh No!" I guess I asked for that! :)

end of the year bulletin board

I made the background by gluing large pieces of tissue paper on top of each other. I watered-down some Elmers glue so it was easier to apply. My cute alligator is colored in with oil pastels, thus the bright colors.

Hope all who read this have a wonderful summer! See you in August!

how to remember the order of planets...

Well, today my fouth grade class told me how they remembered the order of the planets. They were so excited to tell me because I was their inspiration... I guess.

"Miss Vasso Eats Marshmallows Just So Underneath the North star."

It's a good thing I teach Art and not Science. I couldn't figure out what "E" stood for. Duh! :)

potato or tornado???

The other day, my K4 students were drawing BIG pictures for a project. I was encouraging BIG arm movements, BIG shapes… BIG everything. Some of the boys were doing big circle-like movements, calling them tornados. As I would walk around the room, all the students would try to get my attention saying things like, “Miss Vasso, look at my beautiful drawing!!!” Of course every picture is “beautiful”… in its own way! =) Well, one of the little boys in the tornado groupie kept calling me over. When I made it over to him, he asked me if I liked his “potatoes”. He then went back to making his big swirls with the crayons and said, “ See Miss Vasso, I’m making ‘potatoes’ just like them!” He was pointing to the rest of his tornado groupie. Well, I couldn’t help but laugh a little bit. What a cutie! And I must say, that was the most creative drawing of a “potato” I had ever seen!

target practice...

Yesterday I brought in my pottery to show my high school students. During the day all my elementary and middle schoolers saw them sitting out. My elementary students were amazed; their amazed at just about anything! :) I took the opportunity to explain the different processes to my middle schoolers; how I made them, the time and techniques that went into each piece. At first they were a bit uninterested, but very quickly there were asking wonderful questions, and were being quite observant! I was encouraged! My last hour had come, and I was pretty excited to show my high schoolers. I was sure that if my middle schoolers were asking such great questions, surely my high schoolers and I would really get into the subject. Well... after seeing the pieces, they were pretty indifferent. As I was talking, I felt like I was talking to a wall; they didn't really care. Then, all of a sudden one of the students got pretty excited and raised his hand. In my mind I sighed, "Finally, I got someone interested!" I called on him, and you know what the booger said as he pointed to one of my beautiful pots, "That would make a great target for target practice; it would smash into a who bunch of pieces!"