Zoo Day

This weekend we went to "Adoption Day" at the zoo. It's just another way that Post Adoption Services continues to bless our family. They teamed up with "Bikers Against Child Abuse" and made our whole day wonderful. The weather was absolutely perfect and it was nice to be outside for a loonnngg time.

Baby Boy took in EVERYTHING. He spotted every animal before we did, pointing and making all kinds of sounds. He said "tweet tweet", "roooaarrr" and spotted all the balls in that place!!!He couldn't stop pointing and talking!!

Ribbit overheard the song " its all about the money, money, money" and started singing " Winnie de Pooh eats honey, honey, honey"....hahahah!!! She was super stoked about seeing elephants and birds and watching the monkeys who she said kept "showing their booties" to her.

Goober HAD to see the rhinos. He is going a report on them in school and wanted to see them in real life. He got to hold a horn, see a rhino skull and look at one up close.

Since we got to the zoo so early the animals were at their best, eating breakfast, playing, chasing each other, fighting. It really was a great day.

I'll post those pictures soon....but I wanted to post some pictures of my students and there best pieces from Art. Gallery Night is Monday night at our school. Each student has 2 to 3 pieces in the show and its an in house competition. It was hard for a lot of my students to pick just 2 to 3 pieces as many of them are sooo talented and have several pieces that they wanted to submit. I LOVE MY JOB AND I LOVE THESE 9th GRADE STUDENTS!!!

I was a little obsessed with the skeleton this year.....just how fascinating our bodies are and how specifically God designed them. This was a mixed media piece...oil pastels and watercolors....aren't they great!!!

These two are showing off their "iphrase" projects. I wanted to move towards more graphic design oriented projects. So we talked about the apple ads and how they use silhouettes to communicate actions or phrases. So each student chose an "iphrase" and an "imove" to capture that phrase. We covered kaolin boards with india ink. Scratched off the negative space, painted it with ink/paint and then scratched back through to show the white kaolin clay letters.   " I Rangers" and "I love".

These 3 are showing off their paper relief projects. We made bisque tiles with deep grooves in them...most of them using architectural themes. We them made pulp and pushed it into this bisque tiles, let them dry and removed them to reveal a low relief! Aren't they beautiful!!!

These 5 are putting in their AMAZING linoleum prints. I LOVE printmaking and try to instill that in my students each year. This is my 2nd time to have this group of kiddos, once in 7th and now...therefore, their printmaking skills were pretty mature and we were able to do 2 projects....one based on Warhols' Pop Culture prints and in the another one I allowed them to make a social comment on any issue that they had a personal opinion about. From left to right...breast cancer, the hunger games theme, gossip, verbal abuse, television and Texas Rangers....you can tell our school is in DFW area by all the Ranger themed art I get :)

These three chose to put in their Expressive self portraits. They were to focus on the lines of a face, how a thin or thick line can create a different meaning. They painted their background in colors that they felt expressed their personality and then composed their self portrait based on that background. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the young man's portrait. He left off an eye and nose because of how concentrated his background is in that space. I call him "Martha Stewart" because he incorporates yarn and glitter glue in a lot of his work...hehehe, he is such a sweet, loving, polite christian young man!!

A lot of my students wanted to submit their ceramic piece so I divided them into girls and guys for the pictures. We did two ceramic projects this year. The handbuilt piece was, in short, giving an inanimate object life...or a personality. The second project was on the wheel...and basically was anything they could create since this is only their second 5 week time period on the wheel. So from left to right we have a cleat with rainbow showstrings (the spikes on the bottom are little feet), a flute conducting music, a coffee mug sleeping :), a very energetic coffee mug and an elephant bowl. I LOVE THESE SWEET YOUNG LADIES!!! See all that long hair? I play with each and every one of their hair as I make my laps around the class and critique....(my little girls hair is curly and doesn't allow for too much hair playing just yet)....some of them beg me to play with their hair longer every day :)

And my boys...from left to right; a bottle opener with buck teeth, a beautiful wheel thrown bowl, a bird vase and a sweating oven....HAHAHAHAHA. The same sweet boy who made the sweating oven decided to comment on drinking in his social comment print and made a large print that said " Drunky is Funky".

I'll post my other kiddos later...this was the only class that I got super organized in ;)