Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Mayan Book - Grolier Codex - Activity Page


Free drawing coloring page for the Mayan Civilization.  I'm using this as part of my lesson plan to go in Chase's Social Studies interactive notebook.

Recently, PBS published an article finding that the "Grolier Codex", originally thought to be a forgery, was in fact, a true artifact, depicting deities that were unknown at the time of its discovery and therefore could not be faked.

It has several images linked from a gallery of the pages.  For my unit, I am having Chase study the images, watch some videos on Mayan culture and read the article about the "Grolier Codex".  Also, there was an interesting tidbit about the Quetzal bird, a very long feathered and beautiful bird, that was seen as a messenger to their bird deity, Quetzalcoatl.  They used the feathers of the male bird for their headdresses and ceremonial adornments.

For this activity/coloring page, I have adorned the borders with Mayan styled drawing, using the apparent number code from the codex as the side borders.  The Mayan culture revolved around the stars and the dates, so those would be recurrent themes as well.  The sheet is 8.5" x 11" but can be shrunken down for interactive notebooks.  I set mine to print as 8" x 10" and deselected "fit to page" in the Windows print options.  Your printer may need adjusting, run a test print.

This could be used for guided drawing.  Tell them to draw a one sided figure, like in my drawing and to exaggerate the nose.  Tell them to draw an animal on top of their head with big eyes, like a funny hat or headdress.  Then they can choose what the character is doing.  Holding corn or a snake by the tail, or holding a spear.  Then, they can decorate the empty spaces with patterns from lines and dots in elliptical shapes, kind of like a rounded rectangle.

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Latest Arty Project - Texas Auction


My family is holding an auction and fundraiser to help my Uncle after losing his wife to cancer this year and he has fallen into some financial strife.  I'm making a new mixed media painting, which will be going to auction.

Spent half the day yesterday and today assembling roses and making petals.  These will be attached to the canvas with gel medium and all painted and incorporated.  I may not be able to send it to Texas in time for the auction, but perhaps as an online auction instead.  I'll have to contact my Aunt for details.  I would prefer to send it directly to the recipient.

I wanted to make something special for the auction, rather than send an existing work.  I may be sending prints of my other works for the actual auction.

Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Tosanoides Obama Pyle Fish

Next assignment for Chase is on the newly discovered "Tosanoides Obama Pyle Fish" from the genus Tosanoides.  They are named after our President for his conservation efforts to expand the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.

So, I've decided to release a little clip art of this cute little fish.  One b&w version with just the lines and another of the colored version.  JPG and PNG version of each.

I used a photo reference from National Geographic's website, taken by Richard Pyle, the man who discovered this new species.  As such, this is a completely free resource with share and share alike permissions.  As in, any products made with this should also be free.  It is an educational resource from a news source and I am uncertain if it is in the public domain or not.  This is, of course a hand drawing that is watercolor painted on card stock paper.  So would fall into fair use, however, I feel this little fish should swim freely.

Don't know what his non-Scientific nickname will be, I am guessing "Obama Fish"  ;D

Download on TeachersPayTeachers



This fish will be named in honor of President Obama for his commitment to protecting nature through the expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
PHOTOGRAPH BY RICHARD PYLE

Bonus!  Free Coloring Page!  Just randomly decided to make a coloring version print page.  You can give guided instruction for the colors of the fish, or use print outs of my watercolor version as example, or let the students color however they like.

Monday, September 5, 2016

Digital Stamps


I have several digital stamp files, wondering if they would be useful clip arts for TeachersPayTeachers.

Just printed some out onto watercolor paper as a batch of Patron rewards.  Debating whether or not I should color them with my shimmering watercolors or send them blank for them to paint/color as they please.

These can be attached to a card face as focal images of greeting cards, or added to art journals, scrapbook and mixed media collages.  I've tested my printer ink and it doesn't seem to bleed with a light amount of watercolor.  Not sure how it would do with a heavy wash yet.

These are currently available on my Patreon and also my Gumroad as digital downloads.  Print on paper of choice and they are ready to go.  If you have a laser printer, you can do image transfers, just remember to mirror the image first.  That is the ideal method of transferring digital stamps into art collage/art journals, as it gives it a perfect blend.  But you can also print onto tissue paper, attach it to card stock securely first, and then, print and it can be decoupaged into the project and the paper will fade into the bg.

So, opinion poll, painted or not?

Friday, September 2, 2016

First Weeks in Review + Dungeon Crawl!

PBS Learning Media Storyboard for new school year
Friday and gave Chase a test and storyboard assignment this morning to review what we've learned so far.  I made my own storyboard to highlight a few of the things.  Just a good way to keep track of what we've learned.  Don't see anyway to embed these.  It is similar to the Glogster posters, though those you can embed.  However, Glogs take a long time to load, I think it is all flash or something.  This could also be used as a presentation for projects.  Though Windows 10 has a built in app that might work better.  It's called Sway.  I'll have to play around with it a bit to see how useful it would be.  The storyboards are simple, and that can be good enough.

In the afternoon, we did our first dungeon crawl.  Only made it to the first room of the Old Aqueducts, though.  We had a random encounter with 4 tiny scorpions and they kicked our butts because we couldn't hit them!  Hahaha.  Well, after Kai (Chase's fighter) fell into a floor trap that nearly killed him, we took on a huuuuge centipede and destroyed it.  Then there was lewts.  Emberlyn (my pirate/rogue) found some gold and split it (evenly, of course! ---- not!) and Kai found a glowing gem and a cool sword.  Our NPC, Asila, a second year Healer student, found a small silver ring.

That is as far as we got, had to have them take a short rest...  Guess we're combining 3.5 and 5 rules to try to simplify things.  Rather than make us spend the night in the dungeon when it should really take one night only.  We're exploring a tunnel under our school and they would probably have to send a search party after us if us first years didn't make it back.  But hey, we did sign the waivers that adventurer's school could mean our deaths!

Chase has no problem solving math problems on the fly as he rolls his saves and attacks.  He did well with the roleplay part, with a character afraid of bugs and our first encounters....  My character flaw has a fear of ghosts.  Kevin wanted us each to have a flaw to make our characters more interesting and have fun to roleplay with.

For our table, we bought a shower curtain as it is cheaper than a large vinyl mat, cut it to size and we're using overhead markers to write on it.  He made a dungeon map to go under it and drew on all the features and added tokens as encounters.


The DM notes and encounter tokens!


New miniatures for our characters from Reaper Mini.



The full table view of the dungeon.
Oops, just remembered, forgot to do school pictures today.  Well, maybe we'll take them on Monday.  We were still discussing what to do with them.  Last year it was Minecraft themed, where I used a green screen to superimpose him into a Minecraft scene he composed.  I think he wants to do that again, but after looking at the portrait of Benjamin Franklin with his favorite things to present himself as a person who believed in the Age of Enlightenment, he might want a tailored portrait.  Maybe styled as a painting.  Only my Wacom isn't compatible with Windows 10, plus I managed to lose my stylus!

Last year's pictures!  2015-2016 School Year - 3rd Grade

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Dual Challenge - DIY


This week's DIY, I have a double challenge set up for Chase.  Both of these should be pretty easy but as an extra bit of work, I want him to use the Storyboard Tool on PBS Learning Media to do the assignment portion, where he adds in his media, text, links and details with a bg and on a timeline style layout like a blog post.  It's similar to Glogster which he is already familiar with, but has a much cleaner design and an easy to use template for drag and drop and rearrangement of elements.  Actually, it's like a website builder.

I'm going to be having him use this for 'week in review' type of assignments.  Where he'll be adding what he has learned through out the week to his storyboard.  So I want him to practice with it so he is prepared.  I'll have to make one as well so he has an example to work from.  Do our own, homeschool so far story.