Sunday, May 20, 2012

Funny Faces and Making Watercolors from Dried-Up Markers

Today's surprise came while I was walking the trail at MacIntosh Lake with a couple of friends. There's a great vein of quartzite running through the park, some rocks as large or larger than my living room chairs....  I spotted a small quartzite rock embedded in the middle of the path, with a clump of grass spiking off the top like a head of hair. "Hey!" I said, pointing, "It looks like a face!" A blank face. So we searched the ground for something to lay on the rock to complete the image of a face.... three small acorn hulls and a curvy stick. My friend captured the funny face with her iPhone. We continued our three mile hike, wondering who would notice our funny rock face. Maybe it would make someone smile today!

Which reminds me what happened to my face this week, which wasn't nearly as funny from my point of view. It's a long story, but I'll make it brief: I was hit in the face with a basketball... smacked in the face is more like it. I'm walking along the front of the gym when a wildly thrown ball sought me out and beamed me good on my forehead/nose. Fortunately, it struck me from above the nose and not below. My glasses were bent out of shape, but easily repaired. My nose, on the other hand, was fractured... a small one, but fractured just the same. It's not looking too bad today, three days later. And it doesn't hurt nearly as much as I thought such an injury would. Make-up easily hides the worst of the bruising.

No doubt, I was never meant to be anywhere near a gym unless it's to be part of a school assembly. The only thing I could ever want from a basketball is for it to be still while I used it as a model for a drawing. I do feel safer in my classroom, where I can play with markers and paints all day! Which is why I posted today... to share something I just learned this week: what to do with all those used up, dried up washable markers. You know the ones I'm talking about... the kids leave the caps off, or the marker has just been used over and over again and finally doesn't do what it was made to do.

I'm always seeking ideas for what to do with all left-overs and throw-aways when things get used up. Like empty wet-wipe tubs, or tubes from the copy machines, lids from plastic bowls, glue stick caps, old crayons, ... and used up washable markers. I'd heard about how one could make watercolor from dried up markers.

Since it's the end of the school year, I wanted to get rid of the old markers, but didn't want to just throw them away (in some ways I am like a hoarder).  I thought I could let the students help me sort through the markers as they worked on their project. Last week, while students colored their abstract alphabets, I told them to toss their used up markers in the bin on my desk, and by the end of the week, I had a bin filled with used up markers.

 This week, I made watercolor paint from the old markers. You can see in the photo how simple it is to get the last of the color from the markers by soaking them over night (or over a weekend) in a cup or jar of water. I used tap water, but you could probably get a cleaner paint using distilled water. The longer the markers soak, the deeper and richer the color you'll get. The ones you see soaking in the photo above had been soaking for just a few minutes, but the next day the colors were quite dark and rich. Then you just pour the watercolor into a squeeze bottle with a cap.

If you don't have enough markers to make your own watercolors this way, send out an email to all your teachers and ask for any of their old markers, the ones they're throwing away. You don't even have to use all the same blues to make blue watercolor, or all the same oranges... I mixed the light blues and the dark blues into one hue. The magentas and reds together, the light and dark greens together, etc.

Oh and don't throw away the marker caps... you'll have a basketful of them eventually, so save them. Why, you ask? I haven't any ideas yet, but I'm sure I'll think of something to do with the plastic caps. For starters, they're easy to hold if you need a little circle-maker. Easy for students to hold it while they trace the circle around the base. I've been looking around other art teacher blogs to find out what they do with their old caps, and found this cute idea for making finger puppets at Captain Crafty.

I want to show off some Abstract Alphabets in this post. First Grade students work here isn't colored yet. I'll post the finished ones next week. They look pretty good.

 

Their task was to create an abstract drawing by connecting letters and numbers to create shapes and spaces in which to color. 


 

 
Fourth and fifth graders have been working on Escher-like Tessellations that we started a couple of weeks ago. I let them choose from 12 different animal Roylco tessellation templates to save some time. In the past I showed them how to make their own templates, but it takes longer and many of the students were just not satisfied with the results.



The challenge for the students was tracing the templates and placing them in the right position without any overlapping. They are quite pleased with their drawings. Coloring begins next week, if they don't run out of school days!


That's it for today's post. Next week I'll be remediating students who didn't pass the reading EOG. I'll be the best darn reading teacher I can be because that's what I did before I became the art teacher.  :-)

12 comments:

  1. I always find your posts so fascinating Bea! There's a little bit of everything here. So sorry about your nose! I can well imagine that hurt like heck! Ouch! I also love seeing what your art students do. I think you must be a most brilliant art teacher! xxoo

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    1. Thanks, Marie... I'm really not brilliant at all, but I am resourceful at times! The hoarder in me shows up in my classroom and in mmy drawing room at home. The bridge of my nose doesn't hurt much at all.

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  2. Sorry too about your nose; hope it mends soon - explaining it away can get a bit tedious too I imagine:)
    The idea with the markers is a great one. Will pass that on to our art teachers who are always complaining about not enough paint!

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    1. Yes, students who didn't see it happen only noticed that I wasn't wearing my glasses for a couple of days (I couldn't get to the optician right away due to a series of events that took place right after I walked out of the acute care facility, yet another story left untold!). A second grade student noticed the imprints where my glasses sit on my nose, but because she didn't realize they were actually bruises, I refrained from giving more information than she needed. One first grade student did ask "Don't you wear glasses?" I said "Yes I do, but they broke yesterday." Apparently that was all she needed to know because the 'How?" question never came up, which I was grateful for not having to think of a short, funny explanation without sounding dismissive. Most students just looked at me a bit curiously as I walked past them in the hall, so I only had to respond to the ones that actually came to my class each day. :-)

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  3. Brilliant use of the markers. Hard to believe another year has come and gone.

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  4. So cool! Using some of your ideas with the grandsons.

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  5. I really enjoy the projects that you are working on in the classroom, Bea. Pretty nifty idea with the used markers, also. Kudos to you! So sorry to hear about your accident with the basketball - I am sure that it hurt for quite some time. I wish you a speedy recovery.

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  6. Welcome back. I've missed your posts. They are so full of wonderful ideas. I pass some of them along to my daughters for their children. Boy, I would have loved for you to be my teacher when I was a kid. You take care. Glad your nose didn't get broken. You can find me here:
    http://barb-letschat.blogspot.com/

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  7. love the templates... was there somewhere that you downloaded them from...? Also, I have a ton of markers, pens, highlighters that I would be happy to send you if you need them, or want to start collecting them for next year...

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  8. How wonderful to see a post from you again Bea! Sorry about your nose and your glasses... Your markers idea is clever. I must remember that one as I have a cake tin full of them for when my grndchildren visit. I must sort them out. I have a toy/game cupboard in my living room which my grandchildren can dive into when they wish. I hoard all sorts in there...just in case it becomes useful one day. We are alike when it comes to thriftiness and hoarding. You just never know...lol
    Jeanie xx

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  9. Ouch! That looks painful. How wonderful that your glasses didn't break!

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  10. You always have such great ideas,

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