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Book Review – 50 Art Lessons For Kids

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Fifty K-12 Art Lessons: Deluxe Color Edition: Creative Differentiated Explorations In Art

This FULL COLOR book contains fifty differentiated art lessons for K-12 students, with extensions for advanced classes. Many include links within lessons that will connect to mini-video tutorials. Most explorations in his book can be done with different kinds of media. Don’t have oil pastels? Use crayons, colored pencils, or just about any drawing media. Taking a drawing project and re-tooling it to be a painting lesson is often possible. Use what you have on hand.

These are lessons I have developed over my thirty-year art teaching career. I specifically chose these fifty, because the root of each can be simplified for younger students, and beefed up for the more advanced. This is also helpful while working in an integrated classroom where special needs students work alongside their peers. While a class works on a particular lesson, the simplified version can be used as well so that all can work on the same root concepts.

These lessons appear in our other book “Extended Sub Plans For Art Teachers.” However, this book is designed with the classroom art teacher in mind, so it does not include media tutorials needed for a sub. This book ends with critique worksheets, grading rubrics, classroom resources, and enough sub plans for 25 days of absences! Many additional free resources, videos, plans, and more can be found on the author’s blog at Artedguru.com.

 

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Pumpkin Sensory Activities

When my daughter was younger, she loved to play with the insides of the pumpkin when it was time to carve the jack o’lantern. In the years since she’s decided the inside of a pumpkin smells bad, but playing with pumpkin guts is a classic sensory activity that kids of all ages generally love.

Here are some more fun and easy pumpkin sensory activities to do at home or in the classroom, with real pumpkins or just pumpkin smells and colors.

Let’s start with a collection of pumpkin sensory activities using real pumpkins from Everyday Chaos and Calm. From pumpkin washing to hammering to painting, there are lots of fun ideas here (and this delves into pumpkin STEM activities as well).

If you have a kid who likes to play with pumpkin guts, you can take the slimy sensory factor up even further by making pumpkin slime that includes pumpkin guts. You can even mix it up in a pumpkin! Get the recipe from Little Bins for Little Hands.

If you’d rather have a slime that’s not quite so slimy, you can try this pumpkin spice slime from Sunshine Whispers.

How about pumpkin spice playdough? (I made some of this years ago when my daughter was in her playdough phase, and ti smells so good!) Another recipe is from Natural Beach Living, and this is a sensory activity you can use throughout the fall all the way through Thanksgiving.

And while we’re on the classic sensory substances, why not make some pumpkin scented moon sand, too? This recipe is made with pumpkin puree so it’s actually taste safe for those kiddos who always put everything in their mouths. You can get the recipe from Parenting Chaos.

For a different kind of sensory experience, try this pumpkin sensory matching activity from I Can Teach My Child. Just load fun things into orange balloons and see if kids can touch their way to matches. Or just do different sensory balloons for the classroom without the matching activity.

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