Sketchbook Covers for Kids

It has been a busy 2 weeks and a rough transition back to school.  The actual "school" part has been just fine.  The problems have been with coordinating my schedule and "life balance."  I will talk about that more at the end of this post, but first I will show you some pretty pictures.

We have been making sketchbook covers from donated file tab dividers.  My sister-in-law works in medical records and they were transferring everything over to digital, so they did not need all these file tab dividers anymore.  Of course, as an art teacher, I will take the free donations!  So I have lots and lots of boxes of these great cardstock papers.  They are two hole punched already and each have a colored tab with something printed on them (like "allergy" or "inpatient admissions").  I showed the kids how they could either just leave the tab on or they could snip it off with scissors.  It is fun to see the kids get excited and say, "OOH I got a pink allergy tab!  What does yours say?"  Some of the kids were collecting the snipped off tabs.  Anyways... so my plan is to use these sheets as our sketchbooks.  They are thick enough to take paint pretty well.  Since they are already hole punched, we are going to collect our drawings in envelopes and then bind them with rings at the end.

Here are some of the cover assignments I gave:

Kindergarten Color Collage:
Find shades of one color in a magazine, cut out and glue to make a collage.

 

 

Second Grade Circle Prints
Use cylindrical objects (like a toilet paper tube or souffle cup), dip in black paint and stamp on paper.  Let dry, then color in with markers. Thank you, Katie Morris for sharing this idea!

 

Look at the thumbprints added to this picture.  Creative!

More sketchbook covers to come soon.

So back to the "life-work balance thing".  The first week back was hard because my almost-3-year-old did not want to go back to daycare and did not want to go to sleep at night.  She would rather spend all day playing with ME, of course!  One day, she tells me, "I don't want to go to Mary's house because she has alligators there.  The alligators bite me!"  When we get to daycare, I ask her to show me the alligators.  She brings out these two stuffed alligator baby toys and gets all excited.  I think she's just trying to make me feel guilty.  I tell her, "Momma's going to school," and she says, "I want to go to school with YOU."   Then, this week, she has been sick most of the week, not going to bed well, waking up coughing several times a night and so forth.  Last night I got about 3 hours of sleep, which makes it very difficult to get ready in the morning.  It's like having a newborn all over again!   She appears to be getting better, so hopefully I will be able to sleep a bit tonight.

How's YOUR year starting?  I hope you are having a good transition.