How to Make Homemade Scratch Art Paper in 3 Easy Steps

Easy DIY Scratch Art Paper 

Scratch art paper is fun to use, but I think it might even be more fun to make! My kids gave this project two thumbs up.

Gather Materials for your Scratch Art Paper

• card stock
• crayons
• black tempera paint
• dish soap
• paint brushes, foam brushes, or sponges   
• bamboo skewers or wooden scratch sticks from a scratch art set

Start Coloring!

Cut the card stock in half or even quarters if you want the sheets to be more manageable. Use the crayons to color the entire page. It's particularly fun to use all the colors of the rainbow!

Scratch Art Paper Step 1: Color a good amount of the card stock!

Mix it Up

Use a 50/50 mixture of black tempera paint and dish detergent and paint over the colors (a foam brush works well).

Scratch Art Paper Step 2: Paint over your colors

Create Your Scratch Art Designs

After the paint has dried, it's time to scratch off the black layer! This is the fun part!

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Using Minecraft to Learn about World Landmarks

My kids have been into geography lately, and of course they are into Minecraft (whose kids isn't?). While I can appreciate Minecraft as a parent, I prefer when the kids are working on meaningful tasks as opposed to just roaming and killing mobs or animals. Last week, I had the idea to show them images of famous world landmarks and ask them to re-create their own version in Minecraft. They LOVED this task. Here are some images of their Arc de Triomphe interpretations.

Without prompting, they added so many little touches that I was a little blown away by the creativity! There were torches, and my eldest even included inside/upstairs, where he added statues and signs. My favorite was the one below, "Upstairs tour by permission of the French government only!" Haha!

There was even an "employees only" wing with beds to that the employees could rest as needed. Obviously, they did this in creative mode, but they couldn't wait for another assignment after they did the first one! You can take screenshots of your Minecraft creations by pressing F2, then create a digital scrapbook of all of the landmarks they create! If you'd like them to record the landmarks they create or get started with some landmarks that are fairly easy to create in Minecraft, I have a free printable for you! It includes both color and blakc and white versions of the 5 landmarks included (Acropolis, Arc de Triomphe, Brandenburg Gate, Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Statue of Liberty). It's part fo my resource library, which is free when you join the Momgineer newsletter list.

If your kids are ready for even more of a challenge, you can try a Google Image search for inspiration or try some of the following landmarks:

• Burj Khalifa
• Christ the Redeemer
• Colosseum 
• Eiffel Tower
• Pyramids of Giza
• St. Basil's Cathedral
• Sydney Opera House
• Taj Mahal
• The Duomo (Santa Maria del Fiore)
• Tower Bridge

I hope your kids enjoy this task as much as mine do. Not only will they be learning about geography and world landmarks, they will also be exposed to different types of architecture styles and history. I suggest taking books out of your local library to go along with this task to make it even more meaningful in your homeschool or classroom. If they create and landmarks, feel free to link to them in the comments below. We would love to see them!

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Pi Day Pop Art

Pi Day Pop Art

Pi Day is 3.14! How will you celebrate this year?

 I love the simplicity of these coloring pages I created, and you can download one of them for free (the top left design in the image above) by going here:

Have you jumped on the bandwagon of adult coloring? These are fun for grown-ups, too. I have started coloring again and even purchased myself some really nice markers and colored pencils. It's amazing how much work it is to color and/or write when you are not used to it, and definitely gives me an appreciation of why my own kids are often resistant to writing. Long gone are the days of calloused fingers from all the writing I had to do in school. Now I just have to worry about carpal tunnel from too much typing - I'm sure you have the same issue!

In addition to the coloring page in the freebie, there is a math activity (graphing the first 100 digits of pi) and a game.

For more coloring pages, head here:

Hands on Pi Day Fun

Looking for more ways to celebrate Pi Day? You don't want to miss this post - it's one of my favorites and is full of ideas to celebrate Pi Day with your students and kids! From the top left: Pi Day circle stamping art, Pi Day punched circle art, Pi Day bracelet, skyline, and a circumference experiment that will really help reinforce the idea of Pi with your youngest mathematicians!

I hope you have a fun Pi Day, however you celebrate!

100th Day of School STEM Activities for Upper Elementary

Are you getting excited about the 100th day of school? This is a fun milestone to celebrate to see how far you've come. Whether you are in the classroom or homeschool, why not take the time to reflect on your year so far and where it is going. I invite you to take a moment to think of all of the challenges you have faced and how you have handled them, and know that you have the strength to face them head on moving forward.

Here is a fun way to celebrate, that even your young students can enjoy. Build a 100 block tower. You may want to have them explore first, to see how they can come up with a stable base, and how to best make it as tall as they can. If the tower keeps crashing, remind them of a time when they struggled but were able to keep at it and succeed. Maybe their tower needs to be a little shorter to be stable and strong, and that's okay!

For your older kids, this is a fun arts and craft activity that can be modified from a typical paper link chain. Why not try a 100 link web? Working together, your students can create a web, and then all hold a piece of it out. What happens when everyone supports the web? It is strong and has a defined shaped. What if you let go? It might not look like much of anything. Working together helps us reach our goals!

 

Are you a 5th grade teacher?

If you have 5th graders, the 100th day in 5th grade is also the 1000th day of school. How amazing is that? What an amazing feat! I created a fun little resource just for 5th graders on their 1000th day of school:

 

100th Day of School STEM Challenges on Teachers pay Teachers

If you are looking for even more 100th day celebration ideas, I would love for you to visit 100 Days of School STEM Challenges! Included are a variety of STEM challenges such as the two listed above, as well as many others to help you celebrate this fun day in style! Instructions, photos, and recording pages are included, as well as a "100 Days of Learning" banner:

 

Celebrate yourself! You are rocking it. You have made it 100 days and are over the hump. Warmly,

End of Year Memory Books: POP UP Style!

I have been working on this pop-up book for awhile now and am so excited it's finally finished! Are you looking for something a little different in your end of year memory books this year? How do pop-up memory books sound?

There are base pages (with guides for gluing in the images) as well as the pop up image art. The above pages show the basic book, but I have included several more pages that you can add in based on what you'd like to include.

Fill out the base page and pop up inserts. Color as desired.

Cut out the pop up inserts and fold in half. Fold back the tabs.

Glue in the tabs. Here is the page opened op.

The pop up inserts fold snugly into the book as it closes.

Trim wish washi tape for a fun touch!

This is a fun way to end your year. Pop up books always bring a smile, and the creation of their very own pop up book is a way to instill creative confidence! There is even a page for homeschoolers. I have labeled this activity for grades 2-5, though if you have classroom helpers you could do this with first graders as well. Students in grades 4 and 5 should be able to complete this project independently, while second and third graders might need a little assistance making sure their folds/flaps are creased well and lined up to fold into the book correctly.

You can follow the steps I've shown above to create your own book, or purchase my template by clicking on the image below:

Five for Friday: Friday the 13th!

Time for another Five for Friday post!

This week we had so much fun making our own scratch art paper and making valentines with the paper! It was so simple to do - just color with crayons on card stock, then paint on using a foam brush, with a 50/50 mixture of black tempera paint and dish detergent. Let it dry and scratch away!

We are continuing to learn about important people during Black History Month, and have made great use of these amazing freebies I found on TpT:

It's not a good week if you don't get in some fun science experiments! My kids have been helping me work through all the experiments in my upcoming Chemistry/Matter unit. Today we blew up gloves with the good old baking soda and vinegar chemical reaction:

We have had a lot of snow in the past couple of weeks, and more is on the way. We have spent tons of time outside snowshoeing, sledding, and playing in the snow. The bitter cold has also allowed us lots of reading and snuggling time, and yummy baked goods:

I updated my Interactive Notebook Flip-Flap Foldable Templates this week! I was very excited to add over 20 new templates, so if you already own this resource, look for the update! I have lots of examples of use included in the file:

Thanks for hosting the link up, Doodle Bugs Teaching! Happy Valentine's Day, all!

Autumn Trees Art Project

I loved doing this project with my kids! I found this post and really liked the tree art project, so we tried it out this morning. I cut a few sheets of paper in half (the long way) and trimmed some tree silhouettes, thinking it would be easier for my kids to focus on their design.  I love how they turned out!

Here are the tree silhouettes and background papers. I used blue for crisp blue autumn sky. For the tissue paper, I lucked out and had several colors that I thought would work.

The kids worked on trimming the tissue paper into small pieces and then started composing their trees. At first we were using glue sticks to place the paper pieces, but found it frustrating, so I grabbed a can of spray adhesive and sprayed each sheet. That made it go a lot faster, though you had to be sure you knew where to stick the paper pieces (that spray adhesive is strong stuff!). After the papers were stuck, I sprayed the trees with the adhesive and stuck them on. Then we added a few more touches (a bird, some leaf-shaped tissue paper pieces), and I trimmed off any paper that was hanging far off the side of the paper.

Wordless Wednesday: Colored Pencils Dominate This Week!

Apple page from Jenny K, who was featured here on the Minds-in-Bloom blog.

Wordless Wednesday: deCordova