It Just Got Surreal.

How many Salvador Dali's does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Clock.

Welllll, this joke went way over the heads of my elementary students (like much of my off-the-wall humor does), but I will say, this whole wearing a costume or accessory thing is FAB-ulous.

My students are stunned into silence (maybe a little bit concerned about my sanity too) from minute one.  BEST classroom management tool ever.  

Total twinsies, right?

Best part about my costuming this year, is that the kids are getting into it.  This little friend below was proud to show me his mustache sweatshirt he purposely wore on Art day.

Before kicking off the artist intro, my kiddos were given a few minutes to design their own mustache, which naturally they had to wear for the rest of the day.  Tell ya what, it is SERIOUSLY hard to guzzle coffee with a 'stache.  I had coffee all over my smock!

Surrealist art is our focus this month, so we continued with a little Dali up in this Art Room.

I forgot how totally wild Dali's paintings are...and I also forgot how many undressed ladies there are in his paintings.  One of my fourth grade artists paged through a Dali book at her own home to do some research and (thank the art gods) is a totally mature student, and quietly reported to me that she found some cool paintings, but "gosh, Miss D., there were a lot of ladies without clothes."

Therefore, Miss French Fry had to do some serious combing of images before presenting them to her students.

The Persistence of Memory, 1931

The Elephants, 1948

Check out our 4th grade finished works below:

 

Those are some vicious carrot-chomping teeth right there.

What a shifty-eyed selfie, am I right?

Annnd the 2nd grade's Dalis in development:

Okay, no more dilly Dali-ing for me.  Off to update my CPDUs online, ugggh.  I don't know what your state's Education website looks like, but Illinois' is super dull.  They really should have hired an Art teacher to jazz up their page, so it's at least a little fun to look at...

Fab Flamingos.

I blogged a ways back about some of our Dali projects in development, one of which was my Second graders' project based on Dali's The Elephants.

The Elephants, 1948

I was really trying to drill home our two Art Smart words "exaggerate" and "overlap" with this project, so I wore the words every class for the entire lesson to remind the students to use these techniques in their final products.  After all, no lesson is complete without some weird accessory attached to me, right?

After looking at some examples of Dali's works, I "read" my students Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle.  Now I say "read" because the book is wordless, but we could not get enough of the story.  As a lover of all things flamingo, I am in LOVE with this book.  My students loved narrating it as we flipped through it together and studied the flamingo's poses.

We got to work creating the backgrounds with tempera and salt first, then created painted paper with two tones of light and dark for the flamingo bodies and wings.

Next class, we used eyedroppers with watered down black tempera to create the exaggerated Dali-esque legs.

 

Then we cut out the bodies, beaks, wings, etc. and glued them down carefully as the black leggies were still pretty wet.

Final details of google eyes and feathers were added last.

Love the legs on this one!

Have a Fabulously Flamingo Friday!

My Man, Magritte.

So, round 1 of the dress like a crazy commenced today...

Not quite doppelgangers, but I think we look pretty related, right?  Now, my outfit doesn't come close to my blog crush, but I do what I can sans sewing machine.  Hear that hubs?! My birfday will be here soooon.

Lemme tell you what, teaching with an apple in front of my face all day was tricky.  There were many a moment where I ended up rocking the backwards hat look, circa 1990.  Yeah, that's right Justin Bieber, you belong in the 90's.  

Or maybe just not in the United States circa any era, mmmkay?

We kicked off the lesson reading Dinner at Magritte's, which unfortunately is out of print, so track it down if you can!  The author/illustrator does a fabulous job taking inspiration from Magritte and Dali's work, both of whom are characters in the story.

Time Transfixed, 1938

We also looked at a LOT of Magritte's pieces.  My third graders couldn't get enough.  So many smarty arty students couldn't wait to contribute to our class discussion of his work.  When they found out that Time Transfixed was here in Chicago, you woulda thought I told them Bieber was visiting our Art Room.  I had FOUR different parents come up to me after school to tell me that their kiddos couldn't wait to check it out.  Yep, that's right kiddos, get off your sofas and put down your handheld electro boxes, and go look at some art!

Sixteenth of September, 1956

The Sixteenth of September was our piece de resistance and the whole inspiration behind our project.  

Check out the mini Magrittes in progress.  I will post the final products once they're finished...

Crock Around the Block Tonight.

This ain't no cookin' blog, and I am definitely no Marth (Martha Stewart, that is).  But lately, due to late nights in the art room prepping student works for a few shows (this time of year is rough stuff for art teachers in my district), I have been rocking the crock.

This baby is the paint to my brush, the soup can to my Andy Warhol, the mustache to my Dali.

We purchased this 7 quart slow cooker from good ol' Costco.  The best part about this particular model is that once your meal finishes cooking, it automatically switches to "Keep Warm," so if I start the meal in the AM and don't get home in time to stop the cooking, the meal will not keep on cooking and burn, but instead stay warm, toasty, and ready to eat!

I spent 2 hours last weekend busting out some make ahead crock pot meals.  I made 5 large gallon bag meals and immediately froze them.  The meals are large enough so that the hubs and I get dinner and lunch out of them (sometimes even an additional meal).  I pull them out and defrost them the night before, then throw them in the slow cooker in the AM, and VOILA! Dinner is served.

Here are the meals I put together:

Chicken Teriyaki

Pepperoncini Chicken

Red Pepper Chicken

Chicken Curry

Mushroom Chicken with Rice

I like to write the cook time and any reminders about side dishes directly on the bag.  For example, if some of our frozen garden green beans would be a good addition to the meal, I make note of it, so brain-fried Miss French Fry remembers to cook those up too.


I stuck with the chicken family this go 'round and used a variety of organic chicken thighs, drumsticks, and breasts.  Next time, I'm going to dive into some other meats.  Thus far, I've tried the chicken teriyaki and the mushroom chicken, and they are GOOOOOD.

Crock 'n roll, folks.