raheem tech

  Hello, friends! I'm here today to do some oversharing of my second grade masterpieces as they are giving me so much LIFE! Both my young artists and I are beyond excited with how our Heather Galler-inspired masterpieces have turned out. These works of art are HUGE as we created them on 18" X 24" tagboard. I cannot wait to share them at our upcoming art show. Here's the video lesson I created for y'all to explain the process: I only see my second grade kiddos for 30 minutes, twice a week. On our first day together, we managed to knock this out:   This lesson could easily be done on a much smaller scale. However, while going through our pieces for the art show, I realized that my students had yet to do a BIG show stopper. Many of the second grade works of art were on the smaller side. I knew I wanted one piece that they would be super proud of. So this big masterpieces were destined to happen. As y'all know, I have a slight bingo dauber addiction. I have create...

  Did you know that today is National Walk Around Things Day?! Me neither! That is, not until I checked my calendar. What is this day? Well, apparently, it's open to interpretation...personally, I thought it sounded like a fun way to get the kids up, moving, doing something new AND having them search for mini-masterpieces by the artist we are currently learning about: Vincent van Gogh! Here's how I introduced Walk Around Things Day and this hunt to my first graders:  Y'all, this was so much fun and so interactive! When I explained what they were to do, one of my students said, "like an Easter egg hunt, but for Vincent van Gogh!" My fourth graders are also learning about van Gogh and I did the same activity with them. Because I have doubled up fourth grade classes, I skipped over the "walking around like a giant bit"...I'm certain they would have loved it but I know my crowd: they are a little wild. I can only give the a little bit of leash, if you kn...

  The second big project on my Spring Break To Do List was carving out this brand new home studio space! This was the second big endeavor I set out to accomplish over my break (check out the others here and here ) and I'm so excited with how it turned out. This room is our bonus room (dubbed the "bogus" room by me for years as I literally just piled stuff in it!) and it sits right above our garage. It's a big space and filled with light and windows. This room serves many purposes: it's my yoga studio on the 3 times a year I decide to practice; it's a book writing space ; a lesson planning and video recording spot and where I host Facebook and Instagram LIVE every Wednesday night at 8pm, CST. While it's always had many jobs, I never felt like this space was my actual studio. My drafting table was in another part of our house and my art supplies were scattered about. Over break, I decided to change all of that.     I started by clearing out the accent chair...

  I've been redecorating my art room so much that I've started to feel the itch here at home. Last summer, over on the blog A Beautiful Mess , the author Elsie shared a show stopper of a gallery wall. As soon as I saw that post, I knew I wanted one of my own. We have a very large wall at the top of our stairs between our bedroom and a spare bedroom (that I use as a closet...don't judge). It's been home to these two paintings I created a couple years ago. While I still love those paintings, I wanted something new, big and impactful...like a gallery wall!   I actually purchased the frames way back when I first saw Elsie's post. So for those of you that think I do things overnight...don't be fooled! These frames have been stacked in my bonus room collecting dust for MONTHS. I did wait until they went on sale for $10...you can find the frames I used here .    I then spent a part of my spring break pouring over boxes of photos. I knew I wanted to get photos that mea...