Half Person, Half Animal, Half Crazy

In the lazy days of summer, I forget how hectic the school year gets.  Case in point: we got home (my sweetie and I) from a full week of school last Friday, and the thingamajig fell off the top of our vertical blinds.  It's only decorative, and it's fallen before, but when I went to put it back I realized the clips that hold it on were broken.

The cover part of this is what I'm talking about.

I was busy, so I moved it away from the door
and "out of the way".

And there it stayed, all weekend.
Until yesterday, in fact.

Being the art teacher that I am, I couldn't bear the thought of throwing it away. It has to be good for something, right?!  So last night I decided to cut it up and make a class set of scrapers.  Scrapers for paint, printmaking, clay. whatever:

It made 29, roughly 3" x 3 1/2".
Now, let's hope I remember to use them!

Home is the crazy part right now, as I feel like I have no time to get anything done (like send out the thank you cards from Sweetie's birthday nearly 3 weeks ago).  At school, third grade has been finishing up their Catal Huyuk people.  In the ancient town of Catal Huyuk, images of half person/half animals were found, and no one's really certain what they were.  Here's some of our versions:

Students folded their papers,
drew the top half of a person
(from the waist up), gave it to me
to draw lines to give the next person
a starting spot, then traded with
someone who drew the bottom half
of an animal.

When completely drawn, students
traced with Sharpie and colored with colored
pencil.  The person who drew the person
is the owner of the artwork.

 

I really like the background
 on this one.  But as usual, I
 can't figure out how to make
 it go right-side-up in this blog.



When their half and half was fully
colored, they created a background
on construction paper with
construction paper crayons.



So those are our half person, half animals, and I only feel half crazy.  Now to find something else to cover my sliding glass doors, something a little nicer than those dumb vertical blinds. . .