Five for Friday: animals, art, and Thanksgiving

It's been a while since I joined up with Doodlebugs' Five for Friday.
By the time it gets to Friday I have a hard time thinking of ONE thing, never mind five! But it was a really busy week in my classroom and I have a bunch of things to share.  Teaching 3 days a week makes it so crazy trying to fit in everything you plan to do.  Especially when there's a fire drill and an assembly! 

Earth Rangers came to our school this week.  They are a conservation group that goes to schools to educate kids on protecting animals and habitats.  This is the second time that they've visited our school and it's always tremendously popular because they bring live animals to show the kids.  This year they had a tortoise, a martin, a barn owl, and a hawk.  The birds flew across the gym just over the students' heads.  Pretty exciting!

This picture is from last year - I forgot to take any pictures this year!

I started a fall art project on leaves on Monday.  I got the idea from That Artist Woman.  If I was smart I would've just made the leaves and mounted them on a black background like she did.  But No, I had to add a painted background, forgetting that it would mean 3 painting sessions  - the leaves take 2 because they're done on paper prepped with Gesso and tissue paper.  We did NOT have time to do 3 painting sessions in 3 days, so the leaves remain unpainted, but the background is ready to go (my last group was just painting their background when the fire bell rang........).  We'll finish them next week.  I think they're going to look great.  Here's Gail's sample and a link to her blog with the directions.

Not being particularly artistic (Ha!  Understatement!) I didn't have any Gesso on hand, or admittedly, even know what it was.  Internet to the rescue!  I found a recipe and made my own using 1 part water, 1 part plaster of paris, 1 part white glue (Elmer's), and 2 parts white acrylic paint (although there was none in the school, so I used liquid tempera and it seemed to work fine....).  It only took a few minutes to mix up and it did the job of making a nice textured paper for the leaves.  I used one cup of the first 3 things and 2 cups of paint.  It made enough for everyone's project plus about 1 liter left over.  Should be good for another project.  If I remember what it is.  And if it keeps.  We'll see.  If you make it be sure to stir in the Plaster of Paris and mix it up well before adding the glue and paint.  Otherwise it's hard to get the lumps out.  Can you infer why I'm telling you this?  The directions said to do this, but I dumped everything in at once (duh!).......I'm thinking that watered down glue might have worked about as well as the Gesso.  I'm even thinking maybe it would've been just about as good to skip the texture step and just trace and paint the leaves.  
Here's how they turned out.

Speaking of leaves.......the kids were burying each other on the playground yesterday. This is my sweet granddaughter. I'm thinking there's probably an art project .........

I always like to have an extra activity for the kids to do while I'm working with small groups on our main art project of the week. So while we were working on our leaf painting the others were making these.

We made these thankfulness pumpkins that I saw on Pinterest. The orange strips have sentences that they printed on:  I am thankful for _______________ .  They turned out really cute and the kids were thrilled to have a decoration to take home for the holiday. 

I have my turkey thawing in the fridge and am making preparations for our family Thanksgiving dinner here on Sunday afternoon.  I like to do the dinner a day early so that on Monday we can relax, eat leftovers and play games.  And be rested up to go back to work Tuesday!