Happy New Year! (Dragons!)

Celebrating Lunar New Year? This art project  (and this!) provided us with great fun as we  commemorate the Year of the Dragon. Here's our monster:

The dragon's scaly skin is formed by painting with bubble wrap. Fun medium!!

We've also been reading. Two of our favorite books this week...

• The Knight and the Dragon (by a beloved author/illustrator, Tomie DePaola...this is also a great story to act out)
• The Paper Dragon (with a beautiful moral...the strongest thing in the world is not dragons, but LOVE!)

I've also learned (by much trial and error) that the single most effective way to get children to draw is to sit down and draw with them. We got out the Prismacolor pencils yesterday. Here's a 9-year-old's dragon (right.)

I'm also thinking about a math lesson...  How about a survey where students interview people of all ages to find out which animal under the Chinese calendar they were born? It'd be a great Facebook survey to do at home.

Happy New Year from someone born under the Chinese Calendar animal...

wait for it...

MONKEY! :)





(Photo taken at a garden in China.)

Linking up at stART.