Paint Nite (day)!

 Have any of you had a opportunity to do a "Paint Nite" in your town? I've been to a few and they are so much fun. A group of about 25 to 50 people all meet (usually at a restaurant or bar). All the supplies you need from paint to aprons are set up for you and ready to go. You basically all paint the same scene, as your artist host shows you step by step instructions while she/he paints as well. There's music, cocktails and you may even make some friends! 

A few months ago we were gifted paint, easels, brushes, and enough canvas's for each student to do about 5 paintings from Donorschoose! We did a "free paint" back in October and it wasn't pretty. They just wanted to add paint to paint. Color over color. We had a few black blobs, lol. They had fun and that's really what was important but I knew this time I wanted it to be a bit more organized. 

Sure enough, there are a TON of "Paint Nite" artist on Youtube who do step by step directions for beginners!! I had the kids watch each step first with their paint brushes down, then re-watch it while following along with her as she painted again. When each step was finished I would pause the video while the kids finished the step and caught up to her. As you can see my kids did an amazing job! They were so proud of their work! I can't wait until we do it again!

Hello - What Would You Do?

Well hello there! It's been a while since I've posted I know. January was a very hectic month for me. A CASA case I accepted five and a half years ago was coming to an end and there was so many things to do to prepare her for emancipation. I had made a decision to take a break from CASA before taking on another case but literally 2 days later their was a sibling group that really needed an advocate and I felt it was where I needed to be. I also offered to take on a family findings case to try to find family for a child who knows none. So for the last 3 weeks I've been mining files every day after work, meeting my new kids, and acquainting myself with their social worker, attorney etc. It really is hard for me to say no when a child is involved.

I have so many pictures on my phone of thing I want to share with you and am going to try to make an effort to do that regularly now that things have died down.

So, first thing I'm sharing is some "what would you do" cards on independent living. We started these last week in my classroom and so far have done 10 of the cards. We spend about 5 minutes discussing each card. The kids seems to really enjoy brainstorming and coming up with solutions. There are 30 cards in total. I laminated mine so they would hopefully last a few years. I also put together a Kahoot quiz if your interesting that corresponds to the the cards. 

The quiz can be found HERE.

The cards are available in my store on TPT for free if you're interesting in doing them with your class. Just click HERE

You can read more about how we are using them there. 

Until next time,