For a moment the earth’s breath is soft,
Warm on my cheek, scented with apple wood and hay.
Grass tops touch nodding heads together in autumn prayer.
Vanishing moments of gold whisper soft, brown feathers open. 
The quiet time flows across the valley.
Blood red weeps against the gold and green of fall.
Something about the light changes in Texas in October. The air seems fresher to breathe. Rain seems to enhance the glow.
I’ve been watching the oak trees on my farm drop a prolific crop of acorns this year. So many acorns in fact that I began to wonder if my trees were alright. Sources I’ve read say that despite the old farmer’s warning, a heavy acorn drop does not mean we will have a hard winter, it just means we had the right weather conditions for a heavy flower set on the oak trees this past spring.
So we have a bounty of acorns. My bay quarter horse Jo-Jo loved to eat acorns in the fall, but he could not stop himself from contentedly crunching them until he’d end up getting a colicky belly ache. Not good. Our resident squirrels (we don’t have many squirrels because of our healthy population of hawks and coyotes) stand in bewildered amazement at the abundance of acorns under our red oak in the back. At the rate they are burying them we should have our own red oak forest come spring.
Acorns plunk down into our waterfall pond like heavy raindrops and also into our coffee if we sit out by the waterfall on the weekends. Navigating our patios are rather like walking on a bag of marbles, no matter how many times you sweep the crackling, rolling carpet up.
But in retrospect, the bother balances with the good when I think of how many animals use the acorns as a food source. Between the deer, quail, squirrels, foxes, small little night rodents and the birds, a bumper crop of acorns means food for their winter. So the table is set for you guys at my farm. Bring your friends, we have plenty of acorns to go around.
Image CCO Public Domain Pixaby
There is magic in the beginning of school. As an art teacher, I am always astonished by the creativity of the teachers around me. Those who profess, “I don’t know anything about art!” or ” I can’t draw a stick figure.” come up with these dynamite bulletin boards and doors. And those who don’t do the hallways spend HOURS arranging their room for the easiest traffic flow, the best group seating arrangements or the best access to technology or reading centers or anchor charts or manipulatives; whatever gives their students the best opportunity to learn. Give a teacher some blue painter’s tape, a few trips to the Dollar Store, file folders and plastic packing crates and you have classroom magic. Architects could not draw up a better blueprint for a learning environment.
Our theme this year is “Travis Students are Blazing New Trails.” Best theme EVER in my opinion. Western theme artwork and messages abound; this is Texas after all and a school in a town like Mineral Wells, rich in a past western heritage. And more importantly those bulletin boards have content. They inspire, they illustrate, they explain, they show respect, love, rules, information and the quality and caring of my intelligent, compassionate colleagues. So congratulations to all those teachers who spent hours in the hallways and in their rooms organizing. While I don’t have a picture of everything you did, I know you outdid yourself again.
#mwisdmatters
A lesson on color schemes took on a vibrant life for my 5th graders this fall. Warm colors (reds, oranges and yellows), cool colors (blues greens and purples) and neutrals, (browns, blacks and greys). A great lesson I found on Artipelago offered a wonderful opportunity to play with color schemes.
The Banyan Tree lesson was presented in three steps.
My students really enjoyed working with the oil pastels and used a 12 x 18 sheet of paper for maximum effect. Here’s some of our results:
You are never too old for Halloween fun. Something about this holiday inspires you to be silly and creative. That is if you were raised with a Halloween like I was; where it was all about spooky stories, slightly scary but harmless costumes, hay rides, bonfires and trick or treat candy you did not have to check. Period. No other meanings implied or intended. Having said that, I broke out the pipe cleaner spider project just as a way of reminding myself that the Halloween of the past can still be recreated in my room. Yes, you can make a science curriculum connection in the study of arachnids…blah, blah, blah….I want to make slightly trembly spiders on hot glue spider webs, because they make people squeal and they are cute.
Can we just be kids in the art room for a second? Okay.
Here’s what you need for each spider.
Here’s what you need for the spider web.
To make the spider:
Twist the legs under the loop at least 3 times so the legs won’t come undone. Place the body of the spider on the table and bend the legs up so that you can separate 4 on each side.
Add 8 of the beads close to the body.
With the spider still on its back bend the knees in the same place on each leg and position the second bead on each leg above the knee.
Turn the spider over and spread the legs for balance. 4 to the front, 4 to the back. By the way this fashion maven spider sports the Mineral Wells Ram colors.Spider webs are just hot glue applied to a black foam board. Make glue lines out from a corner and then half circles that cut across. If you want your spider to stay put on the web, apply him while the glue is still sticky.
You remember when drawing clowns was a good thing? I grew up in a time when Emmett Kelly and Red Skelton were still known and the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey clowns were not scary. They were funny and sad at the same time. But not scary. I drew lots of clowns as a child.
Now, you say clown in a classroom and the entire room shudders and bursts into horrific descriptions of the clowns they know. So I substitute these scarecrows. For most fourth graders, scarecrows are still an innocent reminder of the farm, fall and the pumpkin patch. I have a wooden stand in my room where we build a life-size scarecrow some years, but most of the time I use a tabletop scarecrow I bought years ago as a model.
We draw BIG, we start in pencil, outline in sharpie, then crayon for the body and watercolor for the background. The watercolor is a relief at the end because it takes a LONG time to color large sheets of manila paper. Good conversations about color, geometric shaped patches and French fry fingers and feet are had. I hope the movie industry and the news media will leave scarecrows alone.
In My Mind's Eye 