Tie Dye, Psychedelic Donuts, & Ojo de Dios

There are 4 days left of school...I REPEAT 4!!!!!!  

It's no secret that I'm a tie dye lover, and my students know it too.  In fact, they BEG me to do it with them.  HOW I WOULD LOVE TO DO THIS, but I'm still trying to figure out the logistics, like ya know getting white shirts that fit everybody.  Maybe I'll start small and try it out with my summer school class.  This one time at summer camp we had an auction, the campers bid on items (aka counselors) with the payment of pine cones.  I'm not kidding.  Well I decided I would put myself on the chopping block and who ever was able to pay me the most pine cones would get to tie dye with me. NEVER AGAIN.  Needless to say, thirty 8 & 9 year olds and tie dye had me going  extremely a little crazy.

Moving on......

You know at the end of the year when you have all those nearly empty paint bottles?  You try to combine them, dilute them a bit to get the paint of the sides, keep them upside down, and you still feel like you are wasting paint when you throw them away.  I've got your solution--if you're in to tie dye.  I hit up the travel section at target and bought a bunch of those little 50 cent travel hairspray type bottles.  Water those paints down--like a lot--as long as you can see the color your golden, pour them in the bottles and you're all set for some magic.

2nd graders took on fiber arts for this lesson.  We started off with talking about the history of the Ojo de Dios (God's Eye) and the culture of the ancient Pueblo People.  We sat all kum ba yah on the floor (me included) and we got to work on our Ojo de Dios.  

The next class we made our "tie dye." I showed students a couple of different ways to fold their fabric, you don't need to use rubber bands, and then they used our spray bottle of paint to color the fabric.  When they were finished I had them clip it to our makeshift clothesline.  

If you don't have fabric you can do this with a sturdy paper towel, just make sure to soak it in water before hand.  Some classes ran out of time so we had to do a different version of tie dye.

To finish this off, I'm going to leave you with these psychedelic, rad donuts, that only one class who had a little extra time were able to do.  We learned a thing of two about our friend Wayne and made these beauts. Donut you just love them?  

Summer's so close I can taste it.