Videos of Shorebirds- How our funds from calendar sales will make a difference

Here is a video showing how The International Bird Rescue Research Center helps seabirds affected by the Gulf Spill.

To view more videos form IBRRC go to their YouTube Channel.

The Calendars are ordered & A math contest and FREE giveaway to the winner!!

I ordered the 50 calendars this morning!!

Here is a math problem for the kids and a giveaway to the winner. The FIRST Murch family that e-mails me with the correct answer gets a free 16"x20"painting canvas and a brand new flat brush. My e-mail is Miriam.Cutelis@yahoo.com and you must identify in the e-mail the Murch child's full name, grade and teacher. The answer must be written in a full sentence. All math work MUST be done primarily by the child.

Math problem (drum roll please)

Ms. Cutelis got a great deal on the wall calendars for $10 each calendar from Shutterfly.com. She charged each person $18 for each calendar. Tax was $30 total for the entire order and shipping was free. The leftover money will go to International Bird Rescue Research Center as part of our fundraiser. How much money will we donate to the International Bird Rescue Research Center ?

LAST DAY TO order 2011 Shorebirds Calendar TOMORROW

Tomorrow, Friday November 5th at 4pm, is the last day to order your 2011 calendars. If you order online you have until midnight tomorrow. Click HERE to go to info and order page. These would make great gifts for family and friends for the holidays. Once the order is placed there will not be an opportunity to order another batch, this is it.....remember it goes to help a good cause and they are beautiful.

2011 ART Calendars for Sale NOW....Shorebirds of the Gulf Fundraiser

Get a sneak peak at the (revised) 2011 5th Grade Fundraiser for Shorebirds from the Gulf Coast. Please click to pre-order your copy online through Pay Pal or pay by personal check through an order form that will go home later next week. The 12-month 2011, 8.5"x11" Calendars will be professionally printed through Shutterfly and is for sale for just $18. The money above what it would cost to print them will go to International Bird Rescue Research Center.

The last day to order these calendars will be Friday, November 5th, 2010; no exception. The orders will go out that Saturday so they could be delivered in time for holiday break.

50 calendars have been ordered so far (updated November 5th, 2010)....Our goal was to sell at least 50 calendars!!! Way to go Murch!! So rush in your orders, deadline is Friday, November 5th at 4pm and midnight for online orders.

To VIEW all paintings up close go to the gallery page.

This is the front cover. The children in each class voted for their peers. The top of each 5th grade class is on the cover.
Because there are 61 paintings and only 48 large slots, some paintings are displayed on the dates. This allowed me to also show these paintings in detail. See how the bird from the painting on the 10 of the month is highlighted on the 8th of the month.
Your calendar will be a spiral bind.
On the month pages, there will be 4 paintings per page. Each 5th grade class got 4 pages each.
I used the kids' in-class votes of each others' work as the criteria for choosing which work gets highlighted.

Letter to 5th Grade Parents

Dear 5th Grade Parents,
In the 5th grade students have been using their new painting skills to paint shorebirds in their habitat. They spend a whole class looking at how painters have depicted water in their work and practice those skills themselves. They have also spent an entire class carefully looking and drawing shorebirds in their sketchbooks. We have one more week to work on our paintings. The combined images of all the paintings created for this unit will be printed in a 2011 Shorebirds in Their Habitat calendar which will be for sale online through the Murch art blog next month. All proceeds above and beyond what it cost to print them will be donated to International Bird Rescue (http://www.ibrrc.org).
As part of the assignment I will have children write about what their wishes are for their contributions to this organization. Please take a few minutes to explore the site www.ibrrc.org. They have beautiful and relevant images, video and stories about their work restoring wildlife bird populations in the Gulf. In class this week I will be reading an excerpt from the site called, Procedures for Rehabilitating and Releasing Oiled Birds. Please review and use some of the vocabulary words below at home to help facilitate discussion about the subject in class and express relevant ideas in their writing; some of which might also be included in the calendar.
Miriam Cutelis
Miriam.Cutelis@yahoo.com
www.Murchart.blogspot.com


Relevant Vocabulary
* Stabilize: to make stable
* Waterproofing (in birds): What give shorebirds waterproof ability is the position of the feathers
* Criteria: standards that must be used in evaluating a decision.
* Hyperthermia: is an elevated body temperature due to failed thermoregulation.
* Hypothermia: is a condition in which core temperature drops below that required for normal metabolism and body functions which is defined as 35.0 °C (95.0 ...
* Debilitated: make weak
* Preening: What a bird is doing when it preens is carefully aligning each feather, which is made up of a shaft, veins, and tiny barbs that connect the veins into a tightly woven unit. This feather structure does not allow water or air to penetrate and provides buoyancy and insulation.
* Agitate: to give motion.

5th Grade Plunge into painting water.....

Children in 5th grade have been studying traditional paintings of water/ocean. They answered questions that required them to really look at the paintings. The questions were:

1. What colors were used in depicting water in these paintings?

2. The brushstrokes go which directions (vertical, horizontal, vertical strokes)

3. How long are the brushstrokes you see?

4. How do you think the colors were applied? which one was first and last, etc.

children will paint their 'water' this week and next week they will be adding their shorebirds onto their water paintings.

Half the children in art choose to stand while they work. They all are so focused on their paintings.

More Shorebird Sketches by 5th grade

5th Grade Begin Work on their Gulf Seashore Birds Calendar

This will be a social justice and activism focus year for the 5th grade class. My goal will be to impress upon them that they can have the power to affect changes in their own world and that art can easily be a venue for their message. For this unit children will create paintings of shorebirds (and pelicans) in their habitats. Their paintings will organized into 12 pages and will be professionally printed on 2011 calendars sold to the school community as a fundraiser for The international Bird Rescue Research Center to help with the affects from the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf.

But right now, we are just at the beginning stages of this process.....sketches.

Children use photographs of these birds and draws them on a self-made sketchbook.
Please note, these are just samples of work done by the students. Some children forgot to put their names on their work.









We also looked at some facts about the spill.
I used reproduction images from this book as a resource.