In the Art Room: A Virtual Tour of the Art Room

Hey, friends! As you just heard, cuz I just done tole you, I'm gonna take you on a lil tour of my art room today! I tried to keep these two clips short and sweet for a coupla reasons: 1. It takes me foreverness to upload a video clip on youtube. Like, 4-eve-err. If any of y'all have any tips or tricks, I'd so appreciate 'em. And 2. I have a hard time listening to my own voice in a vid clip so I assume it can only be worse for you. 

That bein' said, I thought y'all might be able to better understand the lay of the art room land if I virtually showed you around. Now, this is just a wee tour but I do blab a pinch about my first coupla days of school that will begin next week. For that I'll give ya a full blog post of what new things I'm trying, what's working and what's gonna get tweaked (er, what?!). You can read about my first coupla days of school from last year here, if you wanna. For this year, stay tuned. For now, welcome to my art room!

C'mon in!

At the start of the video, I show you this board. All of these fun souvenirs have been thrifted and garage saled over the years. I also reference my giant windows (which are glorious, I know. I'm very fortunate to have such a great space. This is why they can't get rid of me!). I repaint those window every year to go with my theme. You can check out my Parisian windows here and Asian-themed windows here. 

As for my Masterpiece Gallery, you can read how that was created with a bunch of thrifted frames here. You can also read about our game The Smartest Artist here. 

So I chatted for a moment about those vocab pockets that I keep next to my door. As the kids enter, they usually read an art word. However for these first couple of days, we are going to read these words. Then we're going to chat about how these words both describe us and art class. These will be our first "word wall" words. For more deets on this flashcard biznatch and my feeble attempts at teaching vocabulary, go here, here and, wow more?!, here.

Details on that Word of the Week in this here blog post. If you attended this summer's AOE conference, you might recognize that telly on the right. A fellow art teacher commented that she was looking for one to use to "call an artist" and I thought that was simply genius and promptly stole her idea! I can't wait to try it out. 

You know with the way educational theories and junk change with the wind blowing (usually outta some politician's a$$), I don't know if it's still "I Can" statements or something new. Regardless, I like having the kids recite what they "can" do as I find it empowers 'em. So I'm going to keep it up. I wrote about this here. 

Now, I don't know why I didn't say this earlier, but new art-teacherin' friends, you just might be freaking the funk out right now. I know I have a lotta stuff: decor, books, souvenirs, a rando rotary phone. I've spent the last 16-ish years collecting, gathering, midnight-online-shopping. And I've been in this art room for over 10 years so I've managed to decorate just a pinch. But you DON'T NEED ANY OF THIS STUFF to be an excellent art teacher. Seriously. All you need is a whole lotta love for the kids and art. That's it. And maybe a can of this. Because it has the best name ever and everyone knows art teachers use this for deodorant. 

 Like I said, we really only visit this area when I start introducing and chatting about Mexico and Central America. The kids are very good about not running over and grabbing things. In fact, we treat the objects in this area as if we are in a museum. Look but please don't touch. Except for the books. You can get as touchy as you like with those. For the paper decorations, I just accordion folded some scrap bulletin board paper and cut designs. 

By the way, any of y'all got a killer Day of the Dead lesson plan for me? I've been scoping the interwebs and finding all sorts of fun stuff. However, the last time I taught about Day of the Dead it was misinterpreted by some and was promptly shut down which is unfortunate. So this go-round I've got to be certain to teach it very carefully. 

Now, let's chat about my windows, kay? I usually paint both sets but this time, after spending 2 half days working on these, I was done. I pulled some images from the interwebs and started sketching my design with a grease pencil. For paint, I normally use Window Chalk (which I can no longer find!) and the kid's paint. This year, I really wanted the windows to be vibrant and not fade as fast so I decided to use my acrylic paint.

My make-shift painting studio. Do you see that tube of cerulean blue sitting here on the right? When I picked it up, I could tell it had tons of paint in it but when I squeezed it, nothing happened. So, being the genius that I am, I squeezed it even harder until the paint exploded from the back of the tube covering the floor, splattering on to my keyboard, my necklace and my legs. Shoot, it hit places I wasn't even aware of until folks be like, "Um, you have blue paint on your XYZ". And don't nobody want blue paint there. The best part? Every time I needed blue paint, I WOULD FORGET THAT THE PAINT WAS GONNA SHOOT OUT THE BOTTOM and I managed to splatter it everywhere all over again. Wiping it off the cat as we speak.

I think I blabbed for a moment about Mona Lisa in the vid clip. I know some art teachers do this thing where they say "Mona" and the kids say "Lisa" and then they are to imitate her stance: body calm, hands in lap, eyes on me...creeper smile optional. I thought I'd demonstrate that with my framed Mona on the right. I painted that a couple of years ago after finding the frame at the thrift store. I was tired of looking at my same rules so I decided to use these fun images from a Keith Haring calendar instead (I said Kandinsky in my video clip, sorry, friends!). 

Here's the deal, in art class and in life, I think you should be nice. In Teach like a Pirate (our Artsy Book Club book), the author Dave Burgess calls his classroom the No Meanness Zone. I think it's super important to teach children the importance of kindness...even in the face of unkindness. Which is tough and something I struggle with. A part of that is having respect for yourself which is where the "take pride" idea comes in. I'm a lil too tired of hearing the kids down talk themselves and/or their artwork. But I'm really getting ahead of myself. More on rules and first day-ness soon.

Yes! I have drums! Thank you, Forks Drum Closet! The chimes are my hub's biz called Treeworks Chimes. You can find em here...and a super great attention-getting chime bar here (okay, commercial break over). Details on that Art History Wall here. 

Oh! Y'all remember these frames? 

Well, you might have noticed that I've gotten 'em up! I spray painted them gold (although in this photo, it really just looks like brown wood, humph) and have 'em around my room. I picked 'em up at Michaels for just a couple bucks each. I do believe every art teacher in the land needs these fun frames so get you some! And, if you got 'em, I wanna know what you did with 'em.

And that's it! I do hope all y'all have the very best back to school ever! I'm so excited to share with you guys what we're up to...that is, once I figure it out. Chat with you soon!