Are you Being Bullied?

Never in a million years did I think that one of the hardest parts about teaching would be dealing with the adults. Adults who behave badly. Adults who treat others poorly. Adults who are bullies. 

In this week's podcast episode, I'll be talking about just that: bullies in your building. UGH. They worst. Who knew that junior high never officially ends? Here's the episode if you'd like to take a listen here:

And, in case you didn't know, I have a podcast! It's a new one I started late this summer and I've been having a blast creating it. Well, I take that back...it hasn't been entirely a blast as I'm doing all the recording and editing myself. So it's been a HUGE learning curve with a side of a blast. You can listen and subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or even here if you'd like to listen from whatever you are currently using!

At the top of the podcast episode, you heard me share this week's sponsor: Prang Tru-Ray Art Teacher of the Month. Look, I NEVER run sponsored ads here on my blog. It's never been my thing. BUT this right here is too good not to share (and, full disclosure, I'm not getting paid to promote them here...I just think this opportunity is too awesome NOT to!). I know that there are many days when I feel unappreciated. I love that Tru-Ray Prang are running this wonderful monthly campaign to give a shout out and some love to some much deserving folks: art teachers! More details here. 

When editing my podcast episodes, I've taken to doodling. These little reminders are as much for me as they are for you. YOU gotta stand up for YOU. No one is gonna fight those bully battles...and no one should have to. LOVE you. Have a wonderful week!

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Simple Embroidery for Day of the Dead

Last Friday, I hosted a Halloween craft night and it was a whole lot of fun. We created super simple embroidery and needle felted decorations. My theme for mine was Day of the Dead but, since I was hosting a bunch of art teachers, I decided to just share the basics and leave the options and creativity up to them. Here's what they came up with: 

 So fun, right?! After sharing these images on my Instagram, I got a lot of questions about embroidery and needle felting basics. This project is all about the basics so I thought I'd create a little easy-peasy tutorial for you and the crafty folks in your life. I do believe children as young as 7 years old could handle this craft with you by their side. Here you go:

If you are not familiar with Day of the Dead and would like to read more, you might want to start here. 

 Supplies needed:

* Embroidery hoop (ours were about 6" wide)
* Fabric (scraps work great for the background!)
* Embroidery floss
* Embroidery or chenille needle
* Craft store felt in a variety of colors

Optional:
* Wool Roving
* Needle felting tool
* Needle felting cushion

 Instead of needle felting, you could always just glue on flowers, jewels or Halloween decor! The fun part on craft night was having a ton of supplies on hand for everyone and just seeing what all they could dream up!

 I like to keep my Calaveras (skulls) in the hoops and then hang them that way. I have a Halloween Tree (yes, I'm that person) and they look so cute on there.

I hope that tutorial helps. Have a wonderful time creating!

If you like this, you might want to grab MY BOOK, right here!

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In the Art Room: Teaching Line (and more!) to Kindergarten

 Hey, y'all! I've been sharing a lot about my kindergarten friends here lately as I feel as though that it a weakness of mine...and just might be a weakness of yours. While I LOVE teaching kindergarten, I find that I often drop the ball when it comes to teaching them my routines. I know they have a shorter attention span and I love to get them creating when they come to art. It's my weakness and it's something I'm working on...because when I don't, I tend to make those same faces as shown above. 

 One of the most popular posts on this blog was the one I wrote on my Kindergarten Line Unit. It has a ton of lessons, poems and info if you have not checked it out. And while I still do many of the lessons from that unit, I decided to change it up a bit this year with a little Line Game for my kindergarten's first line study. Here's how it worked: 

 Before the kids arrived, I cut paper into 12" squares. Then I added two black dots on each side of the paper (you can kinda see them now, right?). Then, working with the person seated next to them, they were to pick a start dot and their neighbor was to pick their end dot. Then they had to take their line for a walk from one line to another. When all the dots had lines, they had to go on a shape hunt. Lines make shapes! They had to find those shapes and color them in. We used paint sticks to fill in the shapes. 

I loved their final results. One the third 30 minute art class, we learned about collage and created the shape monsters you saw at the start of this blog post. They LOVED that! Here's a little video from one of those art classes:

And if you'd like to see more videos like this or hear my podcast episodes about my dear kindergarten friends, you can hop over here. 

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In the Art Room: Sketchbook Decoder Sheets

Hey, y'all! I'm trying, once again, to give sketchbooks a go in my art room. It's always been tricky for me with 30 minute art classes and I've tried doing sketchbooks a BAH-ZILLION different ways. Here's hoping this works. MORE sketchbook details to come (I even created insert pages, y'all...I'm crazy) but until then, I thought I'd share with you a previous post on how I have done sketchbooks in the past . AND I wanted to share with you this free PDF on how they created these sketchbook covers!

Now if these decoder sheets look familiar it is because this is the same idea I used for our Getting to Know You Sculptures!

For our sketchbook covers we used 6" X 18" paper and paint sticks. But really, this would be a great activity for sub plans, the start of abstract painting or simply Getting to Know You works of art!

 Here is one Sketchbook Cover Decoder Sheet.

And here is the other titled MORE Sketchbook Cover Decoder Sheet.

The reason for the smaller format of the sketchbook decoder sheet is that these were later added to their sketchbooks when assembled!

 The kids loved creating these and I loved how colorful and creative they were. These could be done with just about any art medium too!

You'll have to keep me posted if you give these sheets a dry with your students! A fun line and shape review as well!

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In the Art Room: Tiny Gallery of Gratitude

Recently, I shared that my students in fourth grade are working on creating their own Tiny Art Show. Because I was going to be out of school for a couple of days visiting the art teachers in Vermont, I needed a lesson to keep my students engaged. I created this Tiny Gallery of Gratitude sheet for my third and fourth grade students. I hope they enjoyed it (I'll find out tomorrow!) but fingers crossed they did. If you think your student would like it too, here's a link to the FREE PDF. 

I gathered these books for my sub to start the lesson with. They are all wonderful books to introduce the idea of gratitude. Because my sub would be with my students for a couple of days, I asked that she read a book at the start of each class...but I let her decide which ones to read. 

 Here is the sheet I created for my kindergarten through second grade students. (link works, just click on bold sentence!)

As for supplies, I set out pencils, erasers and color pencils for my students to use. I asked that the sub save the work so that we could return to this drawing as a sketch for early finishers. I also want to see what they drew!

If you are interested in other projects that show gratitude, here you go:

 This Gallery of Gratitude lesson was a HUGE hit with the entire school with all creative hands on deck. I cannot recommend doing this lesson enough!

 I recently did an updated version of the Gallery of Gratitude and I love it even more! We used modeling clay and did a bit of writing out the faculty and/or staff member we were grateful for. Lesson here and here. 

Helping my students understand what gratitude is and how to show it is very important to me. Do you have lessons that you love that help spread gratitude? I'd love to hear about them!

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In the Art Room: Clean Up Routines!

Is your art teacherin' clean up time a real pain in the, well, you know? I've tried EVERY clean up trick under the sun and I've finally found what works. There's a whole lot of bells, whistles and moving parts when it comes to my routine...some may work for you, some may not. But that's the trick. Finding what works and sticking with it. In my podcast episode this week, I am sharing an audio clip of my kids cleaning up from the alarms I set...

(And there are a lot of alarms I set because each day of my schedule is different AND each of my classes is 30 minutes in length) to the Clean Up Drums and Gong, to the Table Caller and the super easy reward system I use to encourage a quick, quiet and amazing clean up. I'll also be sharing a whole lot of alternatives to what I use as I don't assume most of y'all have a drum set or a gong. I hope you will take a listen AND I hope you'll share what clean up routines work for you. Here's the episode:

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In the Art Room: Tips for Both Hosting a Student Teacher AND Being a Student Teacher!

It's a new school year...which means that some of y'all are going to be student teachers and others might be considering taking a student teacher on. No matter which boat you find yourself in, I've got a podcast episode for you! I've hosted a grand total of three art teachers in my art room (with only one becoming an art teacher and that's the amazing Rebecca Tenpenny) so my track record isn't great. But I have learned some things having had my feet in both set of shoes so I thought I'd share them.  

If you find yourself in the "about to be a student teacher" camp, you should definitely take a listen. This is the time you are going to be learning SO STINKIN' MUCH so you'll want to make the most of it. Take a listen here:

And if you are thinking of hosting a student teacher, I can share with you what I've learned from those experiences. Here's more:


If you are interested in reading more about that mural Rebecca is working on, you can travel back in time to this blog post for more.

I also did an interview with her a while back! You can read about that here. 

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School-Wide Collaborative: Positive Four Letter Word to Describe Our School

Every year, I like to start my students with a school-wide collaborative. In fact, you can find a ton of our back to school collaboratives right here, just use that search bar! You can also see my third grader's school wide collaborative here. 

To kick off the school year, on the third day of art, all of my first through fourth grade students began painting. I picked up packs of large paper shapes from IKEA on a recent trip. Any construction paper would work great though. The paper from IKEA was thin so it wasn't the best for painting. It did, however, give us a variety of shapes to paint on. 

If you want  to hear more about my painting setup and how I introduce painting to all of my students, you can check out this blog post. Here's the break down of the lesson (keep in mind, my classes are 30 minutes in length):

Day 1 and 2: Painting! We painted patterns all over our letters. My focus for those two days was introducing my painting procedures.

Day 3: Working together in table teams, the teams of four kids had to come up with a positive four letter word to describe our school. Each table team had a dry erase board and had to write down three things: what their word was, who was going to construct what letter and what color of paper they were going to use for the letter. 

The letters were created from strips of paper. Students who finished early helped their teammates. Any tables that had fewer than four kids still had to create a four letter word...they just had the help of early finishers.

Day 4: Assemble the word! For this, the kids again worked in teams. They had to glue two long strips of cut posterboard together Then they laid out their words and glued it down. This only took a short amount of time. Once complete, they wrote about their chosen word!

 If you are interested in doing this lesson and would like a free copy of this bunting, here you go! 

To display, I stapled four triangles together to create a pattern bunting. 

 The bunting was then hung between the displays.

Because I didn't want their words to get lost on the boring wall colors, I cut out flags to go behind them. Yellow and blue are the colors of our school. Yes, that was time consuming but I really like the look. Also, the bunting and the integration of writing in my art room makes me so happy!

FOR FIRST GRADE: Okay, full disclosure, getting first graders (who are really still kindergarteners) to dream up a word and create it was gonna be super difficult. So, instead, I assigned each class a word that we voted and agreed on. One class did NICE while another did KIND. These were then hung by string in the hallway.

 I was so impressed by the artists during this lesson. The words are now hung throughout our school. The message they send really makes me happy.

 The kids dreamed up so many wonderful words. They did outline the letters in the opposite color of paint once complete. 

 I love the choice of SWAG. I also had one group come up with the word ZANY which I totally hung by the art room door!

 If you do this lesson, I'd love to hear from you! I can think of some things I would change...but for now, they look lovely, especially for our upcoming Open House.

 And it got all of the kids painting nearly right away!

 This would be the perfect project to use up any scraps of paper too. Those papers could be used as the paper for the letter making or the background shapes. 

 And how we have moved on to our sketchbooks. I am loving that lesson too! More to come on that soon.

 The ramp that leads to my room created some difficulty when it came to hanging these. 

 So I made sure to hang them a little higher...and at varying heights so they could be seen. This way of hanging them ended up being my favorite!

Thanks for letting me share this fun lesson with you all!

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