In the Art Room: A Giant Painting Banner for Field Day!

This past Monday was our school's field day. There was a 90% chance of rain and thunderstorms for the occasion (of course!). I was in charge of the Art Station which was a new thing last year. In the past, I'd always been in charge of the Face Painting Station with parent and student volunteers. Last year, some changes were made and I was given a box of sidewalk chalk and told that was my station. Y'all...I don't know if you've ever sat outside all day in the blazing sun while kids rotate every 15 minutes only to write words like "fart" on the sidewalk and then ask when they can go to the next station but I can easily testify that it is NO BUENO. I decided to do something different this year...

And this was NOT it. My grand idea would have involved being outside (I'm keeping it a secret in hopes that I can make it happen next year!) and Mutha Nature was given me a big fat "no" with those impending storms. So I arrived at school at 6:30 am to start plotting what my Art Station might look like. I created a video to kinda walk you through what we did:

 I already have several "stations" or centers in my art room that the kids are familiar with as they are my Early Finisher Centers. In addition to those centers, I also created two painting stations for the kids to explore. This HUGE banner was one of them and what we created on canvas I will share in an upcoming blog post. 

 These banners are about 18' long. I simply rolled out huge pieces of bulletin board paper, laid it across three tables and went to town with my good ole bingo dauber. I'm about read to retire this set as we've used them a lot this year and the tops have lost their fuzzy marker-ish-ness. But they work so well for big posters!

 As soon as the kids walked in my room from their outside activities (I have an exterior door making it easy for them to come in), I invited them to take a seat on the floor. I was concerned the kids would be bummed that they were inside (cuz, y'all, IT NEVER DID RAIN!) but they actually loved it. 15 minutes in air conditioning with a chance to go to the restroom if needed ended up being a good thing. I told their teachers, who were rotating with them, to take a little break and come back in 15. It was a good moment to relax for everyone. 

Once everyone was seated, I reminded them of their centers choices and talked to them briefly about the banner. Then I released them. 

 I told the kids that they could rotate to a new center if they wanted but first had to leave the old one as they found it...or even better. 

 Painting friends were reminded to slap on an apron as leaning over the giant banner could get paint on clothes.

 I gave no instructions when it came to painting other than be sure and clean your brush between colors. To clean it up a bit, I painted over the whole thing with my black outline and added pops of white once it was dry.

 And now we have two huge banners to decorate the halls when we come back to school in August! I'm so excited as our hallways are usually so sad when we return. 

Have you ever done anything like this? Love to know what you did in your art teacherin' world!

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