Hey, y'all! A while back, I shared with you some of my Art Teacherin' Resolutions for the Brand Spankin' New Year (that post is jam-packed with resources from all over the place so if you've not checked it out, do it. I spent, like, foreverness on it. That's right, I be guilt-trippin' you into reading that post). So far, I'm loving almost all of the new thingies I've introduced to the kids (one is getting tweaked, deets to come!) and I thought I'd do a Part 2 because, let's face it, there's a whole lotta things that need to be resolved in my art room, y'all. But first, this just in!
This silliness of a blog has been nominated for AOE's Blog o' the Year Contest! I'd love y'all to throw a vote my way but, more importantly, go and check out all of the incredible blogs nominated! There are some new ones for me and I cannot wait to spend my snow day checking them out (okay, we've not gotten the "snow-yay phone call YET...I'm using the Power of Positive Thinkerin').
Art Room Jobs: Okay, so speaking of AOE, I have a girl-crush on one of their writers, Alecia Eggers. She is THE MOST organized art teacher on the planet, y'all! I want her to come, organize my art room, my life and, finally become my life coach. I learn so much from her posts and videos on AOE. However, because I am such a hot mess, I always have to put her tips and tricks into a Cassie-Fur-Realz context. I get all excited when I see her ideas but then I take a deep breath and say, "Cassie, fur realz? Is this something you can maintain?" Well, with my spin on Alecia's clean-up jobs, I think I can! I have the jobs you see above posted in two places in my art room. One under the large telly in the top photo (it's small but big enough for the kids to view when they sit on the floor) and the other is Large Marge on my white board (shown above).
Because my tables are covered in paper and my chairs get moved around so much, I decided to color code the table legs! I used stickers but they were pretty lame at sticking so I ultimately put clear tape over them. Which means I coulda just used cut pieces of construction paper. Le sigh. Now, my tables seat four children...but most seats are not taken. So the kids know they must do their job and the job of an empty seat beside them. Let's talk jobs!
TABLE TIDIER: So, like, make the table tidy. Like how you found it. Only better. Hence make it tidy-errrr. Which means supplies put back...
Scissors and pencils in their lil orange caddy, table top trash can emptied (which is just a Folder's coffee can with a laminated Warhol print wrapped around it) and drawers of art supplies organized and closed.
Speaking of, I've not really thought through my drawers yet (uh, that didn't sound quite right). I know glue in various forms will go in the top drawer (glue sticks, glue sponges and glue cups) but the lower drawers are pretty much empty. I'm thinking eventually our everyday-ish supplies will go there like oil pastels, colored pencils, you get the idea. I'd love to print up some pretty labels too...but that's on the back burner with everything else.
MESSY MAT MOPPER: Did y'all notice my laminated and ART-ucational messy mats?! You don't even know how happy these guys make me! But more on that in a minute. The job of the mopper is to use a pre-dampened sponge to wipe down the mats on their table. This job is a favorite currently. Because kids are weird.
MATERIALS MASTER: These dudes and dudettes are in charge of, you guester, materials. They have to get out the special supplies for their class and put them back at the end of class. In my Barbie Art Teacherin' Dream World, I'd have my counters labeled and all that jazz. But, look, I'm no Alecia Eggers, okay?! SOUND SILENCER: Ya know. They get to shush the above-a-whisperin' kids. This job is also a fave...unless the SS is a known chatter-box. Which leads to self-shushing. Always fun to observe.
Art-U-cational Messy Mats!: All my classroom teacher friends have these awesome things taped to student desks. The alphabet. A number chart. Other stuff. For years I've wanted to do something similar but I couldn't figure out why/how/spaghetti (ADHD. The struggle is I LOVE PIZZA real). Then I started buying things off TPT like it was going outta style and one of them was this fab-o Elements of Art purchase by Mrs. Nguyen (also a Blogger of the Year contender, go girl!!).
For the reverse side of the mat, I found a free color wheel and color mixing chart on the interwebs.
The kids have LOVED seeing the recipes on their mats! One first grader even thanked me and some kindergarteners were excited to see that what they were painting was correct according to the mat. It was a chore to make these (I had my fab friend Carol give a girl a hand, thank you, Carol!) and it did take us about 2 hours to cut, glue and laminate 25. But I think they will last a good long time.
Relocated "I Can" Wall: Previously this was located by my telly but it often was blocked by an easel. And then I would forget to update it and refer to it. Like, seriously, that's bad, y'all! (please ignore the HAWT MESS EXPRESS under my demo table. ALECIA! CLEAN UP IN AISLE 13!)
Of course the I CAN's include an I CAN DANCE TO OLD 70'S RECORDS. Which wouldn't be complete without a disco ball, y'all.
The "I Can's" are divided by grade level and by "Today, I Can...", "So That I Can..." and "I Know I've GOT IT When...". I also used these awesome magnetic strips I found at the Parent/Teacher Store to divide up my board.
Filmed Sub Plans!: If y'all were here 10 minutes ago, you know I filmed my latest sub plan (go here, kids). I remember reading about how Ron Clark does this and thinking, that is GENIUS. Well now that I'm out for several days for jury duty, I thought I'd give it a shot. I went to school this morning to prep and I met my sub. I could tell she was a little nervous about the whole thing (she had an understandable technology aversion of which I can relate) but at the end of the day, when I dropped by, I heard she LOVED it! And look!
I just grabbed a couple of fourth grade and second grade pieces, put them together and let out a squeal! They did fab-o! I'll share the finished mural soon. This has made jury duty and missing teaching the kids a little less painful. Alrightie! That's all the Art Teacherin' Resolutions for 2016! Here's to stickin' to 'em. Cheers!
So today a magical surprise happened in the art room: Barney Saltzberg, author of Beautiful Oops dropped by!
Okay, pick yourself up off the floor and lemme tell you how this amazement went down.
So this book is every art teacher's dream. It focuses on working through your "mistakes", or oops as Barney calls them, and turning them into something beautiful. This is how creative ideas are born! Isn't this what we art teacherin' types try to teach our young artists everyday?
So all y'all can only image what a thrill it was to have Barney himself not only read Beautiful Oops to the kids but also talk to them about his creative process. When writing the book, he didn't start with a plan, so to speak, but he created each "oops" illustration and then worked from there. What a perfect method for such a book, don't you think? He shared with us that after illustrating this page, he went into his son's bedroom and saw that he had drawn a similar penguin to the one his son had created! It was so cool to hear his ideas behind each page.
One of my fave stories he shared was how Amazon stopped shipping his book soon after it was released (don't worry, they've since resumed). Apparently a ton of folks were returning the book because one of the pages is torn and Barney makes an oops out of it. Guess some folk were a lil unclear on the concept and thought they'd received a damaged book!
Y'all might be wondering just how a girl and her students got so lucky. Well, I have Mark Meckel, the dude on the right, to thank for that. You see, last year, my then third grade kids had the opportunity to visit a recording studio and record the song It's a Beautiful Oops.
Working with Mark and our music teacher, my students learned the lyrics of the song and recorded it in Nashville.
But the icing on the cake for me was chatting with Barney via Skype that day. So you can only imagine how thrilled I was that he popped by today! Fortunately, when Barney dropped by today, he visited with a fourth grade class, the same group of kids who had sang It's a Beautiful Oops!
After reading the book, Barney used one of our messy paint mats and created a crazy elephant head sculpture out of it (he named it Elepantish, ha!). Then I passed out the kids sketchbooks and told them to close their eyes and draw a piece of scrap paper from our painted paper box. They were to create something from that oops. I gave them free reign to sculpt, collage, draw, etc. They were thrilled! We spent our last 15 minutes other just oopsing it up!
It was an awesome day, one me and my students are sure not to forget. Thank you, Barney, Mark and Tom!
Hello, cats and kittens and welcome to the very first day(s) of art! It's been a wild -n- crazy week so far and, y'all, IT'S ONLY TUESDAY. Which means we're having fun, right?! Well, somebody is, anyway. Glue sniffing will do that to a gal.
For the last couple of years, I've shared with you what my first day(s) of art class look like (go here and here for that, y'all) . I keep saying "day(s)" because my schedule is a lil different than the rest of the art teacherin' universe (I ain't complainin', I'm just sayin'). I see my first and second graders for 30 minutes, twice a week; my third and fourths for 60 minutes, once a week and kindergartentown (who don't start until next week) for 40 minutes, once a week. So! What I've got for you today is what I teach the youngers over the course of two classes and the olders in one class. Make sense? Before we get started, lemme just tell you a couple of things I decided at the start of this school year: * My room doesn't have to be perfect but it does have to be functional on the first day. Y'all, I used to spend entire summers in my art room. Rearranging. Organizing. Making visuals. It was exhausting, time-consuming and I never gave myself a break! This year, I seriously spent a handful of days in my room preparing. I always redecorate my room with a theme (see my Paris-inspired art room and my Asian-themed art room) but this year, I've only just begun updating my decor. Mostly because I knew I didn't need it at the start of the year and I was enjoying every last drop of my summer! * Introduce the art room, routines and other new stuffs gradually. I used to try to cram in everything in the first couple of art classes. What do you think the kid's first impression of art class was? Rules, Do's and Don't's, Procedures and Zzzzzz-snoozefest. I think that whole deal is flawed. The kids only hear about the first two minutes of whatever it is you are talking about anyway. You go over one million boring-ish things with them all at once and you've lost them! I want their first impression of art class to be a fun one so we are covering those necessary things in baby bites, over several art classes. And doing some fun stuff everyday, like painting on the first day of art class!
So, speaking of talking too much, here's a clip of me talking too much TO YOU about what goes down that first day. I go into more detail about what you see here in the post...but if you have any questions, you can find me in the comments, y'all.
Those flash cards I mentioned? They say: inspire, art, artist, create, creative, imagine, unique, etc. All words that describe the kids, art class and what artists do! My first thru fourth grade students read these at the door. For kindergarten, I show them shape flash cards. More in this vocab blog post.
This is the view of my art room from the doorway. This is what the students see when they enter my room. The "teacher chair" is on the right and the other students are to sit on the floor in rows in front of the "teacher" (the quotes are cuz the teacher is a student I picked at the door to both monitor student behavior and play the game "see, think or wonder".)
Here's what the kids seated on the floor see. A view of my giant telly with an image from our Artist Inspiration, Henri Rousseau. When I am finished quizzing the kids at the door, I ask the "teacher" who was the best behaved boy and girl. Those two kids will get to be the host of our end-of-art-class game The Smartest Artist.
At this point, I take over and introduce our Word of the Week. What the kids don't know is that I am secretly introducing them to our art class routines as we do this each and every art class! Whenever they hear the WoW, they are to "whoop! whoop" which is one part annoying and two parts fun, depending on your mood.
After talking about our WoW and our Artist Inspiration, I (re)introduce my students to Jes, our mascot/traveling tiger! I made a Jes a couple of years ago (details here) and he traveled around the world like Flat Stanely. It was so fun, the kids loved it...and then the poor dude was shipped to China never to be seen or heard from again (in my imagination, he took a turn to Bangkok and decided it was so fun he never wanted to leave!). So I made a new one and the kids are so excited to send him packing. I'll keep you posted on how that goes as I'm going to need your help!
Then we made a list of all the places we thought Jes should go!
After a quick stretch, we talked about rules. Oh, rules. Double snooze. But we made ours all sorts of wild and crazy which I think I explained in el video. So, we'll just leave it at that!
We have a new incentive this year with a sticker chart! I've never EVER done a sticker chart, y'all. I'm seriously the most unorganized and inconsistent person you will ever meet in your life. However, I juuuuust might be able to do this one. All the special area folk in my school are on board so we are hoping to do it together. The kids have the chance to earn two stickers by following the two thoughts above.
At the end of a quarter, whatever grade level class has the most stickers is rewarded with (a super cheap/easy) party! Like a 5 minute dance party at the end of class, popcorn party(tho we have so many allergies, y'all. It might have to be peanut-free/glutenless/flavorless/why-bother-living candy of some sort), you get the idea. Who else does this? Has it worked for you? TEACH ME YOUR MAGICAL WAYZZZZ.
At this point, I wanna hear the kids talk because I'm tired of hearing myself. So I call roll. The kids are to respond with a "Hello, Mrs. Stephens" (which helps the newbies learn my name, to hear it said 20 other times!) and then I ask them a silly question like those seen above. Yesterday, I asked one boy, who was new, when his birthday was and he replied "Today!" So, OF COURSE we had to stop, drop and sing Happy Birthday. The kids love these questions because they are random and ridiculous. Which is always a good time, says me.
Oh, lookie! I can's! I changed up how I post these and I'm really digging it. Let's zoom in, shall we?
Big, simple, kid-friendly and with visuals! Thanks, Dollar Tree.
This will also help the kids know what supplies to gather for art projects of the day.
So this was the beginning-of-the-school year decorating that I did which I felt was necessary for that very first day. The cute stuff will come later. And when it does, room tour!
Another new thing for us this year, the Look What I Learned Today board! I call on three kids to tell me one thing and jot it down. While I do, the kids do their "ooguh, ooguh, OOOOGUHHH" chat. It's fun to see what sticks with them!
Now, for the younger kids, that was the end of art class on day one. But for the olders, the fun was just starting. I told them their table assignments, sent them shopping at the store, had them drop their supplies off at their seats and meet me at my new demo table (seen in the center). After a quick texture painting and printing demo, the kids set to work!
With a limited palette of yellow, blue, turquoise and white, we painted and mono-printed as many papers as we could until it was time to clean up.
We now have a huge stack of these beauties to use for our upcoming jungle-themed projects! Henri Rousseau, eat your heart out...
So much happiness.
And a beautiful mess at the end of the day! I can't wait to share with you what we do with our papers but that will just have to wait. Mama needs to soak these feets!
Labels: elementary art, vintage clothing
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