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!

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:

In the Art Room: The Gallery Game!

UPDATE! Here is the Painting Genres PDF.

AND here's the Tiny Art Museum PDF. 

Lately, I've been inspired by two amazing art teachers: McKay Lanker Bayer who is the art teacher behind Tiny Art Show (see more on her Instagram @tinyartshow) and Emily Compton who is an elementary art teacher who recently shared how she uses games for assessment. I was struck by McKay's Tiny Art show concept and have been wanting to do this with my students. What I love about McKay's art show is that it's not just little works of art but it's also about how to curate an art showing. And I totally fell in love with Emily's super simple assessment ideas. 

I have many weaknesses as a teacher but one of the two that I want to work on this school year are assessment, teamwork (for the kids, I gave up on being a team player myself) and including more art in lessons. This Gallery Game I came up with seemed to do all of those things. Plus the works of art are so tiny that it ties in perfectly to the Tiny Art Show we'll soon be creating!

Hopefully this video will help you out!

To create the game, I used this artist sticker book from Dover Publications. I added the stickers to magnets and scored the cookie sheets at The Dollar Tree. I created two games per table so that kids could pair up and work together. They were to sort the artwork according to THIS Painting Genre sheet. They were to then create a museum, curated anyway they liked. Most choose to categorize the work by genre but others did by artist or color. 

From there, they drew on their cookie sheet, using both sides of the sheet if necessary. Inside a sheet protector, they could name their museum, the sections and draw a map! It was a lot of work for them in 30 minutes but they had a blast AND they learned so much!

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. 

DIY: Super Simple Way to Paint Furniture!

 Last week I got a wild hair and decided that I needed to paint not one piece of furniture for my art room but three. And the process was so stinkin' easy, I thought I'd share it with you. Here you go:

A while back, I created a couple of murals for my art room and I didn't end up using all of the paint. I kept the paint and I'm so glad I did (I mean, what else was I gonna do with it?! I'm an art teacher AND a hoarder, HELLOOO!). Now I can make sure that, despite all of the different crazy patterns, everything kinda-sorta goes together because the colors tie it all. Says me. 

 All this madness actually started with a cabinet that I'm now calling Sketchbook Town (see below). But then on Friday afternoon, I just couldn't stop! I repainted my easel that had become sad and ugly with just blobs of the cold colors. Thinking I'll paint the reverse with the warm colors. That cabinet was a score from the teacher's lounge. The space below that table was just begging for something to fill it AND this little cabinet does the trick. It currently holds my dry erase boards, markers and erasers as we use those everyday...but they were taking up too much space on the table above. We call that The Store and it's the supply-gathering area. I try to keep it clear but I also have a terrible habit of cluttering it up. So getting those dry erase supplies outta the way will (hopefully) help. 

 So all this painting mayhem started when I decided I wanted to create Sketchbook Town. I'll be filling you in on this later (so much to share!! I'm excited). But here is a sneak peak. Oh yeah, I also painted three paintings in this dotted style. I think I actually caught Dot Day fever, y'all! 

 Here's my sketchbook cabinet. If you are wondering where all this furniture came from, lemme just tell you, in your school there is ALWAYS furniture that folks are wanting to part with. Ours is kept in a spare classroom or sometimes it's dropped in the teacher's lounge. Also...if you need furniture, be sure and stop by that local thrift store. You never know what thrift you are gonna score. 

 These are the murals I painted in my art room a couple years ago. You can read more about this mural here...

And the mural that started it all! You can read about that one here.

Okay...I seriously had a million things to do last week...but sometimes, you just need to slap some paint on stuff. Trust me. Carve out some time and do it. You won't regret it.