School-wide art show

I know I haven't blogged in a while, my friend Ted (www.artwithmre.blogspot) has been bugging and bugging me about it, but I have been very busy and a little forgetful! Anyways, now that some big things have been taken off of my plate, now I have time to post some pictures. One of the major things that I was dealing with was a school-wide art show. There are two art teachers here at my school, but with almost 900 students, this is still a lot of work. Most of my classes displayed their prints, but the kindergarteners displayed their bugs, and the third graders had photo collages up.

                    

I didn't blow the kiln up!!!!!

As some of you know, my friend Ted (artwithmre) and I have been talking about firing clay pieces with marbles or other glass pieces in them. He tried, and posted some of his results, and now it is my turn. I tried using a variety of glass pieces, from marbles, mosaic tiles, the glass "wafers" that are used in plant arrangements, millefiori glass pieces and even a variety of glass beads, including faceted beads, seed beads of a variety of sizes, bugle beads, and some square beads I had.

 I fired to cone 04 since Ted said he had some pieces where the glass popped out. Some pieces were glazed, and some were not. I was very excited to see how they turned out, so I came in over the weekend to open the kiln, and was surprised to find that every piece survived. Here are some of the results...

Before...

 

After...

      

I'm a little frustrated right now.....

I know that I haven't posted in a while, my friend Mr.E. likes to remind me about that, but I felt the need to post today. In my classroom, I have my paper area. I am very lucky that one of my parents works for a publishing company, and at least once a year I am lucky enough to receive a huge paper donation. This is the paper that I use for the "free draw" box. When the students are finished with their project, they are allowed to get free draw paper and draw whatever they want. Now comes the frustrating part. I have a box clearly labeled with "free draw" on it as shown below. But there are always at least 5 students in every class that always grabs the good drawing paper instead. I have discussed this numerous times with the students, and they all can tell me where the free draw paper is, but there are always a few that just won't do it. when I talk to them about it, they always respond with "oh, I didn't know". My question is how can I possibly make it any more obvious? I don't have the room to move the paper somewhere else, or to keep the good paper locked up. Grrrrr......

Sometimes I forget...

I still have not learned my schedule yet this year, partly because it has changed, partly because I have missed almost 2 weeks of school, so the other day when I pulled paintings off of the drying rack, I could not remember whose class the projects belonged to. So I decided to make some markers for my drying rack to help me. I took small pieces of cardstock and wrote all of my class names on them. I also wrote the grade level in the top corner, and the day(s) that they come to my room in the bottom corner. I laminated them, and then punched a hole in the corner and used a small piece of pipe cleaner to make a "hook". Now, when the students put their artwork on the drying rack, I know exactly who the artwork belongs to!

Crazy beginning of the school year!

It has been quite a school year already, I almost want to start over. My school is almost 100 students over projected numbers, so we have been adding classes and moving students like mad, which means that my schedule has changed as well. Due to personal reasons, I have had to miss about a week and a half of school, and now it is close to the end of the 9 weeks and I am scrambling to get the 3rd and 4th graders projects finished for their upcoming art show. Phew!
On a good note though, the second graders are finishing up their collage projects, and they are turning out well. First the students tissue paper collaged a 9x12 piece of paper for the background. Then they traced their hands on a thicker piece of paper. We took about 20 minutes to brainstorm words that describe personal qualities, which the students then write all over their hands with sharpies. The students then cut their hands out and attached spacers (some plastic beads that were donated to the art room) on the back of their hand, and then glued them to their background. Many of the teachers have been impresses with the range of descriptive words the students have come up with.

Back to school!

Metro schools have already gone back to school. The teachers had to come back July 27 and the students came back Aug. 1. I have been crazy busy setting up my room this year. All of the tiles in my room were removed due to asbestos, so my entire room had to be packed up as if I were moving rooms. As well as new tiles, my room was re-painted. They matched to colors of my room, and did a much better job than I did last summer, probably because I am so short that even standing on the ladder, I had to use a paintbrush taped to the end of the broom handle (lol!). Anyways, I just realized that I forgot to take pictures of my room until today.the black and blue quote board is in the hallway, and the inspiration comes from Painted Paper's blog. The other bulletin boards are in my room. One of the boards has my "kid friendly" standards on it. These are the TN standards re-written in language that the students understand. Our new teacher evaluation requires that we post the standards and objectives in the room, and this is how I have chosen to display them. The large monster was a gift from my friend Ted (Mr. E) last year. My students have named her big Bertha, and she sits on top of the student storage area, reminding everyone to put their names on their paper.