It's been a long, long, loonngg time!

I realize that it has been quite a few months since I have posted, I am not entirely sure where the time has gone! My school is bigger than ever (officially the largest elementary school in Nashville with over 950 students!), we are now large enough that we have three art teachers at our school, which is great! I have been team teaching with the new art teacher a lot, helping him learn the ropes. I have also been helping to train my other fellow art teachers in the new portfolio assessment, which has been interesting and time consuming to say the least. In addition to that, my friend Ted and I have led two art workshops as well, one on kindergarten art and one on green art. I am also in charge of our schools after school LEAPS program, so trying to stay on top of the training, payroll and student schedules has taken up a tremendous amount of time. I a now at school from 7:30 am until about 6:00 pm Monday thru Thursday, and normal time on Friday. I am by no means complaining, but only recently realized how crazy busy my life is, winter break can't come soon enough!!! 

Anyways, now on to something fun! In my after school class, we played with "snow" and oil pastels. I had the students draw a fun snowy day picture, and then gave them the "snow" to add on. The snow is made from mixing equal amounts of shaving cream and Elmer's glue. The glue keeps the shaving cream from breaking down, and dries nicely, creating nice fluffy snow. Some of the kids tried rolling it into balls to make a 3D snowman, but that didn't work too well.

Back to school time!

Well, it's back to school time here in Nashville.  I went back on July 29th, and kids came back for a half day on August 1st.  Tomorrow, the 5th is the kids first full day, and my first day for classes. I decided to keep my eclectic monster/alien theme for my classroom this year, and just tweaked a few things. I expanded my word wall (it used to be on the back of the door) and also created a whole board focused on the rubric that I use to grade the student's artwork.  I do reference the rubric when I explain the projects that I expect the students to create. Above the marker board, I have the visual standards posted, and plan on hanging the objectives for the various lessons on this board as well.

                                      

The door was fun to decorate. I don't typically buy too many store bought decorations, but I found a cute monster set (the monsters above the marker board that are holding the standards) online. It came with something like 24' of border, but when I got it, the border was a solid sheet, and was not easily torn apart, even though it was perforated. So I used it in my cricut and cut out the letters for the creativity part of the door. I also put the pink alien on the door, because pink is my absolute least favorite color, and I wouldn't be able to see it with the door closed. Lol!

                                                        

I collect Crayola items, and had to have my little stuffed buddies out on a shelf.

                                                           

This is my paper cupboard, with the elements and principles on it.

                                        

Big Bertha is back again, although she is starting to fade a little, I think that a makeover is in her near future.

                                                   

This year, my school is focusing on three main rules, which are be respectful, be responsible, and be safe. My rule area says "Out of this world artists are respectful, responsible and safe. They..." And then under each of the main headings are more defined rules, such as follow all directions, use inside voices, etc

                                                      

I consolidated all of my books, both teacher and children's books into one area. I didn't realize that I had that many books!

                                       

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!