New year, new room!

School has started here in Nashville, and I have been very busy in the art room, getting it ready. I'm in a new room, which was a very bland navajo white color. I painted the room two different blues (seen in an earlier post). Then I had to wait...and wait...and wait some more for the custodians to clean my room and wax the floors (it's a new room and I was a little anxious, ok!?!?) Once I got into the room, the the unpacking ensued. This room has way less storage built in, with only one little sink and cabinet in the corner, and a set of open cubbies

that someone had bolted to the original chalkboard.

These cubbies are great, but open to the room, so not the best thing for storing supplies that you don't want the children getting into. So I have used this as my classroom library area. To solve the storage issue, I have 2 large 2-door cabinets, one for paint and printmaking supplies (I have a lot of paint, I admit that I am a hoarder in this area, I unpacked 84 trays of watercolors, not all of them useful, but I hate to throw them away!), the other cabinet for paper and other supplies. Since there is only one bulletin board in my room (albeit a really long board!) I have used the doors of the cabinets as more board space. On my paper cabinet, I have placed my behavior board, and on the paint cabinet, I have attached my scissor storage. The scissor storage is magnetized tool racks found at Home Depot for $12. The scissors hang on the racks until needed, and are high enough that the kindergartners can't reach them.

I found this idea on Pinterest, with someone using knife storage bars from Ikea, but since Nashville doesn't have an Ikea, I improvised. In this classroom I have a door that goes outside, and a window. By the door, I laced my word wall, and by the window, my reading area. Between the door and the window is my long bulletin board, which I have split up into smaller boards, and will post better pictures of later.

I have used the theme of outer space this year, and if you are aware of the blog http://artwithmre.blogspot.com/, you might recognize the big mama alien hiding behind my door. Ted (Mr. E) is one of my friends, in fact, more like family, and when he found out I was going with an outer space theme, he offered me the alien and other things that he had make for his art show last year. I jumped at the offer, and Big Bertha (as I now call her) is now part of our classroom. She will have a sign that says "is your name on your paper?" around her neck, since she is setting beside the artwork storage cabinet. Continuing with my theme, the tables have been numbered with aliens, one at each corner, the numbers of which correspond with the pockets on my behavior board. On each table is a basket that has crayons, markers, pencils, erasers, and pencil sharpeners. This cuts down on time passing out supplies. On the bottom of the chairs, I have rubberbanded 2 layers of felt to cut down on the scraping of chairs on the floor. This keeps the classroom quieter, and save the wax on the floor longer.

My next post will be better pictures of my bulletin boards and hallway displays.

Back to school!

Well, it's that time of year again, and school has started back up. I decided to keep the theme of jungle for my classroom, but I have included more lizards this year, as well as the monkeys from last year. Here are a few of my bulletin boards. The first one is my behavior board. I have assigned a number to each of the seats, and have a corresponding pocket on the board with four pieces of colored construction paper in the pockets. As a child chooses to misbehave, their "cards" are pulled, and there are consequences given. This board is right by the door, so as the classroom teachers arrive to pick up their students, they can easily see if a child misbehaved.

The next board is the one outside of my classroom. We have new teachers this year, and with two art teachers (one outside in a portable) I wanted to make sure that they could find my room.

I have quite a few bulletin boards in my classroom, but they are not in the most convenient areas of the room. One of the boards has to be covered up by the shelf that I use to hold the children's artwork, so I decided to "split" up the remaining board.

Now let's talk storage. I mentioned the shelf that I use for storing my students artwork. Storage is a huge issue for art teachers, and unless you are in a room designed for art, you need to get very creative. I was very lucky to have a kindergarten teacher who decided that she didn't need this piece of furniture anymore. I offered to give it a home. I have little labels with the teacher's names on them stapled to the sides of the shelves. The artwork can be stored flat (unless, as you can see, I let one of the little ones put the artwork in instead of me doing it)

I also have two little wooden shelves that hold plastic bins along one of my wall. I have not finished putting all of the art supplies out yet, but I like using these bins because then I can grab the whole bin to pass out supplies.

I also have a wooden shelf with the glue on it, and a set of drawers with things like brushes, beads, scissors, etc.The drawers are nice because they slide all the way out for distribution.

Painting with elementary students

I love to paint with my elementary students, but I know that there are a lot of art teachers out there who have problems with paint. Paint is very messy, and I think that the more organized that you are, and the more you teach that organization to the students, the better the student's artwork will be, and the cleanup will be much easier as well. I thought that I would share my painting organization with anyone who need help with this.

I start by spending a few minutes with each class, teaching them (or reminding if it is an older class) about the way we do and do not use the brush. I teach them the vocabulary of the brush parts (bristles, ferrule, handle) and remind them that we only paint with the end of the bristles and therefore, I should not see paint on the ferrule, or on the handle. I also talk to them about not "scrubbing" with their brush, so the brush should never look sloppy. (This is a great time to show the video "Young Sloppy Brush" that is found on http://www.teachertube.com/. After this, I pass out the paper and the paints.





For tempera paint, I like to use the "poster paint" containers. You can buy the empty containers from most art supply stores. They hold 6 colors. I use one for the primary and secondaries, and another for the other colors. I like this method of passing out paint because I feel like we waste less paint this way. There are lids that close, and if you need to clean out one color, you can just open that one well, and clean it out. Also, at the end of class, I do not have 20 different palettes to clean laying in the sink. We just put the lids on and go on our way. The containers last a long time, the ones in the pictures are a couple of years old.

I also use "cafeteria" style trays. I place the square brush basins (a must for the classroom in my opinion) in the middle of the tray, and then 2 of the paint containers, on opposite sides of the basin. Next, I place paper towels and brushes (a couple per student.) The great thing about this method of organization is that since the bowls are stable, I am able to stack up 4-5 of the trays on the counter. I can get them ready for the next day. It also makes it much easier to pass out supplies, I can pass everything out in one trip (well, other than their paper), and since the students are not out of their seats, there is less chance of spilling paint or water.

Because I take the time to talk about how to use the brush and paint correctly, and because there is the tray underneath the supplies, there is very little drips and splatters on the table, but if there is, the students have a paper towel in order to clean up the mess right away. I also do not let the students tap their brush on the brush basin to get rid of extra water from their brush. I make them wipe the brush on the side of the bowl.

I use the same set-up for watercolor painting as well.

With kindergartners, I do not let them use watercolors right away. I like to let them use tempera cakes first. I do this because it is the same concept for both types of paint in that they have cakes of color that they have to add water to. The tempera cakes are larger and harder than the watercolor, so the students can learn not to "dig" their brush into the paint, but to add more water. I find that if I have the kindergartners paint with the tempera cakes a couple of times, my watercolors last a lot longer when I finally let the students use them.

Cleanup is very easy, since everything is on the trays. The students place the brushes on the trays, and as I am picking up the trays from their tables, the students are putting their papers on the drying rack. I simply stack the trays up, and clean the supplies when I have a few moments.