Look what I found out!!!

This has been bugging me forever!  I finally figured it out!

It's about to get pretty inappropriate up in here!!!

So I know we all have those "OMG, you will NEVER believe what happened at school today" stories.  I have plenty, but I want to share one with you that happened yesterday!

Oh geez... where to begin... Well, this sweet child walks up to his K5 teacher and shows her the "squishy bracelet" that another one of their classmates gave to him.  The teacher gives the usual "Oh, that's nice..." and then really looks at this bracelet.

This child has a CONDOM on his wrist!  I'm not sure exactly how he was wearing it, did they poke a hole in it and stick their hand through, or did they roll it out and tie it on?  Who knows?!  Anyway, she very sweetly tells him that those kind of bracelets aren't allowed at school and takes it from him.  Then she has to go up in front of the class and ask if anyone else got a special present from that child.  No one did, thank goodness, but when they opened the kids' book bag, it had about 15 more condoms in it!

I imagine that was a pretty embarrassing phone call home to THAT parent.  Hahaha!  Well, this kid gets pretty upset that the teacher took all of his special bracelets away, so he bolts out the door.  They go after him, but he's a quick little bugger, so administration is called.  At one point, I'm in my room and I can see the principal chasing this kid across the front lawn.  Dear oh dear!

I would love to hear some more "OMG stories" from all of you!  Please share in the comments!

Name Projects...

So I've been working with my two awesome Art ladies this month, and we are doing lesson planning together.  We did some great beginning of the year lessons using the kids names.  I'll illustrate a few below and tell you about them!  On most of the examples, I went over a lesson on Pop Art before we started.  I taught them all about Pop Art and the artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claus Oldenberg, and Jasper Johns.

This is one inspired by Zentangle designs, it's a 5th grade project.  We had the kids draw a fish, then do their name really big on the inside.  Then in each space in between they did patterns and designs.  After they were completed, I had the kids cut the fish out and glue them down on colored paper.  The color really makes the black and white fish POP off the page.

This one is also based on Zentangle designs, but it's more of a Zentangle mountain of letters.  Also a 5th grade lesson. The kids could do their name or their initials.  They filled in the spaces in between with patterns and designs.  Then, they color the letters neatly with markers.

This one I did with 2nd grade. We talked about bubble letters and how to do them, then they wrote their name with pencil on black paper. After they got it how they wanted it, they traced their name with white crayon, then did colored patterns in the background with construction paper crayons, which are totally awesome!

In this lesson I taught the kids about the crayon resist technique. They drew their names big on white paper and traced over them heavily with a black crayon. Then they did patterns and designs in between the letters, and were careful not to color them in. During the next class, we painted the white background with watercolors paints, and I got the expected Ooohs and Aaahs when the crayon would push the water away.

This was a quick 3rd Grade lesson.  They drew their name and then went around and around it with marker.  It was surprising how easy it was for some, and how hard it was for others.

And last my 4th Grade lesson.  We talked about Pop Art and also symmetry.  Then we divided the paper up like you see below and drew names and patterns in the spaces.  They colored it carefully and neatly with markers.

For my Kindergarten class, I printed out their names on white paper and had them practice coloring neatly.  They're a mess and I only see them for 30 minutes at a time!  I never get anything done!  Oh well, slow and steady!  I'm really enjoying this school year and I'm excited to post more pictures of what we've been working on soon!

So... Hello Again...

Yeah... *cough* let's completely ignore how I posted two things and then never posted again the entire school year.  Ha!

A lot of stuff happened last school year, and the blog really got put on the back burner.  I won't go into all of it, but let's just say, I started looking for a new job.  AND FOUND ONE!  So now I'm in a different school district, and I'm super happy where I am.  Now, I don't want you to think I got fired.  I was just working in an environment that I found hostile, and I really needed to get out of that situation for my own health.

Also, blogger is not the easiest website to get to work on the school computers.  It really will not load for me half the time.  So I will TRY MY BEST to keep up with the blog this year, but we will see.

So, more about my new job!  I am now teaching Art full time!  At my other school I was .8 Art and .2 Gifted and Talented.  Which I HATED.  I loved the kids, but I went to school to teach Art, not to be a classroom teacher.  And teaching the gifted kids is like being a classroom teacher (times 100!) because the kids are so smart and need that much extra work and motivation.  It was really sucking the life out of me having to go home and STUDY before I taught these kids a lesson each week.  So I'm very happy to finally just be doing what I am passionate about, which is Art and Art Club!

BUT!  I am between two schools.  I am at one school Monday and Tuesday, and I am at another school Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  I'm fine with it right now, I've got two classrooms, and all the supplies I need.  I'm working with two great Lead Art Teachers who I've really clicked with and they are making it so much fun!  At one school, I was in danger of being ART ON A CART!!!!11!!1!!1!  But my lead over there made sure I had a space!  LOVE HER SO MUCH!!!

So hopefully this year I will have a TON of new lessons to share and we can chat about all the troubles of working between two schools and dragging your art supplies from the storage closet all the way down to the science lab to teach your lessons.  I'm looking forward to it actually!

I'm HAPPY about going to work for the first time in five years you guys!!!  HAPPY!!!

Some of the teachers invited me out for "carbs, sugars, and protein" after work today!  I will let you take from that what you will!  ;-)

That dreaded first week...

...was not so bad after all!

So it's the end of our first week back.  I'm typing this from an awkward position because they gave us stupid computer carts that are too high for a chair, but too low to stand.  Yay!  The week has been fine.  I think five years in, you really start to fall into the routine.  I can only imaging how easy and smooth 10 or 20 years will be, but maybe I'm wrong on that.  Who knows?!  If you know, tell me in the comments!  I haven't had any really huge behavior problems with the classes.  My only real complaints are that my technology has been a pain to get working, and that the K5 classes are at 28-30 students.  That's A LOT of five-year-olds!

My lessons this week are basically just introducing the art room to the kids, reminding them of the safety rules, etc.  I made some awesome new posters for my classroom, I will show them to you!

I found this one on Pinterest here:  ARTIST poster

I love me some Pete!  So when I saw this poster on Pinterest I had to make one too!

This is the one I think I like the most!  It will REALLY help my K5ers learn the best way to color.  Found here: My 3 Star Paper  Can you tell that I really like Pinterest?

Let me tell you... the Veriquest Die Cut Machine is my BEST FRIEND!  I don't have very neat handwriting, so I hate making posters where I have to write on them, but Veriquest makes that SO EASY!!!  If you don't have one of these in your school, you need to scream and cry until they get you one!  LOOK AT IT!!!  I promise they're not paying me to say that, I just really love that machine.  You have to watch what paper setting you put it on though.  If it's set on heavy construction paper and you're using light construction paper it will start to catch and tear and that makes a huge mess and can damage the machine.

The actual lessons I'm doing to get their creativity flowing: K5-1st grade doing Self-Portraits, 2nd-5th grade doing The Exquisite Corpse game.  I have found that most of them really really like this game.  They are delighted and laughing at the weird creatures they get.  BUT!  I have found that two of my 2nd graders are almost in tears at the idea of letting someone else draw on their paper.  I talked to them about how it's teamwork and they have to trust their teammates.  I told one of them, because he was just adamantly NO, that if he did it my way on one side of the paper, that I would let him draw his own on the other side of the paper.  Should I have done that?  I don't know, but it worked with him, so that's good.  In the future, I might not do this with 2nd grade, and leave it as a 3rd-5th activity.  Here's the Exquisite Corpse Lesson

In the past I've done portraits, creative apples, sketchbooks, and other things as beginning of the year lessons.  What's your favorite beginning lesson?

Ta-Da!

Hello world!

I've started this blog for many different reasons.

I think we all need to share more.  And not just pictures of what we did.  We need to share written lesson plans, share our ideas, share what worked, what didn't work, and how we fixed it.  And I don't plan to charge you for these things.  They are free!  I think we need to share more with each other to make art classrooms BETTER and LESS STRESSFUL!

I also need a place to vent... and who understands teacher problems better than fellow teachers?  I'll also be sharing my ways of de-stressing and calming myself.  I'm a highly anxious person, and I've had to carefully develop my go-with-the-flow attitude for my classroom.  Let me tell you... I grew more gray hairs my first two years than I can count.  Hooray hair dye!

I've also noticed that I've kind of let my art go.  I recently brought in some work from a few years ago, and I realized I can't draw like that anymore.  If you don't use it, you lose it.  And drawing simple things for elementary students everyday REALLY isn't helping.  So to keep myself in the groove, so to speak, I will *attempt* to complete some kind of artwork each month.  And hey! If I get good at it, I'll try for more!  I've set up an art space in my office devoted solely to ME!

We had our local Back to School rally today.  It was fun, uplifting, you know the drill.  It really made me think though.  Last year, one of my best friends won Teacher of the Year at her school.  I started to think about how the related arts are sometimes overlooked.  At least they are here.  I do a lot of little things for this school.  I don't really like being in the spotlight, so I don't usually volunteer to head a project, but I am willing to be on a committee.  I've decided I'm going to teach and volunteer every year like I want to win Teacher of the Year.  I noticed that those who do win, teach like that regardless.  It's easy to fall into a slump and just cover your standards.  I need to be more accountable for the things that I do, and I want those things to be excellent! (But I still secretly believe that these things are rigged and that the school doesn't actually vote on who gets nominated) *cough* SO! Moving on!

So anyway, that's that.  I'll be blogging my lessons, you are welcome to take and use them!  I find a lot of stuff on Pinterest, so I'll be sure to give credit!  Please feel free to comment or email me.  This blog gave me a gmail account, but I'll have to remember to check it! I think it is artteachersgiveahoot [at] gmail.com

Good luck!  Have a wonderful school year!  I hope to see you again soon!