Back to School 2016 - Art Room Tour

Happy "back to school" time! Here's a quick photo tour of my Art Room and you'll find some info in the captions.

Enjoy!

We've got a "Road Trip" theme this year - riding the road to success with a little Disney love!

Thanks to the Dollar Spot at Target, I have a new vinyl cling for my wall, a new ROYGBIV'd poster and new marker buckets!

I'm trying a "Behavior Notebook" this year to keep better documentation about student behaviors. Thanks Pinterest!

Besides getting my classroom ready for the new school year, I also have the "honor" of decorating all the bulletin boards for Open House. Here are some of the cute ones. And I do love me some thematic fonts!

This one is my favorite - it's is our PBIS bulletin board that helps track how many Paw Prints our students earn for an end-of-the-year, all-school party. I love the watercolor "road" over the real map!

And today marked an exciting day - I finally gave my last "first day of school" speech! I give that same "these are the rules, here are the jobs, how you get points, blahblahblah" speech 20 times at the beginning of every new school year! I've been making Prezis to make it more engaging for a few years now - check them out and give it a try.

Enjoy the quick tour and have a great September!

~Amy

Happy Thoughts

Looking around my school brings me joy...most days! This week, these are the things that I think are pretty awesome!

4th Grade Radial Prints

Truth be told, these may be prettier from far away than up close. Using donated cardboard, each 4th grader created a "printing plate" for this collograph project. On their 9" square of white paper, they blended chalk pastels in analogous colors (which I called OMBRE and they all said, "Ohhhh!" because that apparently sounds way cooler!) Then, using black ink and brayers, they printed their plate four times in a radiating pattern. Overall, a great/cheap way to introduce printmaking with cardboard, but the end bulletin board display knocks my ROYGBIV socks off!

When I saw THIS on Pinterest with a Tournament of Books bracket, I knew I had to adapt the idea for our sports theme this year and combine it with Youth Art Month.

Art Madness Bracket

 For the month of March, each class will vote on a head-to-head battle to decide which painting is the "best" and the variations of what "best" means to each grade level, or even each student, is fascinating. Some are voting for the most famous, the weirdest, the most details, the one they think deserve to hang in a museum, etc... And while we're voting during art class, the hallway has a large-scale bracket with pictures and some autobiographical facts and tidbits of information.

We already have some students predicting which painting will "win it all" but really, I've already won because I've got students who are actively discussing art history, outside of my art room, in their spare time! #teacherwin

Have a great week, art ed. world! Hope to see some of you in a few weeks in Chicago for NAEA!

~Amy

"Beyond Roy G. Biv" Approved

Anyone who knows me is aware of my obsession with Target! They have everything I never knew I needed! They have the dog food our pup eats, the brand of paper towel I like, the cute new dishes I want, the Starbucks coffee that I NEED, and a vast quantity of things that just show up in my cart when I wasn't looking!
Well, today during my weekly Target fix run, this display stopped me in my tracks! And I didn't have to even rearrange them to go in Roy G. Biv order - they were already like this! 

"Beyond Roy G. Biv" Approved! 

Thank you, Target, for making my day!
~Amy