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

5 Tips to Get Started WEAVING

Weaving is, by far, one of my most favorite lessons of the year! Once the kids get the rhythm of it, they love it too!

Here are my top 5 tips to try weaving for your next lesson:

1. Invest in good quality cardboard looms with wide-notches.

Kids can get frustrated if the process seems too tricky or takes too long to master. Good quality looms make a world of difference in their frustration level. I often overhear, "This is easier than it looks." when I use the "good" looms. I've had some of my looms for over 10 years, and they still look and work great!


2. Teach students the correct vocabulary from the beginning: loom, warp, weft, weaving.

www.weaverandloom.com

Having them learn and apply art vocabulary is a great confidence booster in the Art Room. And its always fun when they know words that their parents don't!







3. Pre-cut your strings.

I have small plastic boxes filled with pre-cut and pre-sorted strings. This makes the process of picking out new strings so much faster, so they can get back to their weaving, as quickly as possible.


4. Have them check their weavings with you on a regular basis.

On the first day of weaving, they can choose 4 strings. When they are done with those strings, they have to visit me at a designated table and we have to check for "oops strings" - those strings that wanted to go over or under, but...OOPS...they went the wrong way!
On day two, we up the number to 6 and they are THRILLED! On day three, they can weave 8 strings before they visit me, but if they see one of those "oops strings" before they visit me, they can try to fix it themselves. And let me tell you, they are so proud when they figure out where a mistake is before I do! :-)


5. Make a few weavings yourself to understand the process and to have examples of many pattern possibilities.

In the beginning, we talk a lot about two-color patterns, like red-blue-red-blue. But as they weave more, they get ambitious. Maybe a three-color pattern, like red-white-blue-red-white-blue or red-red-red-white-white-white-blue-blue-blue, or maybe a six color pattern like the color wheel, or even a pattern that repeats with ANOTHER pattern! Their ideas are endless, but if you have some examples already made, you can easily show them what a pattern may look like ahead of time.

My 2nd graders are excellent weavers and you can see all their pieces in our Artsonia gallery.

And in the words of Journey, "Don't Stop Be-weave-ing"!
~Amy

Good idea? Maybe!

I'm not sure if this was a GENIUS idea or maybe a waste of time, but either way, I thought I'd share! The kindergarteners were going to be painting with watercolors today and I wanted them to only use the primary colors. So, I made a cover, of sorts, that covered up all the watercolors EXCEPT the colors they needed. It was kind of tedious cutting out the ovals but it kind of worked! Because they're kindergarteners, they totally smashed down the watercolors, but at least they only smashed down the primary colors!

I'll take that as a win!

How do you limited your supplies with the itty-bitties?

Parent-Teacher Conferences

It's a blessing, and a curse, to be an art teacher during parent-teacher conferences. And while I wish more parents stopped in to see their child's artwork, I do love the few hours of uninterrupted work time I get on nights like this. 

This is the beautiful, creative mess I've made this evening!  Just a normal night in the Art Room! 

Believe it or not, this is the beginning of our Spring Art Show! ;-)

~Amy

My Clay Crate

File this post under "What Works for Me"! 

I know that the kids absolutely LOVE clay because it's fun to touch, smells kinda weird and because it's expensive, we don't use it very often. But if I'm being honest, its just not my favorite. It is so messy/dusty/prep-intensive and the projects don't turn out exactly how I pictured in my head. With all that said - I do LOVE how I organize my clay tools! 

I'm not sure where I got the actual plastic crate, but it is heavy duty and it holds all of my clay tools in an organized fashion. I've got a clear shoebox-type container that holds four plastic cups. Each cup has an old, grubby ruler that has a sign that identifies and explains each tool. I've also got rolls of old masking tape to use for circle templates, wallpaper samples for placemats, a few wires to slice the clay and a squirt bottle full of water. Mostly I use the water for spraying dried out clay, but sometimes I use it for spraying kids who are too slow to clean up! Just kidding...maybe! 

I like that the crate takes up very little space, it keeps (most of) the clay mess contained and it is an easy system that even my youngest students can use and maintain. And like I said, it works for me! 

And because I have a small obsession with RoyGBiv order - check out my glaze organization too!

Would this work for you too?

Watercolor Refills

Let me just say - I ADORE Prang watercolors! The colors are juicy and fabulous and the 16-color sets have all the roygbiv colors plus the intermediates. PLUS they are refillable which saves me some precious budget money!

But storing all those refills got a little disorganized and you know I can't stand THAT! So, here's what I came up with. I'm using reusable plastic containers with lids from Target. I think they were less than $3 for 5 containers. Each one is clear, so it is easy to see when a specific color gets low and I need to reorder some. And I've labelled each one and stored them in one of my storage boxes. Easy Peasy! Take a look... 

Doesn't it amaze you when it takes you so long to come up with something so simple?!