This week has been more positive in the clay production.  My third bisque firing was once again successful — no broken pieces!!

Today 2nd graders painted their mammals.  I guess I’m kind of a purist when it comes to clay work — deep down I just think ceramic pieces should be glazed.  But look at how cute these turned out when they painted them!!!  Pretty awesome.

This is a moose, and I think it is so cool.  Sorry it’s so blurry, but you get the idea. 

Remember the caracal??  Still cute (those are claw marks from a bear, in case you were wondering).

 

Also, today, 4th graders added color to their greenware coasters.  Last year I successfully fired these once, bisque and glaze all-in-one.  I’m hoping for success with that again this year!  Once they have painted their stamped radial designs, I will put clear glaze on top of them and fire them.  

3rd grade will be painting their bowls with the same glazes, but their bowls have been bisque fired (photo above).  I will also put a coat of clear glaze on top of their colorful glazes before firing (in my free time).

Finally, 

I just liked how this looked sitting on the floor after a full day of glazing and painting!  

 

This was a full art week, and it started last Saturday, with this:

It was awful. It ruined my whole weekend, and I was scrambling . . . what am I going to do for those 25 kiddos whose pots were no longer pots? And what happened, and why? I got some air dry clay and decided that everyone would paint their pinch pots instead of glaze them. I had promised them we would melt a marble in their pot, so I promised them we would do that at the beginning of the year next year. I had huge apprehensions about air dry clay, but I’ve done the remakes with one class and it worked really well. So, all is well on the first grade pinch pot front, after much dismay. I still have to TELL two classes (5 students from each class) about it on Monday, though

I have analyzed that probably the pots weren’t dry enough. They had dried long enough, from previous experience, but humidity has been high this spring. I needed to fire BIG, THICK sculptures on Monday — wanted to glaze them on Tuesday. On advice from other art teachers, I did a process called “candling” to (hopefully) assure no explosions. The process is heating up the kiln to 180-200 degrees and then holding it at that temp for 12-24 hours before doing the regular firing. That set me back a day and made it so we won’t have time to glaze the mammal sculptures – they will have to be painted as well. But, it was well worth it because there were NO CASUALTIES in that firing. And let me tell you, they were really, really thick!

Finally, the Kindergarten Mother’s Day necklaces made it through the fateful pinch pot firing unscathed, I rearranged schedules so they would be able to glaze, and did a glaze firing on Thursday. I had to go in on Friday (my day off) morning to put the cords on the necklaces and give them to the classrooms, but they got them in time for Mother’s Day, which was the goal. I love the necklace cording in rainbow colors, but I need to coordinate my glazes so they match the cording. Not sure what I was thinking, but at least they are bright

Another highlight to my week was receiving this

A nice reminder about why I do this every day — helping these kiddos grow, in one way or another. I strive for that, anyway, (as all of the teachers I know do) and hopefully succeed at least part of the time!

The long awaited field trip is done, and it went very well. I was really proud of my students — for their behavior AND because when the docents asked them art questions they KNEW THE ANSWERS!!! T THEY LISTEN TO ME!?!?!?!?!

I learned things to do differently next time (yes, I’m actually considering a next time). For one thing, I learned that the museum will pay for buses for field trips!!! That is the main expense, so that is good news! I thought this would be a one-time deal for our school, but maybe not!

I am deep into clay work, as you may have noticed from my previous post. The good news is, they are almost all done. The bad news is, I just realized today that there is no school next Monday. That throws a serious wrench into my already tight firing schedule. I’m afraid things will not be ready for Mother’s Day, but really, that’s the least of my worries. Getting them done before school is out is more important. Wish me luck!

Awesome clay cutting tool. I love this thing!

Paint trays as art

My new rainbow rug! Love!!!

Keepin’ it real, my messy clay room!

I’ve actually participated in two in-services this spring about Common Core and Art. I’m excited by it, and encouraged that I’m already doing a lot of things in the art room that qualify as common core, even if I didn’t recognize/call it that. I’ve become more intentional and conscious about it, and am sure to point out the connections to my students. I used to do things that I knew tied in with what they did in the classroom, and waited for them to make the connections. Now, I point them out. Put dots on the corners of these shapes and connect those dots with the vanishing point — what are we making when we connect the dots — line segments, that’s right! Just like you do in math! Anyway, I’m kind of pumped about it.

Also, in prep for our upcoming 4th grade field trip to the art museum (!!!), we are spending some time “reading” works of art. I talk to them about context clues, title, author (artist), characters, setting, plot! It’s pretty awesome, and they really get into it!

And, clay. Yesterday marked the beginning of CLAY WEEKS in my art room. It’s intense, it’s exhausting, but such energy and excitement. I come home exhausted and dirty (well, ok, I always come home dirty. Teaching art is dirty work), but energized too.

Kindergarten is making texture necklaces.

For this project, I give them a small – about 1 inch square – piece of clay and have them roll it into a ball. Next, they use the palm of their hand to flatten it so it looks like a cookie (but don’t eat it, and don’t make it too flat!). They are exclaiming that it’s cold, why is it gray, will it turn white, can we paint it? I then show them some texture rollers I have and have them feel it — talk about how it feels and that that’s texture. They gently roll texture into their circle, and when they’re done I poke a hole it it, put their name and grade on the back, and we’re done until glazing.

Second grade is making sculptures of their mammals which they’re doing reports on. I love them. I do help them start forming the body, head and limbs but then I let them do their thing. It’s so fun to watch them work. They are totally engaged and enjoying it. I wish I could have them for longer, because I always feel like I’m rushing them to finish.

A moose, with a flying squirrel behind it!

A rat!

A caracal! This one amazes me!

A view of many. The one with the really pointy ears and the curly tail is the caracal.

I must say that during clay weeks, centers are my friends. I didn’t use centers my first year or so, and then I did. Centers changed my life. I’m not even kidding. Imagine 25 kids making a sculpture as you demonstrate. It was total chaos. Now, I have 6-7 at a time, while the others are occupied doing other independent art activities (well, mostly independent). My centers range from texture rubbings, to drawing mammals, to reading art books . . . sometimes coloring pages. Ahhhhhh, I love centers. I do.

Ok, you need to be saying (in your head) that title like Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, and friends, ok?  That’s the only way it works or makes sense.  Do it. And repeat it three or four times.  I’ll wait.

Ok, lots of fun stuff happening in the art rooms these days.  Clay starts next week (my clay arrived this morning.  Thanks, Doug )

This is what the counter in my room looks like ALL. THE. TIME.  Every day week month quarter I think I will get it cleaned off and organized.  Somehow, that doesn’t make the priority list.  Maybe on the work days at the end of the year.  Next year, I will have a plan so it doesn’t get like this.  I will.  I WILL.

On a more positive note, this is what greets me when I walk out my art room door.  How could that not make you happy?  Kindergarten learned about the artist Kandinsky and his concentric circles.  I have been collecting bottle caps for awhile, ok maybe a little longer than that.  My plan is to make a big, awesome, school mural with them.  I asked for small water bottle type caps, but I got all kinds in all sizes.  So, I use them for tracing and cutting!  They are actually awesome.  Peanut butter lids for the big circles, and so on (in other words, I don’t really know what the smaller lids are from, but the big lids say JIF).  Practicing cutting and gluing is a good thing for Kinders to work on, and not gluing the same color on top of the same color is good, too.  Some were random:

Some made patterns:

ALL were beautiful!

I love these things.  They make me really, really happy (ok, admittedly, it doesn’t take much to make me happy, but that’s not a bad thing!).

Fourth grade is learning about perspective.  Vanishing points, horizon lines, smaller objects farther away, and so on.  I am so impressed with their work!  This was our introductory project.  We learned the basics, and then made a vanishing point, aka dot,  in the middle of our paper.  I then passed out cardboard squares and rectangles and they traced 5 shapes around their vanishing point.  Two rules – the shapes couldn’t be ON the vanishing point and they couldn’t be touching each other.  I then had them make dots on all the corners of their shapes and we connected their corner dots with the vanishing point, making line segments (they had learned about those in math!).  They didn’t connect corners if the line would go behind their shape. If they ran into another shape or line segment, the line stopped there.  Then we looked at them and realized they looked like buildings in the middle of a city might look to a bird flying overhead.  BIRD’S EYE VIEW!!!  I told them that we weren’t going to make them into buildings yet — drawing windows and doors in perpective was the next lesson.  So, we colored them abstractly, which means with interesting colors and designs but not to look like real life, with metallic colored pencils.  I think they turned our really cool.  A side note — I cut the paper 8 x 11 for this project, so they fit perfectly onto 1/2 of a large piece of construction paper to frame it!!  Thanks to my colleague, Shelly, for sharing that gem with me!!  That little tip has changed my life!!

I’m sure I got both ideas for these projects from someplace on the internet.  I have no memory of where, and while I tweaked them to fit my classes, I didn’t think them up all by myself.  I owe a debt of gratitude to art teachers who share their ideas freely.  I hope other art teachers can get ideas and inspiration from me as well.

In other news, this is one of the (many) things that remind me how much I love what I do:

And, counting down to our art museum field trip.  I am so pumped, excited, nervous, excited, tense, excited . . . you get the idea.  I’m excited.  The kids are too!!  Thanks Target Field Trip Grants for making this possible!

Happy Spring (as it thunders, hails and sleets outside).

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m feeling tired of NO today.  I feel like, sometimes, I’m saying NO all the time . . . NO stick people, NO words, NO vampire teeth, NO scribbling . . . I want to say YES more, and I usually start out with yes –  things pretty open ended, letting creativity flow.  And then the vampire teeth start.  One table does them, then another, then they all want to have vampire teeth (and mohawks that look like pointy heads). Or they try to out-do each other with silliness that diminishes the artwork (at least I think it does).  It isn’t creativity, it’s following the crowd and doing what’s “cool” right now.  What’s an art teacher to do?

That’s not a rhetorical question, I really want your input and advice!

The last 9 weeks of school!!  It always creeps up on me.  When I started this post, I thought ‘hmmm, this sounds familiar.  I wonder if I’ve posted about this every March since I became an art teacher?’.  So I had to go look.  Only 2 out of the 3 years (in March, anyway, and now it’s 3 out of 4).  But, I found this post from my first year as an art teacher and had to share those thoughts:

I just can’t believe my first year (hopefully not my only year) as an art teacher is on the final lap.  Wow! 

It seems like it just started and I was excited, and overwhelmed, and nervous, and didn’t have a clue what I was doing, and was just barely keeping my head above water!

And now it’s getting close to the end and I’m excited, and overwhelmed, and nervous, and don’t have a clue what I’m doing (some days anyway), and am just barely keeping my head above water!

I know next year will be easier in some ways.  I”ve learned more than I could have ever imagined I would learn.  I’m trying to make a list.  It might be pretty long.  Parts of it might be pretty funny.  Parts of it might make me cry.

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And, the next year (and the next year) were easier in some ways.  I’m still challenged regularly, which is good.  I hope I always am.  I also am still barely keeping my head above water.  But less each year.  So, progress.

I also, once again, for 4 years running, left clay until the last 9 weeks.  Maybe this is how it should be.  Stressful, but fun?

Hmmmm.  I have to digress for a moment (ok, maybe for the rest of this post).  I was in a meeting about “specials” this year, and a comment was made about media specialists requiring a lot of non-student contact time in order to do their job – and I agree with that, they do!

 It was then noted that maybe art was another area that required a lot of non-student contact time to do the job.  Seriously?  MAYBE?!?!?!  One of my coworkers noted that we could use help washing paintbrushes.  That was probably not the best example, but it led me to ponder all the “non-student” work required to do my  job.  It’s huge.  It includes washing paintbrushes (and glaze brushes, and paint cups), but also includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Preparing tray liners so that I know to whom each clay Christmas ornament belongs before, and during, baking.
• Inserting eye pins into each ornament, before baking, so they can be hung on a Christmas tree.
• Baking said Christmas ornaments.  Has to be done after school at the complete opposite end of the school building.  One tray of ornaments per class (13 classes, plus staff).
• Writing names and year on each of the (280 or so) above mentioned ornaments after baking, and then putting them in a container with teacher name on it, so they can be distributed.
• Inserting tree hooks into each eye pin on each ornament.
• Glazing and  hanging ornaments, keeping them in classroom groups to be put back into the containers with teacher names.

That is just for one project.  Multiply that by . . . umm, well, let’s see . . . lots.

I have five minutes between most of my classes.  Below are photos of my classroom after a Kindergarten class was doing a cutting and gluing project.  No paint this day.  I have a 30 minute “plan” time after this class (but not after each Kindergarten class), before 3rd grade comes.  Thank goodness.  Also thank goodness I didn’t actually need to do any “planning” as I had done it at home the night before.

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I think all specials matter and are important.  I don’t think we are all treated equitably.  I don’t really know how to change or fix that, especially with school budgets so tight.  In my school district, elementary students have 90+ minutes a week of music, pe and media.  I think that’s important and matters and should not be cut.  But, they have 45 minutes of art.  I think this is common, and I’m thankful we at least have that much art time.  I’m also not just saying this as an art teacher, but also as a parent.  I wish my own children had had more art in their elementary years, when I wasn’t an art teacher.  Lots of arguments stem from how many minutes are recommended by state and national organizations for each specialty area, and that no one is getting near what is recommended.  But none lack so much as art.  Art has less than half the time with students than what the state and national art education governing bodies recommend, AND half of what all the other specialty areas have.  And, art is a “core” discipline as noted by the National Dept. of Education.  AND, art teaches problem solving, creativity, and so many other things which help students be successful in the ever-changing digital world.

Ok, off my soapbox.  I know I’m preaching to the choir.  Thanks for listening

In January, my lessons usually focus on diversity.  We talk about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the work done during the civil rights movement to make the world a better place for all people.  We talk about ways that we can make a difference and make the world better for everyone.  During Christmas break, I met a woman in Las Cruces, NM that works with indigenous women in Chiapas, Mexico.  She shared about how these women, whose weavings she was selling, are treated as less than human because not only are they women, but they are native, and that is like having two strikes against you.  I shared that story with my students and we talked about how, while changes have happened in our world, there are still those who are treated unfairly and there are things we can do to try to make things more just.

This post will focus on 3rd and 4th grade projects.  Third grade watched the movie “Martin’s Big Words”.  Then we talked about what they thought should be changed in the world and what they would be willing to “march” for, like they marched during the civil rights movement.  I asked them to think of something they could do themselves, and draw a picture of themselves doing it (for example, if they wanted to end animal abuse, a picture of themselves volunteering at the animal shelter; if they wanted less pollution, a picture of themselves picking up trash, etc.).  They drew their picture with pencil on 8 x 11 paper, traced over it with an ultra fine Sharpie, and erased any excess pencil lines.  Then, the fun began  We glued their picture down on a colored construction paper “frame” (9 x 12), took a sheet of copier transparency and glued it on top with scrapbooking glue dots (I got the coolest dotter, for lack of a better word, at Walmart for placing the dots on the paper!).  Next, I had them trace a footprint with a black Sharpie and, finally, we colored only inside the footprint with colorful Sharpies.  It was a fun project!

Fourth grade did self portraits.  We watched a movie called “All the Colors of the Earth”, which is based on a book by Sheila Hamanaka.  It talks about how children come in all the colors of the earth and sky.  I found the idea for this project online, but I didn’t mark the website.   I had them paint a background on 8 x 11 paper with watercolors and the instruction that it shouldn’t look like anything — it should just be color and shape.  While they were painting I took a photo of each of them.  I “posterized” their photos at http://www.pixlr.com and printed them out for the next class.  At that class I gave them their pictures and we talked about what the “important” lines were in their picture of themselves.  We traced only the important lines with Sharpie after we talked about facial proportion and things like not drawing a triangle around your nose, etc.  They could flip their paper over during that process to see how it was looking.  When they were happy with it, I gave them a piece of transparency paper (That stuff is so fun!) and they traced the important lines onto that with their Sharpie.  Finally, we mounted the background on a 9 x 12 construction paper “frame”, and glued the transparent paper on top of that (with the above mentioned glue dots).  The finished products were pretty cool!  I loved how unique each one is.

I know, I know. It’s time to post some more.  I have lots to post about, and even some pictures.  AND, and, and . . . tomorrow is a SNOW DAY!  Woooo hoo.  We haven’t had a snow day in two years, I’m pretty sure.  The snow is coming down as I type.  I’m looking forward to a relaxing, in my pjs all day day.

I’m also planning on posting some pictures and projects that have been happening in my art room.

I don’t know if I mentioned that I received a Target field trip grant to take my 4th graders to the art museum?  I’m pretty pumped about that, and am in the throes of planning the trip.

It’s also “that” time of year again.  Supply order time.  It’s a struggle every year.  I love love love drooling over looking through art supply catalogs.  Seriously love it.  But, actually deciding on what to order within my budget.  Hard!  Tell me how you handle supply orders.  (This is only an issue at one of my schools, since the second school really doesn’t have an art budget.  I just beg for supplies when I run out, and if there’s money at the time, I get them

Ok, promise I’ll be back tomorrow with pictures and more.

I know, I haven’t posted in ages.  I can’t even remember what I posted last <pause here to go look>.  Ok, let’s just say it’s been a long time, shall we?  I have to say that this year has felt like a good news/bad news kind of year.   Kind of like the game we played during our long car ride home last week.  The good news is, I’m feeling more in control this year.  The bad news is, the more in control I feel, the more I want to do, which makes me feel less in control.  I don’t know if that makes any sense at all.   But it’s how I feel at the moment.

Drawn by a first grader in a pictionary game! (It’s a white tailed reindeer)

I uploaded one picture to my computer in December.  One, folks.  That is unusual.  My excuse(s) is/are:  My daughter was in a production (aka play) that was performed in early December; All of my classes at one school made Christmas-themed art to display at their music program in early December; All the students (and some staff) at my other school all made polymer clay Christmas ornaments.  Those ornaments are awesome, but very labor intensive for me (Shout out to my mom, daughters, and awesome art room volunteer for all your help!).  Those are my excuses.  Oh, and we traveled over our break, from the day after we got done until the night before we went back.  YAAAAAAWN.

So, here’s what’s on tap in the art room in the coming weeks.  Right now we are focusing on diversity.  I found a really cool project online last night that is a self portrait project using transparency paper that I am doing with 4th grade.  I’m really excited about that one.  On another note, I love the book “We’re Different, We’re the Same” and am trying to figure out a good art project to connect with it.  I thought I had one today that I tried out with first grade.  Let’s just say it was less than stellar.  You have to have the valleys or you won’t appreciate the mountain tops, right?  So, I’m still working on that one.  If you have ideas, please feel free to share!  There is an art contest tied in to our local Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration later this month.  I just got information about it late last week and the art work, with parent-signed permission forms, are due by next Tuesday.  I was going to try to do it, but decided late today that I just don’t have time.  I think it’s a great idea, but when I see students only once a week, if that, less than two weeks is just not enough notice to get things like that done.  After the diversity projects we will move on to winter/snow related art.  We will also be moving into clay units for all my grades at my K-4 school.  I am considering doing some slab work at my other school too.  There is no kiln there, and my room is in the basement, so I will have to transport the clay pieces up stairs and to my other school.  Please discuss (in my comments).  Have any of you done that?  What are your experiences?  Is it worth all the extra work?  I think clay experiences are important and good, but haven’t convinced myself yet that it’s worth all the stress.  Please share!!

I promise to take pictures of current work being done and share soon.  I also promise to post more often!!  Those are my art teacher blog resolutions.

Happy New Year!