Ten Year Old - Contour Drawings

After the fifth graders left, and I got a chance to really look at their drawings, I was floored.

I never learned contour drawing until I took my first art class in 11th grade. 

These kids are probably better artists at 10 than I was at 17.  I'm happy for them that they have such a wonderful opportunity to learn art at such a young age.

So Much Papercraft........

Make that paperwork.

It DEFINITELY hasn't been papercraft or anything remotely creative. All I've been doing lately is bubble in grades. (Which, by the way, reminds me of punch cards. Isn't that a bit antiquated???????) I teach 400 plus students and that's a boat load of grades with a boat load of bubbles. I also have three classes in which I have to enter their grades on the computer for a pilot grading program. This has all put me into major procrastination mode for EVERYthing. My creative juices have been sucked dry!

I did stitch some paper together yesterday for a future 3D papercutting but nothing has happened creatively since then.

At 35 pounds down, and 6 weeks post op, I'm trying to reboot the fitness juices. I'm back on the bike trying to increase the miles. We did 22 on the W&OD trail yesterday.

Today I did 10 along the C&O Canal.

That's a dirt ring above my ankle; not a tan line.

This is our last week of school. My hope is that once I am done with everything educational, I can begin restoring my creative juices and get back into shape.

My Favorite Art Lesson of the Year

My favorite elementary art lesson is one of the last ones I teach in the year. Clay gargoyles. Our county has us teaching this lesson to fifth grade. Every one of them turns out wonderfully.






I'm so sad to see them leave the art room, but it does make me happy that this is one art product that never ever ends up in the trash can.

Holiday Busy-ness

Here's what I'm doing these days:

More babuska note cards and Christmas cards for sending and for Etsy.

Here's what "my" kids are doing:

Fifth graders - paintings of before and after natural disasters
My second graders painted patterns on paper and used them for animal collages.
My third graders are studying the architecture of ancient Greece. They planned contemporary buildings using Greek elements and then created them out of cut paper.




There are lots of clay lessons happening in the art room, as well as painting.

In Snippyville there's lots of drawing, snipping, selling, and planning. Busy, busy, busy.

Little Pixies

In my last post, Kim, inquired as to what I had done with my third graders.  They got no mention in that post at all.  Even though my classroom usually has around 13 cameras, yesterday it had none, so I had no way to record the moment.  And from home I couldn't get this photo because it was on the school network.

My third graders are experimenting with a computer paint program.  The one that my school system uses, and which I like very much, is Pixie.  I had let the kids experiment with all the tools one day.  Another day they had to alter their own head shot.  Since we currently are looking at how artists show facial expressions, the assignment was to alter their photo to emphasize an emotion.  While they weren't supposed to save the one they created yesterday, one boy begged me to let him save his.  So we were sneaky and saved it.   Hehehe.  Kids love this lesson.

Waking Up is Hard to Do

This week has been a tough one. It was the first week back at work after our short summer break. No kids. Just faculty and staff. We worked hard preparing to give the kids the best kick off to a new year that we can.

Seeing the class schedules for the first time is always traumatic. My school has increased by well over 200 kids since I first arrived there 7 years ago. That means lots more classes to teach and lots less time to prepare for each one. The first schedule that came out this week had me teaching five classes of one hour each, back to back on Mondays. No bathroom breaks. No lunch breaks. No time to set up supplies between classes. On the days that I had Art Club, that would mean six and a half hours with no down time at all. Other days were not much better. I know that schedules go through many incarnations, with the first one being the worst one, but this set me on a stressful path for the rest of the week.

All I could concentrate on for the rest of the week was how I was going to be so tired teaching a schedule like this, that I would be the grouchiest teacher ever. Don't get me wrong. I adore kids. I can't imagine a more perfect job for me than this, but come on!!! Everyone needs a little down time. Or at least a chance to go to the bathroom now and then. There was not one night this past week that I didn't wake up for a few hours in the middle of the night. Once I woke up, my brain would wake up and start tormenting me about how miserable a teacher I would be this year.

My administrators are reasonable and kind people. They tweaked the schedule multiple times to try and help me out. It is a tiny bit better at this point. They promised to work on it this coming week to give me more time to prepare, plan, and, well, pee, but with limited resources and limited time there is not a lot they can do. I'm trying to be optimistic about the whole thing, but I think that one way or the other, this is going to be a tough, tough year.

As my art teacher friends are getting jazzed about implementing new ideas in their classrooms, I'm trying to figure out how to survive in mine.


scherenschnitte 5" x 7"

100 Free Lectures

This link was on Craig Roland's blog, The Art Teacher's Guide to the Internet. I have yet to look at these sites, but I plan on doing so tonight. 100 Free Online Lectures that Will Make You a Better Teacher.

Mojo

Thank you for all the condolences concerning the loss of my creative mojo. I'm about to stick its little face on some milk cartons in hopes it will find its way back home.

My students, however, still have their's.


I love these kindergarten clay faces.


Some just make me laugh.

Some I appreciate for the memory of a child working so carefully to get it "just right."

Out of the nearly 80 kindergarten students, not one said that their's was anything less than anyone else's.


That everyone loved their's, makes me happy.

Geckos

Bless their little hearts. I felt so horrible by the time Art Club started, I just wanted to go home and lay down. The kids didn't get a lot more instruction than this: "This is Sculpey. It is a kind of clay that you cook in an oven. Here are some samples of geckos made out of Sculpey. Create one of your own."

They did get a bit more than that, but I wouldn't claim that it was instruction of any quality.


The kids seemed to enjoy it though.

Tutorial 3D Papercut

Pat, my blogger friend at Zen Crafting, asked me to make a tutorial on how to create a 3D papercutting from a child's drawing. Since I am trying to learn iMovie, I thought this would be a good opportunity to develop that skill.

scherenschnitte

Post - Conference - Sub Report

Some shots of elementary student art from the gallery at VAEA:

I've been reflecting on the art ed conference that I attended last week. One presenter, Sharon Clohessy from Virginia Beach, always gives the most thought provoking sessions. Art instruction to her is absolutely more about thinking than just simply producing, and she always challenges my thinking about how I teach. It is easy to have kids make pretty things, but what do they get from it? She said that the most important thing she wants her students to do is to have them think about art. Think about their art. Think about art in the world. Why did the artist do what they did? How do you get students to produce art that has meaning?

So, that was what I considered the most important line of thinking that I got from the conference.

When I saw my next door neighbor colleagues this morning, aside from the report that my sub was grumpy and rude to them, he told them that I had the kids doing too much thinking and not enough art. Haha! Maybe I'm on the right track.

Multi-media

Once again, I'm getting around to cleaning off my photo disk. Here's just a sampling of the media my kids have worked with in the past week. (And this isn't all of it.) One day last week, I had one class working on laptops; the next class worked with chalk; the next painted with brushes; the next one painted with rolling tools; and the last one drew with markers and felt tipped pens. It takes a lot of energy to prepare all of this....clean up after all of this....put away after all of this....grade after all of this......return or hang up the artwork after all of this.

Is it any wonder that my work spaces at home never get the same treatment? I guess I rebel against myself at home.

Tired

The kids come back to school on Monday. We have "Open House" for them this afternoon. After 23 years of teaching, you'd think I'd have this getting ready stuff down pat. I guess I just always figure out one more thing that I need to do each year. If I had one more week before the kids came, I think I would be ready. For now, I am scrambling around trying to get everything done.

And I'm exhausted.

I'm still having big, big computer problems, so if you have emailed me or commented here and I have not responded, I apologize.

Then there is also that tired thing......

Dirty Old Dadvadant

My students created art cars on their last day of second grade art. Before the big race at the end of class they had to tell me the name of their car so that I could write it up on the scoreboard. When the little boy who just arrived from India told me his car's name, I had to ask him to repeat it several times. After the third repetition, I asked his partner if she understood what he was saying. She just grinned and shrugged. So I had him spell it for me. d a d v a d a n t. He didn't quite understand when I asked him what "Dadvadant" meant, so Dadvadant it was.

Now at my house, when we don't understand a word, we may debate the meaning; we may look it up in the dictionary; or we may invent a meaning all our own. When I was retelling PapaMark about the big wacky race, I told him about Dadvadant. PapaMark suggested that in Hindi it might mean "Man With Big Viril .......um......man parts." I about busted a gut. So for the rest of the weekend "dadvadant" was a favorite word in our conversations. Example: On our bike ride....."Hey, did you see that geezer "dadvadant" chasing that hoochie?"

Children are so inspirational.