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.

A Little Snipping Before Going Back to Work

I really am ashamed how little snipping I achieved in the last week and a half. All the shoveling of multi-feet deep snow just kicked me hard.

There were a few things that got done, however.

This is an illustration regarding a friend's tweet. Her class' frog had been sitting all alone at school for a week. Hungry. Cold. Lonely?

Some kind coworker actually made their way to the school and fed the poor creature.

Then there are these.

I decided to snip a few bookmarks. For Etsy? For gifts? For a change of pace? I've ordered plastic sleeves for them. They may or may not get background textures. I'll be playing around with them a bit before committing.

Actually, after having snipped a bit, I felt better about myself. It was validating to know that not every moment of the last week was spent napping or watching tv....or shoveling.

Squirrel Nutkin and Deja Vu

I was reminded today of those movies where someone dreams an event and then it happens. This time, however, it centered around a kindergarten lesson I taught.

This week we read Beatrix Potter's "Squirrel Nutkin."


Do you know the story about Squirrel Nutkin? It's the story about a squirrel who instead of gathering nuts with the other squirrels, spent his time pestering a wise old owl. Eventually he pestered the owl so much, the owl pulled off Squirrel Nutkin's tail.

So here's the deja vu part. M and I were out in the yard today picking up sticks. I got to a spot where the ground was oddly dug up. I wondered what on earth had happened there.



Then I saw this.

Poor Squirrel Nutkin. I guess our resident barred owl had him for dinner.

Knitwits

My Wednesday lunch partners joined me today in the Art Room. Before winter break I had taught them both to use knitting towers. The plan was to bring in the knitting tubes they had made, and we would turn them into something else today.


Unfortunately, for various reasons, the knitting towers did not make it to lunch, but the kids were still excited to make something. Somewhere, in the deep recesses of my brain, I remembered watching a YouTube video of a kid finger knitting. Though I didn't watch it close enough to learn how when I watched it, I figured it out for myself today. The kids got a chance to practice, but didn't have enough time to really make anything. Next week all the Knitwits have to do is bring their fingers and we can get started.

This length of knitting was done in about ten minutes, and that includes the amount of time it took for the process to click in their brains. Next week we will get started early and try to make a respectable scarf.

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.

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"

Ants at a Picnic

Fruity

I spent most of my kindergarten class time sitting with a very confused little girl. She is often pretty spacey and seems unable to focus on any tiny thing for more than a few seconds. So I was trying to give her as much attention to her stitchery as I could. It really wasn't going well.

Forty minutes in, she whispered, "I have a whole banana in my pants." My thought was that she might next tell me that the sky is green or something, so I just had her proceed with her work. She whispered to me again, "I have a whole banana in my pants." I was starting to wonder if she was telling me something of importance. Did something happen to her with a banana? Is this code for something else? So I referred her across the table to her class' instructional assistant, thinking she would get more information than I.

It turns out that girlfriend did have a whole banana in her pants. A badly bruised, smushed up, nasty banana. Ew. No explanation for why.

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.

The Delicious Paintings




There is a part of teaching that I absolutely ABHOR. That is writing sub plans. HATE IT!!! And after you go through all the torture of writing them, someone, who may or may not have any art experience, has to interpret it. I doubt it is any more fun for the sub than it is for me. Alas, it occurred to me to just film me teaching the whole kit and kaboodle. All the sub has to do is to pop in the DVD and hit play.

After finishing the video, I thought of lots of things I would like to change. I don't know that I ever will though.

Art teachers.....I did this lesson with second grade, but I would try it out with second through fifth to see with whom it fits best.

Before and After

I posted earlier in the week about hosting an inservice in my classroom. A teacher complimented me on my tidiness and organization. She recognized my lack of a poker face when I was confronted with that untruth, and she then asked if I had cleaned for company. Ding, ding, ding! That's the right answer.

I thought you might be curious to see my room. So here it is. This is what my room looked like at its best.









Okay, so prepare yourself for what it looked like at the end of the day today.





And here's the command center:


I like to think of the squalor as a reflection of the fact that I am working with kids during class instead of focusing on housework during class.