In the Art Room...#3-Grades, Grades and Catching Up

It's the end of our 20 week marking period. And despite the 'catch up' days I am still getting the stragglers caught up. And of course the flu or some other illness has struck and 4-6 kids are absent from nearly every class. Worst. Timing. Ever. I did managed to have all projects graded on Thursday by 5pm. I try to give all my students a chance to finish all projects, several chances lately, and it leaves me grading every night all night trying to get them done. I am using Google Spreadsheets for my grades for the first time and it is going to be a huge time saver. I will be posting more on how I do that soon!First, let's talk about what happened this week.

Note: This is my third post in a row. I am killing this.

3rd graders are glazing! 

3rd graders came down for an extra long art class to make these soon to be clay looms. I put them in the kiln right away. They had class this week and we glazed them. I am typically an Amaco glaze user, but the Mayco Jungle gems wins over Amaco Crystallex glazes. Mayco has smaller pieces of frit (what makes the speckles)  and more of them get on the clay projects. I just wish companies would make shallow/wider containers of glazes so multiple students can use at once. Especially those with frit because they always sink to the bottom (so no one wants to use the just opened one). My students have learned to scrape the side of the jar to get the extra pieces.

3rd Place!! Art of Education Rising Star Blog for 2014!!

Pretty excited to be putting this badge on my blog today! Thank you to the Art of Ed for hosting the competition and letting everyone know about all the awesome art ed blogs out there! We are not alone!

If you haven't checked out the Art of Education you should. There is a lot of awesome writers over there. 

Don't forget to check out all my competition too!

This has definitely lit a fire under (or is it in?) me. I have been getting more posts ready, taking lots of photos of projects and students working (which I am really awful at remembering to do), and started looking again into flights and lodging for the National Art Educators Conference in New Orleans in March. 

Are you going to the conference?

In the Art Room...#2 Clay, Hearts, and Catching Up

It was a short and sweet week in the art room. But we were busy getting into clay and Valentine's projects!

And no delays or snow days this week!

Kindergartners are working on their tracing skills. 

Kindergarten students are using positive and negative stencils, 9x12 paper and sharpies to build their tracing skills. They really go into this and loved putting hearts inside of hearts! While they trace hearts I trace them! I use this time to multitask and make them be stencils for their next project Life Size Self Portraits. 

Time to GO VOTE!

Woot! I love good news! This blog has been nominated as a Rising Star finalist in the Art Of Education Blog of the Year contest!!!!! This is an amazing honor to be recognized by my fellow art educators!
 

Now that we got this far we need to vote again to get me to the top! Click below to vote or here to check out all nominees!


And there are some perks to winning! I get a badge for the blog, an opportunity to present at an AOE conference and $500 to put towards an awesome AOE class. Read about that here!


Thanks everyone! Don't forget to vote!

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In the Art Room...#1

Let's see if I can do a weekly round up of what's going on the art room shall we? If you don't follow me on Facebook or Instagram (which you should) it's basically what you are missing out on. So expect lots of pictures!

I even made a fancy graphic. I am getting serious over here.

Kindergarten, first and second grade projects this week!

First, we almost made it a whole week this week, with a two hour delay on Friday. Last week we had a snow day, two hour delay, two hour delay, snow day and a full day on Friday. While that may sound amazing to some people, it is a planning nightmare for teachers. I am so glad for Planbook.com.  to help make edits to my lessons.

Making tints with first grade. 

First graders are learning about color mixing this week. Using temperas on black paper, we added white to the paint to make it lighter to see how many reds/pinks and blues/purples we could make. I love how they all look together on the tables!

Kindergartners finishing up their VanGogh Landscapes! 

To go along with the kindergartners curriculum we make evergreen trees. But first we made VanGogh paper with texture. That became squares which they cut into triangles. Triangles were stacked, white paper was torn, and viola! Instant (not so instant) landscape! But I couldn't stop there. I decided to teach these little guys how to make animals and now these projects are just adorable. We did add some some glitter dots to the sky to finish them too. We watched VanGogh and Winter videos on brainpopjr.com.

CLAY TIME! 

I don't know who is more excited, me or the second graders! We started our clay slab boxes this week. Most of the class is spent going over rules, expectations and demo on how to make the slabs, but they still get to make one square (out of the 5 needed) for their boxes. We even squeezed in a Google Form on the iPads to test their vocab and listening skills. =)

And next time someone asks me why we need art, I will just let them know that they can't win Trivia Crack without it. This is from a former high school studio art student I had 8 years ago !

Critique Sandwich-How to Critique with 1st-6th graders!

Every few months I have a catch up day in the art room. I use this day to catch up the straggling students, pass back complete work and update students about their Artsonia account. As easy as it is to assign a free day in the art room to make all this happen I feel like that isn't educationally sound practice. So I pull out my trusty Critique Sandwich handouts for my students to work on. These handouts are a life saver and can be used on any project and with grade 1 and up. (And if you have Kinders who can write, go for it). They aren't fancy, but they get the job done.

So how do I implement this?

Vote for the Art Education Blog of the Year!

It is time for The Art of Ed 4th Annual Art Ed Blog of the Year contest! 
It would be an amazing honor to be nominated for this contest! If you are a reader, blogger, fellow art teacher, family or friend, please head over to the Art of Ed and nominate me. This is the only contest for art ed blogs and this would be a huge honor!
Click below to cast your votes!
Vote for best elementary art blog 
Vote for the best rising star art ed blog

Here are a few guidelines to help you...

• You are welcome to nominate your own blog.
• You are welcome to nominate more than one blog.
• Be sure to include why you like the blog. What sets it apart?
• Nominations are anonymous. We can’t tell who nominates which blogs.
• AOE is not eligible to be nominated ;)

Head over here to read more about the entire contest 

Thanks everyone! The contest ends January 15th. Don't forget to check back and see who wins! I love seeing what new blogs are out there! 

Creative Coupons for Rewards, Incentives & Positive Behaviors!

We are back from a very long Christmas Break and the first thing on my to do list and re-establishing routines in the art room. We were supposed to come back Monday, had a snow day and Tuesday and Wednesday were two hour delays! So this whole getting in a routine thing is taking a while!
Once I have my students, we will do a review of the art room expectations and my reward system- Creative Coupons!

Creative coupons are a way for me to reward students individually with extra time in the art room. I have tried a million other systems and with 400+ students this one has worked amazingly for several years.

How it works:

Birthday Weekend!

Yes!!! It's my birthday weekend! I do celebrate my birthday for as long as possible.
 1- Because winter birthdays suck.
2-It is too close to the Christmas and New Year's
3- The weather is unpredictable and I need several back up days just in case.
4- It was on a Saturday! I didn't have to go back to school on my birthday!

Stop Spoiling Supplies! Use Supply Dates!

Remember this cute quote from a while back? Well I think rotten paint was to blame.

Not so cute anymore huh?