If you have never spent a week with kids 5-7 years old who know they will soon be out of school for a week, then you ain't lived! For this art teacher spring break can not get here fast enough!!
Because it is Youth Art Month we are having Free Art in the art room. We've created Cylinder Sculptures using construction paper scraps, Stained Glass Eggs and recycled Tic Tac boxes into stained glass rectangles. We've painted; played with clay and used magnetic letters to spell art words that we see around the room. We've read art books, built with Abstack Blocks, built the Eiffel Tower from the tiny blocks AND used coffee cans, Styrofoam, sponges, and cardboard packing thingys to become architects. All of this with close to 750 kids for about 4 weeks and I am about to become well...a headline in some newspaper..."Art Teacher Seen Running from Art Room, Leaving Kids Covered with Paint!" News at 11!

There's been so much learning going on, and they have had so much fun! But enough already! While they have managed to be fairly productive, they have been on the ceiling with energy and talking. Not just normal, art room talking, but playground screaming and chatter, chatter, chatter.  I have barely been able to give instructions. These aren't bad kids, these are excited kids! 

Well, I'd had all I could stands and I can't stands no mo...so outside we went today. We painted on the school walls with plain water, and drew on the sidewalks with chalk...we had ourselves a little art party! I felt the feeling I had years ago when I first started teaching art...this is why I love my job, this is why I am an art teacher! The kids discovered so much about art today, they forgot about spring break and were actually only excited about art and their new found way to create. Who would have dreamed water in coffee cans, old brushes and chalk could sooth these savage baby beasts? It was a wonderful day in art!! And tomorrow is the LAST day before break!!

WooOOOOooooHoooOOOOOOOooooo!!! My Bill brought me home Flea Market Style magazine!! Stay tuned...I'm going to read!

I stumbled across another blog I started in January today...I had forgotten about it. I did the blog as part of my masters work, a side blog I guess of sorts to go along with another part of the project. When I looked at the blog I discovered I liked what was there and that it was very relevant to the present so I snagged part of the blog and posted it below. We all need the courage to grow up, and at times I feel like I am just growing up in my 50s. I realize nothing really matters but the things you love and the things that just take your breathe away. So from here on out I am going to be courageous! This is a blog of randomness, for me. By the way the pear's in the picture below were taken my a friend's daughter while in Italy...she traveled alone for 10 days...her courage came early in her life...I love the green pears, the simple, yet classic look of them. It's the first day of Spring today...

Landscape Escape

Landscape Escape Posted using ShareThis
This is my Donors Choose web page. Donors Choose is a wonderful resource to use if you are a teacher. I wanted real canvases for my second grade students to paint a landscape on, I wrote up my project and it was funded, almost immediately. My kids have had a blast with painting on the canvases. Who would have imagined it? It's a remarkable program!

My favorite kind of Saturday! Yard Sales, Estate Sales and Fresh Market shopping. Today was the annual Peaches to Beaches Yard Sale. Stretches from Middle Georgia to the Coast...one of these years I am going to do the sale all the way to the beaches. This morning because I had to go and get my hair botched up...she did a good job too, I have a big gap over my right ear,well anyway... I did not have time to do much of the sale. I am excited about two purchases...30 burlap and 30 heavy tarp like material bags. I plan to make the burlap bags into pillows. I'm going to stamp on them...initials, Fleur De Leises etc...they are about 16 x 12 in size. I am debating going back for more. At $2 a stack of 30 I can't go wrong. Can't decide about the yellow heavy tarp like ones...they are a bit on the ugly side. I also bought some carpenter tool boxes...love them for planting herbs in, and storing magazines. Also bought some wire design thingys, that I think are for canning, but I just liked the design. Probably not an exciting day for most, but for a junker it was a heavenly day...even with the rain and the gap in my hair.

YOUTH ART MONTH

This year's Youth Art Month Exhibit is now up and ready to be oohed and ahhed over. My students are really enjoying art this year, and it shows in their work. Each March to celebrate Youth Art Month or YAM the school system I teach in has a show of our students' art work at our local mall. Each year I am fearful I will not have enough student work to display and each year I have so many nice pieces I can hardly choose which ones to exhibit. The primary age I teach does not quite understand what it means to have your work on exhibit...until they actually go to the mall and see their work up on the easel. Some come back to school so excited, some come back embarrassed and others return not surprised at all and with the confidence that they knew theirs would be there all along. Over the years I have had to change the way I display the work. One year to my horror some of the pictures disappeared from my huge display easel! The next morning at school several students came to me very pleased with themselves. They thought they were supposed to take their work from the mall...after all it belonged to them. Once I got over the relief that they had taken them, and got over being a bit angry, I cracked up to think they had stolen their own work. Why their parents allowed this I am not sure. So now instead of hanging each piece individually, I glue each piece to a large sheet of bulletin board paper. This makes it easier to hang close to 50 pieces of art, and no little hands can slip their art away from the exhibit. Here is our display for this year and a movie of last year's show. This year's theme is Art Is... and last year our theme was eARTh...it has ART! Enjoy...

Today was an exciting day in my art classroom. In October I submitted a request to Donors Choose for canvases for my second grade students. The lesson plan is titled "Landscape Escape!" For the entire year we have studied landscapes and how to paint and draw them. I am a major "recycler" and I wanted my students to be able to create a painting on a real canvas, instead of the cardboard and paper we have always used. My students create art on everything I can salvage and they have so much fun, but they need to know about traditional art supplies. Fortunately, two different donors came through for my kids. Today I introduced the canvases to one of my second grade classes. What a successful project! I will be posting some photos soon! Students wrote Thank You notes today after painting their landscape...they are beautiful!!