First week back to school!

My art new apron for back to school- Star Wars!!! And yes I was up till 11:00pm the night before Open House sewin up this baby. 

Our PTO got us this cool rock for families to paint/decorate!  I got the honor of first dibs!

I don't know about you, but does the first week of school feel like THE LONGEST week of the year!!?  Well ...it has felt like we have been back for a month or more not just a week, it has been so busy!

I've been in a rush to get seating charts, class dojo, artsonia, and my welcome to art presentations all ready.  Its ALOT of work to prepare all that for 700+ students, but i try to break it up and do one day at a time and I feel like once all that prep work is done, it is well worth it.   

Some new things I am really trying this year are

1.  The Remind text messaging app.  I sent out the info to teachers and I put it on my web page and promoted it at Open House.  I am encouraging everyone to sign up for it in order to receive news and info about upcoming art events via text.  I also hope to send along encouraging and uplifting art tidbits throughout the year as well.

2. PLICKERS-  I havent gotten my classes set up with this yet but I hope to by next week or the week after.  I want to do this because even though our school is a digital conversion school and all students are issued an ipad (k-2) or a laptop (3-5)  they still do not always bring them to art and this year many parents were able to 'opt out' of allowing their child to remove their device from the actual classroom to avoid liability.  Plickers are paper clickers that I can scan with my ipad so I can still get actual feedback and do informal assessments throughout their art lessons without them all having devices.

3. Artsonia- I am planning on using Artsonia all year long and making it part of our classroom routine to show students how to photograph and upload their artwork with my iPad to their Artsonia art gallery.

4. Classdojo.--- DO you dojo?!  Its the best app and site for classroom management!  And its so easy to add students using an excel spreadsheet.

So - I wrote our objective on the board for every class this week :  OUR ART OBJECTIVE: To understand how to do my best in art!


And then I beefed up my welcome back to art powerpoint and called it "Welcome to the world famous art extravaganza!!"  (From Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess- if you have not read this book- I HIGHLY recommend it.  It will revolutionize your teaching!)

After the welcome and art room tour- I had most classes start their first project.  I was going to have a more open ended- Draw or make something that represents you but I found that having a more structured 'challenge' was better for the short time they had during their first class.  The projects all involved LINEs- the first element of art.

5thGrade- Name Illustrations

4th Grade Name Mandalas

3rd Grade Overlapping Supplies

2nd Grade- Hand line design
1st- Moving lines
K- Forsythia Flowers

Summer reflecting and camp

Happy back to school season everyone! As I look back on our short summer and think about my lofty goals of getting so much done, like planning, writing, blogging and flipping art lessons, I have to say, I dropped the ball!!!! But I did do some great things. I was able to attend and present at the awesome FAAE summitt in Orlando where I met some awesome teachers from truly arts integrated middle and high schools in South Florida.  One science teacher in particular even shared a TON of lessons and resources that he used to integrate science and art at his school.  I was so thankful and grateful for that experience that I truly plan on using as many of the resources as possible this year.  
I ran a lot (which is one of my other passions besides art) and I got to participate in some cool sketchbook challenges from Twitter. Here is one from the jfj15for30 challenge.

I also got to teach some awesome art lessons at a fun summer camp at the St Augustine amphitheater for a week in July. Another art teacher and I got to teach two awesome and diverse groups of elementary students that ranged in age from kindergarten to 6th grade. We taught a morning session and an afternoon session. The room we were in was really neat AND had air conditioning! ( which is pretty nice in fl in July)  we were able to order and use a variety of media and create several cool projects that the campers got to take home on Friday.   Some of the projects included a Koinobori wind sock, an air dry clay slab owl, a canvas painting of the St. Augustine Lighthouse and a cool collaborative mural.  The projects turned out so great!  And I really hope to be able to participate again next summer!

Rolling out slabs

Artist campers and our post lunch shenanigans

St. Augustine Amphitheater- the amazing room we got to teach in- (although we made a bit of a mess....)

Clay Slab owls painted with metallic paints  and free sculptures

Unfinished collaborative mural

One of my fav campers of the week with our Koinobori!

Ms. Amy teaching us how to create our beautiful slab owls!

Terra Cotta Air Dry Clay Owls