Back to school...three weeks late!!!

I'm still here!!! I promise!!!  The start of this year has been extremely hectic and I'm only now getting my feet under me!!  We are in the midst of a building project and I was unable to access either of my classrooms ALL SUMMER!!  We also didn't have power, lights or electricity for our first day back of staff development!!  It was horrible for my organized "OCD" to have to do everything on the first two days of staff development.  Not to mention, I wasn't able to get much lesson planning done at home with an almost two-year-old toddler!

Ironically, at the end of the last school year, I tore EVERYTHING down off of my walls in both rooms.  I guess I anticipated that the construction project would be a bit more organized...I guessed wrong. ;)  None the less, my No-No Board is gone this year and it has been replaced with my rules (in the elementary room).  I kind of stole some of the wording from Mr. E. :-D

My supply bin organization looks a bit differently this year.  I found these cute, mini-supply totes at Target in the dollar section, plus some pencil pails and rainbow pails.  I decided to use smaller bins to hold the supplies so that students don't have everything at their tables all at once.  In particular, I was thinking of those 1st graders and Kindergartners who tend to be distracted by the markers and want to use them, even though they aren't supposed to be.  I also made some simple, laminated place mats and taped them down to the counters, and I included a picture on the window for how the supplies should look like when they are returned.

My go-to bulletin boards for the first two weeks of school are minions.  Yup, straight from the art teacher's Facebook group.  The kids loved it!

For K-2, we traced, colored and cut out our hand prints for the first day of art class and I created this bulletin board.  We, of course, returned to school BEFORE Labor Day this year, so we had school on Thursday and Friday, no school on Monday, and then resumed classes on Tuesday.  Essentially, my first week and a half was just rules and hand prints with the younger students and we have only now really started to dive into our projects.

Last year I shared a bit about using sketchbooks in 6th grade, as well as my high school classes, and this year I'm increasing that usage a lot more.  We are using sketchbooks in grades 3-6, as well as in Art 7, Studio Art, my Printmaking elective and my Ceramics elective.  All is going well so far!

Speaking of my classes, I'd like to give you a glance at my ridiculous schedule this year.  I sort of did this to myself a bit this year by taking on an extra class.  My union contract states we teach for 6 periods, have a prep, a lunch, and a duty.  Well, at the end of the year last year, things got changed around and classes shortened a bit to add a 9th period into the schedule to create a common study hall time in the high school.  

I was beginning to have such high requests for electives that I wanted to offer two.  (Secretly, I'm hoping that they will be willing to hire a part-time, elementary teacher for next year to free me up for more high school classes...we shall see how that pans out!)  My numbers have increased drastically in the high school classes since I started teaching them two years ago, so fingers crossed!!

You'll also notice that I have THREE 12:1:1 classes this year...we added another teacher in our district.  AND, we added a third Kindergarten and third 1st grade teacher...those classes come combined to special, which really stinks for numbers and the amount of space I have in my room.

Needless to say, with the increase in numbers in our district, this is another reason I think hiring a party time teacher will be feasible for next year...hopefully!  Oh, and I'm doing art club this year AND I'm the VP for our teacher's union!!  That's it...I stop the ball there.  I'm not putting myself out there anymore this year.  If I do, remind me to say, "No!"  I'm still working my Jamberry business at home, and I plan on posting here once a week.  I know I won't be able to afford more then that, so one post a week is my goal!!

What's New in My Elementary Room!

Well, this organizational technique isn't exactly new...but I wanted to share.  This is how anal I am about organization at school...I wish I could be this organized at home!  Every year when I unpack my supplies, all of the paint and glaze gets the date written on the cap and I always rotate stock.  I also must have everything organized in the color of the rainbow!  I did a little moving of supplies and finally got all of my paint off of the exterior wall of my room.  There has been so much paint that has been ruined from the extreme cold temperatures that happen at those walls.  When I moved into the classroom four years ago, I threw out TONS of paint that was really old, had separated or became super chunky and smelly from getting really cold.

Next comes my supply bin storage.  In the past, the bins were placed in one spot and the crayons bins were stacked in another.  In an effort to try and teach the students better organization, I have placed a colored dot on the counter where their supply bin AND crayon box must go.  I'm hoping that they will start to be more mindful of keeping the pencils in the pencil box, keeping the glue together and not mixed in with the scissors...we shall see how this goes!

Once again, I have the "New Pencil Jar", where students can get new pencils when theirs become very small or broken in their supply bins.  They put the bad pencil in the red jar and take a new pencil from the green jar.  My Sharpies, which I posted about in the previous post, are located on the table, as well as a box of replacement glue sticks.  

The bottom two pictures show the new supply bin set-up on my counter.  In between the warm colored bins and the cool colored bins is a paper shelf with the colored construction paper and white drawing paper.

This is a new classroom management idea I found on Pinterest.  I found this awesome velcro board at Biglots for $3.  I wrote down my five most commonly abused classroom rules and/or procedures, and made some green, yellow and red faces.  I laminated them all and velcroed them to the board.  Most teachers in our district use the red, yellow, green stoplight idea for discipline, so I'm hoping this will work well, especially for the younger kids.  I have this on my door facing the hallway so that their teacher can see how they did as they come to pick them up.

This is also a new classroom  management technique I am going to try and use for the younger grade levels.  Again, this is another Pinterest steal.  What's great is that this correlates really well with the smiley faces on the door!

Last but not least is my "Art Applause" box.  I wanted to come up with a way for students, faculty, administration and community members to give the students positive praise for their artwork.  This is a great way for the kids to be "bucket fillers", if you know what that is.  It's also a creative way to encourage positive reinforcement and should gain me some points on the Marzano rubric for my APPR! ;)  I have some blank slips left out on the table with a pen.  I will encourage everyone to write a nice message to an artist whose artwork is displayed and drop it in the box.  Every week I plan to empty the box.  I may staple some of the nice comments on the bulletin board with the artwork.  Every student will eventually get their comment to take home.

Paint Brush Organization and a Change for Elementary Art Jobs

Sorry about all of these "boring" art room posts. I haven't been spending much time working on curriculum as of yet.  Most of my time has been committed to organizing this huge high school art room!  Yesterday I had to go into school for a half-day training on diabetes and I spent another two hours in the classroom, working on organizing paint brushes, sink cabinets and putting away more supplies.

Currently my elementary room is being cleaned, but I have decided to alter one of my classroom management strategies in that classroom.  Last year, I had this job list on my bulletin board in the front of the room, and each table had a separate job.  This did not work for the older kids, and didn't work very well most of the time with the younger kids, especially when painting.  Students would finish early or extremely late, thus not being able to do their particular job until others finished, so I'm altering the way I do the job list.

Last year I had a paint palette with colored paint splots on each table according to the table color (see this post from last year).  This year, I've modified them a bit.  In planning ahead, I am going to make colored copies of this original (so I can completely replace the signs half way through the year when they get junky looking) and then color each palette appropriately.  The tables will still be color coded for easy handing out of supply bins, but now, instead of each table having a specific job, the seats are going to be numbered and each person at each table will have a specific job to do at their table...

~Supply bins (get and put away for your table, make sure it's organized before putting it away!)

~Paint supplies (get, clean and put away paint supplies for your table)

~Wash and dry table

~Pass out and hand out artwork

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Onto the high school room...one of the drawers in the room was FULL with old paint brushes. I think this drawer was the worst one for my organizational OCD!  They were mixed together, broken, hard, and a lot had bad hair days!  I did toss a lot of the brushes because I was pleasantly surprised that the previous teacher did order new brushes for this year.  I went through all the old brushes and kept the ones I felt were still worthy of being used and tossed the others.  I don't want to complain about the previous art teacher, because she was great, but she always complained about how the students didn't take care of the art materials in the high school.  When I looked at this drawer, it made me wonder why they would even want to take care of the materials based on the way they were stored!

Now, the paint brushes are organized between three drawers instead of one, and I haven't put out all the new paint brushes either.  I actually plan on locking the two drawers with the new brushes until the older ones start to peeter out.  Students will be expected to clean their own brushes and to place them back in the correct bin within the drawer at the end of class.

I received my new acrylic for the high school room.  When I was in high school art, we used the Galeria Acrylics and I've stuck with that brand at home for my own art.  I bought the huge classroom pack of the Galeria acrylics for the high school room and have placed half of them in this drawer next to the paint brushes.

These are extra brushes I had purchased (without knowing the other teacher had already ordered brushes before she left), so they are being stashed away in a cabinet for future use.

I almost forgot about these cabinets by the sink...I tackled those yesterday as well and I found that there are A LOT of quarts of gesso and acrylic gloss!  I shouldn't have to order any of that for a  few years!

Christmas in August!

I always say, when I get to open up my requisition boxes, it's always a huge surprise...just like Christmas!  The custodians finished waxing the floors in my room last week on Thursday so now it's finally time to get everything rearranged to where I want it.  Yesterday, my hubby came and and helped me move around the tables and helped to unpack some of the heavier supplies.  I'm getting so excited to get back to teaching high school art!

My back shelves are all organized...canvas panels up top and we went through and sorted out all the stained glass pieces.  Those boxes on the bottom right are unopened and 1/2 sheets of stained glass.  I have two bins of random glass stored in the dark room...I'm thinking of doing mosaics with the elective class.

Back corner...moved the two manual pottery wheels back there because they take up so much space.

Those three random cabinets have been removed...ah, space!

Another view of the back corner.  The counter on the left, right behind that front cabinet, will be getting three computers with Photoshop!  I'm so excited!  The tech guy will be ordering the newest Photoshop for me!

The two black rolling carts will be leaving the room eventually...right now they are going to be stocked with the old artwork that I don't want from this classroom and then will be put out in the hallway come the beginning of the year for students and teachers to take.  I have asked the custodians to bring down the three electric pottery wheels I have in the elementary room and place them in front of the radiator in this room since I'll be more likely to use them in class with high school.  I have two other carts that are a lot nicer in this room I'll be keeping.

Yup, hubby and the pups came into school to help me out!

Front corner of the room where my desk is.  Keeping a second smaller desk there in case I get a student teacher in the future, and also for a separate area for someone who may need to be separated from the crowd in class.  I currently have a roll of dry-erase board paper being shipped to my house...the top chalkboard will be turned into a dry-erase board for easier handling of objectives, and so I can get rid of the huge whiteboard easel that takes up a lot of room.

Table set-up I'm going for...and some of my supplies I have left to put away.

Yup, we emptied all those boxes in about an hour!  I love my hubby...he's such a helper!

Here are my Post-It note exit slip posters...I'm going to cut out "Exit Slips" on my Cricket to label this section, probably in the empty space on the left cabinet.

Yup, he was ready to go by this point.  I'll be going in Wednesday for a half-day training on Diabetes and I'll finish sorting then!

High School Room Progress...

I've probably spent about a total of 12 hours organizing this room so far, and I am happy to say progress has been made!  I probably have half of the cabinets organized and consolidated, or at least emptied out to store other stuff.  I wish I would have remembered my camera or phone yesterday when I worked in there because you wouldn't believe the amount of construction paper I unloaded from the tall double cabinet and four short cabinets...it seemed unbelievable to me!  I don't use that amount of construction paper in my elementary room!  Either way, I kept some paper supplies and donated the rest to the school overflow room.  I have cleaned out and gotten rid of all of the extra furniture that I don't want and hopefully by the end of the week, the custodians will have the floor stripped and waxed.  I plan on moving my pottery wheels from the elementary room down to the high school room to create a pottery nook.

As I'm organizing, I'm thinking about maternity leave in November/December/January and all of these supplies that my substitute is going to have to deal with.  I am thinking of locking cabinets during my leave and only leaving ones open that she/he will need access to for supplies...which brings me to a question...do you label your cupboards on the outside?  I'm thinking about putting labels on the cupboards so it will be easier for the sub to navigate, but I don't want to make it easier for other teachers to convince the sub while I'm gone that they need supplies.  The only reason I worry about this is because teachers have been trying to scavenge supplies out of this room since the end of the school year when they found out the other teacher was retiring (as if they had to worry...I feel like I'm giving up and donating plenty of supplies!)  My other option I thought about was drawing a little diagram of the room cabinets and labeling everything in the diagram in my sub binder, but it seems more work intensive.  

This cabinet was full of yarn, yarn and more yarn!  I gave two boxes away, put there boxes down in the overflow room, and kept half a shelf and the boxed yarn that is new.  This is going to be my fiber crafts cabinet (and cellophane...lol).  I'm not too into fiber crafts but the time may come that I would want to do some basking weaving or something with the students, so I'm keeping this small stash of supplies.

This cabinet was FULL of construction paper.  I have turned it into the paper supply cabinet.  The top shelf has a small assortment of multi-colored construction paper and black construction paper (for framing artwork in case I run out of mat board).  The second shelf has white, manila and colored tag board.  The third shelf has tracing paper, manila drawing paper and the half used sketchbooks that will be used to supply white drawing paper when needed.  Fourth shelf contains watercolor paper, block printing paper, graph paper and art paper.  Bottom two shelves have the large drawing paper/tagboard/construction paper, watercolor paper and then some random packages of other art paper.  I have labeled each shelf with a piece of masking tape.

These two shelves also contained construction paper.  Now, the cupboard on the left is the sketchbook overflow cabinet and the cabinet on the right will hold art games and activities.

Again, this shelf had construction paper...now it houses the art VHS tapes and reference/resource books.

You can see the four cabinets that were in the room are cleaned out and gone!

The back nooks have been organized...The top middle one will hold the glaze that I ordered for this year.  Bottom right is for stained glass and the top right will be for all the canvas boards I ordered.  Middle right contains linoblocks.  Middle and top left contain 1/2 gallons of acrylic.  Bottom left contains Masonite board and the middle bottom has lots of clay boards.  The rest of the cabinets in the back of the room haven't been touched yet...

Aside from the cupboards I pointed out, there were four other short cabinets that had shelves full of construction paper...I kid you now, when I stacked everything that I didn't want on the tables, it was probably a 5'x5'x5' stack!

I've got the keys...!

...to my 2nd art room!  Hmmm, does this mean I need to come up with a new name for my blog since I will now be teaching out of art room 104 and 309??? ;)   Here's a glimpse and a little history about what I am now dealing with cleaning up in my new room...

The previous teacher had been in this room for at least 20 years.  Before that, she taught at a different district, but it was combined with another, and that's when she ended up in this classroom.  So, needless to say there is about 35 years of collecting in this room!  The previous teacher also had a COMPLETELY different organizational technique than me...meaning complete opposite...so I have my work ahead of me if I want to keep myself sane this school year!  What works for one person doesn't always work for another...

I received the keys to the room yesterday and my hubby came in for an hour and a half with me yesterday to help me do some heavy moving and lifting.  Today I spent about two and half hours sorting and cleaning as well.  There are A LOT of extra cabinets and furniture in this room that make it feel very cluttered, so my goal is to get things sorted and consolidated so that I can get rid of that extra furniture.

There is also some lower grade paints that I will be donating to our new school supply room (a catch-all for unwanted supplies...teachers can come and give and take as needed), which will hopefully keep teachers from borrowing supplies from the art room!  Unfortunately, there is also a lot of paint that I will be tossing because it is completely separated and will not mix back together.  Same with about half the glazes.  They are either VERY watery or completely dried out.  Luckily, all of my elective requisitions were put through this year and I will get everything I ordered for the high school room, all of which will end up replacing a lot of the old stuff I plan on getting rid of.

Once the cleaners get the room cleaned and the floors waxed, I plan on having them move the three pottery wheels from my elementary room into the high school room so that I can have a ceramic nook, which has me really excited!

This is the door to the classroom.  The divider and brown cabinet has been cleaned out and removed from the room (extra furniture!).

When you enter the classroom, this is what you see on the right side.  All the tables and stools are pushed up against the cabinets because the custodians are currently working to clean the room as well.  The door way in the back is the dark room.

Inside the dark room, left and right respectively.  I plan to keep the enlargers for now, until those supplies are used up.  Ideally, I would love to turn this into a mini computer lab with Macs!

This is the front of the room, when you enter the door to the left.  Computer is under the sheet, storage behind the chalkboards much like my other room.

Corner of the room where the dark room is.  There are two sinks and plenty of counter space.  There is a grey metal cabinet that held lots of glazes and old paint that I cleaned out today for removal.  The other open cabinet has lots of basking weaving and yarn in it.  That will also be cleaned out, materials consolidated and that cabinet removed as well (I just got rid of the boxes upon boxes of yarn I had in my elementary room...there are THREE (yes 3!) cabinets full of yarn.  Some of it will have to go!

View from the corner where the sinks are to the opposite corner of the room.  The dark blue, low bookshelf will be gone, as well as the other two dividers in the corner and two of the three file cabinets that are behind the dividers.  Also, the tall cabinets and three short cabinets behind those dividers are FULL of construction paper!  Those will definitively be consolidated and donated to the supply room...There is more construction paper in this room than I have and use in the elementary room!  Construction paper is also another one of those items that teachers want to borrow from the art room, so I'm hoping if I give a lot of it up that I know I won't use, they'll leave me alone...(I know, wishful thinking right?).

And finally, the back of the room.  This is a small area that is adjacent to where the dark room is.  The kiln is back there, as well as more counter space, another sink (to the right) and more storage.  I have so far removed the curtains and consolidated the materials on those shelves.  All the paint and glazes I am keeping have been moved onto those empty shelves I created when I moved things around.

The extra counter space...kiln is to the right, outside the picture.  Sink and curtained shelves are behind me in this picture.

Stay tuned for more pictures as I share how I'm organizing this room to fit my needs and personality!

T-minus 2 Weeks and Counting!

Before I jump into what I accomplished at school today...let me give you a glimpse as to what yesterday brought me!  Naturally, since we live out in the middle of nowhere, we expect our dogs to have run-ins with wild animals...deer, turkey, the occasional skunk...but let me tell you, I was not prepared for my first porcupine encounter!

My darling pups decided to go for a stroll outside of their boundaries and took off into the woods...about an hour later, they come back and I find my poor baby with quills in her snout!  Now, I'm normally a pretty calm and collected person...except when it comes to firsts with my dogs!  (You have to understand, we don't have kids yet, so our animals are stand-ins until we reach that time!)

So naturally, my husband was at work until about 7:30 and Delilah came home like this around 7:30.  Looking at it now, I realize she wasn't really hit that bad with them but of course, I freaked out and started crying!  And, of course, everyone I knew who has dealt with this type of thing before weren't answering their phones!  I called the hubby and told him to hurry home, pick up Benedryl and hydrogen peroxide...I was able to pull out about five quills once I calmed down enough, but the rest were too big and naturally, she was feeling my tension so Delilah started to freak out more!

Vern got home and after about an hour of pinning her down, almost getting our hands chomped off and listening to her cry like a little baby, we were able to pull out all of the remaining quills with pliers.

I believe we counted 16 quills in all!  To make matters worse, she apparently blamed me for all of this happening to her and gave me her "doggy silent treatment" for the next two hours while lavishing my husband with attention and kisses...darn dogs!

I don't know what's wrong with you guys, but I'm fine! (And yes, she managed to cover herself up like this!  Can anyone say spoiled pets???!!!)

So, needless to say, after that ordeal I needed to do some work to take my mind of things!  Today I spent another five hours at school organizing my paper cabinets, putting more stuff away, and hanging up my posters and such.

 This is my class storage system, courtesy of the previous art teacher.  I have four chalkboards the slide back and forth where I can store 16 boxes.  This year I finally made my own labels using my Cricket and scrapbook paper.  Since I have a Smartboard now, I don't utilize the chalkboards as much as I used to, so I have now made the top chalkbaord the place where I will post the daily jobs for each table.  

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This is the front of one of my huge paper cupboards.  I have my craftsmanship rubric posted here and my rule about being "all ears"!  I took a lot of my rule formats from Ball's Bluff Elementary.

Inside of my huge paper cupboard...It was a huge mess by the end of last year!

One of my three construction paper cupboards...

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My tote bins for each table are organized!  I will be making a sign with these pictures to hang on the window behind them to remind students how they should be putting these away at the end of class.  Not sure if I'm going to keep these bins this way or take the crayons out, but this is what I have so far!

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New tactic I saw on Pinterest for trying to tackle the "no-name" papers.  I will also have a "no name" bin up in the front of the room.  Courtesy of One Crayola Short!

Another blog find at Draw the Line...hopefully this will help the kindergartners be more organized at the sinks!

My table labels...I went with clear packing tape around the edges, so we will see how well this will last!

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And my word wall...How many of you have a word wall and how do you use it?  Do you have one big wall for all your grades...or do you separate it into sections for each grade level you teach?  I am thinking that I may separate it into grade level...at least maybe K-1, 2-3, 4-6...

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I've been working on spray painting bottles as they become empty to use them for still life drawings.  Hopefully this will make it easier for the younger kids to observe shadows when working on a still life!

One of my new buys for my classroom this year and I'm curious as to how it will work!  Does anyone out there have this in the classroom?  Did I waste my money or is it a decent buy?

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I love these Garfield parodies!  They are from a calender I had when I was younger.  I hung these up my first year of teaching at the younger kids loved them!  They're making a comeback this year!