Family Art Nights...

I received this email from a Deep Space Sparkle reader regarding hosting a Family Art Night. I hadn't done one in years and wasn't even sure I could remember what I did, but a little searching through my old photos was successful in jogging my rapidly deteriorating memory!

"I am planning a Family Art Event at my school. We are planning to have different stations set up for kids and their folks to experiment with different art materials and have fun making art together as a school. Have you ever had an event like this at your school? If you have and have any suggestions or advice, I will listen with grateful ears! I am trying to collect information and tips from other art teachers who have done something like this before. If you ever have a moment to share something you have learned from hosting art events, I would be so appreciative!" -Lisa Miller

Before I became an art teacher, I volunteered in my children's school assisting classroom teachers with art lessons, ordering supplies and assisting with basic techniques. After a while, the principal asked me to organize a Family Art Night. Huh? We had science nights before but never an art night. Heck, we didn't even have regular art in the classroom. But...it sounded like a great idea, so I said "Absolutely!"

Our school was lucky to have a forward-thinking principal who believed in the value of art even though test scores dictated a much different agenda. Still, I wasn't quite sure what an "Art Night" would involve, and was a little hesitant on my ability to pull off an event where children and parents could experience art together. The principal offered up her staff (a combination of regular classroom teachers and student aids) and together we brainstormed on lesson possibilities.

I don't have all my notes but I believe my list went something like this:

• Printmaking Station: Etch foam with a dull pencil, use a brayer to roll on paint. Print onto pre-cut 5" x 7" paper.
• Water Color and Oil Pastel Resist: Set out small pieces of paper, oil pastels and pans of watercolor paints and let kids free-paint.

• "Antique Flowers" Watercolor Wash: Use oil pastels to draw a vase with flowers. Crumple paper to form wrinkles. Cover with watercolor wash. Here is a lesson link.
  
• "Symmetrical Butterfly": Fold a piece of white paper in half, draw half a butterfly on one half with an oil pastel, fold over and press hard. Trace faint outline on other side and fill in with watercolor. Here is a lesson link.
  

• Stuffed Fish: Children select large fish shape and staple paper together. Paint with bright colors and add glitter. (One teacher was anointed "The Glitter Queen" and sprinkled glitter on the wet paint. A large table was needed for this project as well as large vats of pre-mixed paints, large brushes and plenty of staplers!

• Oil and Chalk Pastel Drawing: Children use oil pastels on pre-cut black paper then smudge chalk pastels over top.
• Symmetrical Vase with Stamped Flowers: Children cut a vase from pre-folded card stock and glue onto a small piece of paper. Using sponges (various shapes) dipped in paint, they stamped flowers and designs onto their paper. Here is a lesson link.
  

• Play-Dough Color Wheel: Children blend colors using yellow, red and blue play dough.
  

Set-up: This was a biggie. I knew it would be difficult to stage actual art demonstrations as people needed to be able to come and go freely. So to make the art project assessable to everyone, I created demo boards. I drew or created the "steps" in the art project and used MS Word to create printable instructions. The steps were easy to follow for anyone.There is an example above (Symmetrical Butterfly).

Art Storage: Once a child completed a project, what were we suppose to do with it? They couldn't quite carry it around as most of the projects remained wet for a while. One of the teachers suggested that we convert an unused portion of our cafeteria for art storage. This is what she suggested: Lay colored sheets of work paper along floor (as long as you can make them...about 20 feet). For each color, label the ends: LAST NAME A-C, LAST NAME D-F, etc. When a child finished a project they took the wet paper out to the paper row and placed their art under the initial of their last name. Each row was a different color so the child could remember what color he was. The system worked beautifully.

I hope this helps, Lisa! If any other art teachers have done anything similar, please weigh in. It'd be fun to hear different ideas and what worked and what didn't.

Prepping for Multiple Lessons

I remember a week before my first teaching job, the principal handed me my art schedule. 8:30-9:30 5th Grade, 9:30-10:30 6th grade, 10:45-11:45 2nd grade...need I go on? It was a bit of a shocker to say the least. I mean, where was the prep time? How do I shoo out one class and usher the next one in without utter pandemonium? I realized quickly that it couldn't be done and for the sake of my own enjoyment, let alone the sanity of the classroom teacher, I made a few changes.
I know what you're thinking...What? Changes? How? The principal was most receptive (as was the classroom teacher) to my idea of shaving 5 minutes off the 5th grade class and the 6th grade class giving me 10 minutes between the two.
This resolved almost everything, except prepping for 3 back-to-back classes .

This is what I do:

Get your artwork together.
This is one of more difficult morning schedules: 6th grade 9:30-10:30, 1st grade 10:35-11:10, 5th grade 11:150-12:15.
As you can see, there is very little prep time and all three classes are different grades, which means 3 different lessons. So, needless to say, I need to be organized. I come in at 8:30 and begin prepping the lessons.

• First I set out last weeks work. If it's a new lesson, the process is still the same.
• I place the stacks of unfinished artwork on a little side table next to my white board. I put them in order because I often get confused! It helps me to write my daily schedule in the corner of the whiteboard for easy reference.
• For this week, I have the following lessons: #1 6th grade Russian Architecture Line Drawings, #2 2nd grade Collage Scarecrows, #3 5th grade Matisse-Inspired Portraits.
• I set out the 6th grade supplies on the classroom tables: paper, chalk pastels, scissors and glue.
  
• Done, now onto first grade...

• On a table near my sink, I lay out all the supplies I'll need for my 2nd lesson. This includes the samples for the whiteboard (which I keep in a manila envelope) paper/template tray, scissors and glue and an extra palette of watercolors for the little one who may have missed last week or needs to finish. An easy peek through the stack of unfinished work gives you a sense of how many kids need to finish step one. In this case, I had four kids, so I removed their art from the pile and set it on top. This way, I'll have them all sit together and only one palette of paint is needed.
• Take note of the white plastic trays I have. They're great to hold any kind of supplies . Switch out supplies as needed. Very easy to whip onto a table, too.

• Then, I begin to prep my third lesson: Matisse Portraits for 5th grade. I mix the paints, fill the water containers and flip through the unfinished work to see where everyone is at.

After a class session ends, I quickly switch out supplies. If I am running short on time (clean-up took longer than normal), I'll ask a responsible child to help. Usually class room teachers, who are required to come into the room with me because I'm not a credential teacher, are too busy managing seat placements to help.

When your schedule isn't ideal...
I'm less daunted now by packed schedules, although in order to manage it, I need sufficient time either between classes or a chink of time before classes begin. This is not always the case.
Last year I had an almost impossible schedule from an art teachers POV.

This is what one day looked like:
8:30-9:15 (4th grade), 9:30-10:15 (4th grade), 10:45-11:30 (4th grade), 11:30-12:15 (3rd grade), 1-1:45(3rd grade), 2-2:45 (3rd grade).

Doesn't look too bad until you get to the transition from 4th grade to 3rd grade. See it? No time at all. I panicked big time. Impossible, I said.
What made this difficult was that I couldn't push the class at either end due to lunch and recess schedules. What made it bearable was the 30 minute break between 10:15-10:45. Ahh, my island oasis in the flurry of the storm. That's when I did my transition prep.
I also adjusted my expectations. These 3rd grade kids just weren't going to be able to accomplish what my other 3rd graders have done in the past. What took 2 lessons before, now took 3. So be it. They enjoyed the class, experienced many art techniques and were very pleased with what they accomplished.

Hope this helps...keep asking me questions. It might take a while until I formulate an answer via post, but I'm alsways striving for better ways to streamline classes.
Patty

Inside the Art Room: Managing Student Art

One of the most overwhelming aspects of being an art teacher is the management of the artwork. Of course, you don't have to manage it at all; children can take their precious piece with them when they leave class. But for me, I like to keep all of the art created in the art room in the art room.

There's a reason for my madness:Art Shows. Each spring there are a medley of opportunities to showcase the student's art, starting with the biggest: the school art show.
Each child gets to display one piece. I like to have all pieces available in individual portfolios in order to select the student's best one. Also, this system gives me the opportunity to select a variety of artwork so the parents can see all of the projects done throughout the year.

So that's what I do: create a portfolio for each student.

Sounds like a lot of work, but done in baby steps, it really is no big deal. At the beginning of the year, I take a 18" x 24" piece of Sulphite Tru-Ray drawing paper (any color, but color coding would be cool!), fold it in half then:

1. Write the student's name,
   
2. Write the teacher's last name or room number
   
3. Write the grade level.
   
4. * If that class has inclusion students, I like to put an asterisk next to those children's names, because even though they attend art with this class, their artwork is group with the inclusion classes for the art show.

So, now that you have a portfolio for each child, what do you do with it? At one of my schools, I have this nifty cubical shelf. It's old and wooden and the perfect size for holding a classroom's stack of portfolios. (see photo at beginning of this post.)
By chance, this shelf has 5 cubes per row. Perfect, since I teach no more than five classes in one day. So this is how I organize the cubicles. I put a label at the very top of each row: Monday Group A, Friday Group A, Monday Group B and Friday Group B.
As you may have determined, I teach in cycles: Group A for 5 weeks, then Group B for 5 weeks. I work two days a week (Monday and Friday). So If I'm looking for Friday Group B's portfolio's, I just look at the last slot.
Of course, you may have a different schedule. At the other school where I teach, my schedule is different and so is my storage. I don't have this nifty shelf, so I use legal size filing cabinets. They are a perfect fit for my portfolios and you can organize the drawers however you like.

Now, don't think I'm an organizing freak. I'm really quite sloppy. After a class is over, the art either goes on a drying rack or gets placed in a stack with a piece of paper on top stating whose class it is. Sounds easy but there have been many times when that little piece of paper that should have a teacher's name on it, gets forgotten. I've mixed up ALOT of art by being rushed and anxious to get home or whatever.

The best part of this system is when a parent comes into the art room and wants to look at what her child has done, I can easily go to the filing cabinet, select the right class, find the portfolio (never alphabetized, I'm afraid) and let the art work spill out in all it's glorious color.

So there you have it: my version of being organized.
Good luck!

Patty

Inside the Art Room: Organization

Many of my fellow art teachers have asked about organization. I've hesitated to respond because I don't particularly feel that my organizational skills are worth writing about. But since school is out and my lesson plans are dwindling (although I still have a few more to post!), it feels like a good time to sit back and reflect on what I did well and what I think can be improved for next year.

Art room "must have": Tables, not desks.
Can you imagine prepping a station for every child that came into your classroom? Tables are absolutely necessary for keeping me sane. In my art room, I have 5 tables that sit 5-6 students per table. I also have an extra table in the back of the room for overflow or if I have a larger upper grade class or if a students needs to work "alone". For my two schools, grades K-3 average 20 students and grades 4-6 average 25.

Front part of my classroom.
I have a large white board that I keep free of clutter and two small tables close to the board for my own teaching prep. The sink (very small!) is on the counter under the window.

Back part of my classroom.
I have a desk off to the side, a round table in the back for "free choice" drawing (when children are finished of main project) and you can see the edge of my back table where I keep supplies for current projects or clear for extra kids.

Storing Supplies:
Large cupboards flank the perimeter of my art room. I fill them with paint bottles (watercolors, tempera, metallic, glitter paints, etc.), paint brushes, drawing supplies (markers, pencils, etc). I try to sort my tempera paint bottles by color and for most of the year it stays that way, but by the end of the year, it's just a big mess.

The drawers under my sink are perfect for pastels, painting and prep supplies (water containers, plastic trays for paint, palettes, sponges, etc.) When I'm prepping a lesson, this is where I stand. Everything I need is one drawer pull away.

Prepping a Lesson:
Occasionally, I'll do a lesson where the children are required to mix their own paints (colorwheel projects). If this is the case, I tend to use foam plates for each student. At one school, breakfast is served and I'll go dumpster diving immediately after and pick out all the Styrofoam trays for this exact purpose. Most are dry and clean and only require a quick rinse. Good for the environment and easy on the art budget. Some kids automatically save their trays for me and bring them to the art room.

This process takes more space than time. I prefer using the sharing method for most projects.

For painting projects, I set out two water containers and the appropriate amount of brushes at each table. this beats giving each child a water container. This might sound mean, but unless we're working with a lot of black paint, I don't encourage the kids to refill their container with fresh water. Most of the time, the water, even dirty water, is completely fine for the project.

I'm a fan of the hard plastic trays and muffin type palettes shown here on the right. They're easy to clean and stack really well. The trays can be used for everything: markers, pencils, pastels, paint brushes, etc. Whatever tools the kids need.

The tray on the left is permanently filled with essential art items. This makes set-up quick and easy. The only things that come out on a regular basis are the pencils and erasers. if you've been following my art lessons, you know I'm not a fan of pencil drawings, so I only make them available when the lesson really calls for it.

Foil trays are great to use if you don't have access to the plastic ones. I buy them in bulk at Costco and keep reusing them. I fill them with paper, oil pastels, embellishments, anything. I set one or two trays at everyone's table. The picture below shows how I organize a project using tissue paper. I decided to sort the tissue into colors for this particular project. I set the trays on the "back" table.

There. That's a start. Next week, I'll show you how I organize teh children's artwork!