Saturday, August 31, 2013

It's a Long Weekend

I am so proud of everything I accomplished today!  I finished 2 portrait paintings, a wedding, and 2 photo shoots!  I also finished my seating charts and did a little bit of lesson planning.  I'm hoping to finish the lessons tomorrow so that I can spend the rest of the weekend being ridiculously lazy!  I hope you're having an awesome holiday weekend!

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Gathering My Thoughts

The Johnston County Arts Council does an art display at  a hospital in my area.  I did a student art display there earlier this year.  They are going to be doing a display of work created by the art teachers in our county!  I call this water color painting I made for the display "Gathering My Thoughts." I hope you're having a great weekend so far!

Friday, August 16, 2013

Classroom Posters & Bulletin Boards

School doesn't officially start until next week, but as the art teacher I knew I'd need to take care of some things before everyone came in.  This will be my third year at my current school, and every year I've created a giant bulletin board based on our yearly theme.  Our first theme was "Climbing to New Heights" and last year's was "Journey to Success."
 We keep track of our successes throughout the year on the board.  The first year's successes were flags and last year's were signs.
This year's successes will be messages in a bottle because our theme is "Set Sail Together on a Learning Adventure."
I also do the bus student of the month board, but I don't have photos of all three years...drat!
The board beside this one is usually reserved for art work, but they are still deciding if they are going to let me keep it this year or put character traits there...we'll see!

This year, my partner in crime aka Mrs. Miller the music teacher got called in for a giant bulletin board too! MUAAHAHAHAHA!  She made the whole board including this awesome plane all by herself!  She did such a great job, but I told her she better watch out because people will start asking her to make stuff for them! ;)
I was supposed to work on a mural this week, but with on and off rain all week we didn't want to risk starting and then having it get rained on and smeared. [Of course it was beautiful and sunny when I took this photo.]
I worked in my room a lot this week while I waited for word on the mural plans.  It has really taken me a long time this year!  I worked Tues-Thursday in my room and I'm still not finished!  Thank goodness I went in because teacher workdays start next week, and we don't get tons of time in our rooms with trainings and meetings all week.  I would be spastic next week if I hadn't done a few things already.  As if I hadn't made enough bulletin boards, I needed to work on my own too :).
I keep up with current projects on the far left, and the other boards will be art work.
I got my book shelf together, boards, and a few posters, but that's it!  I still have to move all of my heavy things out of the way and hang up the tall stuff once my husband can come help me.  I also need to sharpen ten thousand pencils and get the art supplies out of the closet and where they go.  But I love doing all of that stuff.  Is that weird?  I love getting my room ready.  It gets me pumped for the school year and makes my artsy heart happy happy happy.  Here are some of the boards and posters I made this week...

"Draw Light Until You've Got it Right!"  This is something a lot of my kids struggle with.  Hopefully this little reminder will help with the frustrated eraser frenzies that I see all the time.
 My rules poster was inspired by a few posters on Pinterest.  I love that site!  "My favorites are Ninja Entrance" and "All Mistakes are Opportunities."  I used a new treasure box system last year where every class earned a color when they had great behavior, and once they got the whole rainbow they got to go the the treasure box.  It worked really well, but this year I needed to make a new poster.  I decided to make a paint brush with paint drops.  Every teacher has a little sticky note that I will move down the board until they reach the puddle.  Once they reach the puddle, it's treasure box time!  I usually have starbursts, jolly ranchers, stickers, and tiny erasers in there, but most of the kids go for the candy.
 I had my world map in the back of the room last year, but I use it so much I decided to put it up front this time.
 I also made some new table labels.  My room is super color coordinated. LOVE IT.
 And my in-progress word wall.  I have a bunch of posters like these where I've put collage, sculpture, drawing, painting, and textiles, but they go in the places I can't reach.  I'll post them later.  I added landscape, portrait, and still life this year.  I'm hoping to incorporate more of each this year!
That's all folks!  I'll probably post a full room tour at some point 'cause I'm that kinda gal.  I'm going to be posting mostly school stuff on this blog from now on since I have a new photography blog, so stay tuned and enjoy your last few days of summer!