It's Voting Time!

It's that time of the year again, folks! The fine people over at The Art of Education have just announced their finalists for blog of the year. There are a whole lot of super amazing blogs that you can vote for, but I sure hope you'll vote for Thomas Elementary Art. Somehow I won last year, so I now feel like I'm defending a professional sports title. (It's the same, right?) Let's go for the repeat win! You can even vote once per day!

Click here to vote!

New Counters, Happy Art Teacher

 
It's not often that the art room gets something new other than art supplies. A short time before break, I learned that, to my complete surprise, the counters, shelves, and sinks in the back of my room would be torn out and replaced over winter break. Huzzah! I then realized that I would need to move EVERYTHING out of the old one- including 900lbs of clay. 

A job that could have been a big hassle wound up being beneficial. I went through all of the materials that had been sitting on those shelves for years and wound up being able to give away, recycle, and throw away several items that I hadn't used the entire time I've taught at Thomas. (Hamster bedding…really?) I came in over break to put everything back. I ACTUALLY HAD EMPTY SHELVES. Yeah, you read that correctly. Holy cow. 

In all, I'm super happy with the new shelves and counters. The arrangement stayed exactly the same as it had been and I'm hoping to get some doors on a couple of the shelves to keep it neat. I'm psyched! Hopefully everyone else has an exciting start to 2015 as well!

Party Day!

I really enjoy our "Fall Harvest" party day. It's a nice break from the first two and a half months of regular school days. With all of the testing that goes on, kids don't really get to have too many fun days anymore. The related arts teachers at Thomas have several traditions, but the best is our Halloween costumes. It has been a tradition for over 18 years that the related arts teachers dress up as a group of three. Why only three? The tradition predates the addition of library as a related arts class- back when our school population wasn't as massive as it is now. Never in all those years have we repeated a costume. (Feel free to comment and suggest groups of three that aren't obvious.) This year we were face cards from a playing card deck. Seeing that my name is Zach, I redrew the jack to add a little joke to the costume. What did everyone else dress up as?

This picture makes me look like a giant.

Not too bad for making these mostly the day before and the day of the party.

Follow @thomas_elementary_art on Instagram!

I'm sitting at home today. I had to take a personal day to have some electrical work done on my 100 year old house. Consequently, I have some extra time on my hands. I've been working on some staff t-shirt designs and I also decided to start an Instagram account for my classroom. My intention is to use it for some quick daily posts of cool things that are happening in the art room. I was also inspired by Hope Hunter Knight's IG feed in which she's using her IG account as a tool for students to interact with. She posts challenges and students can upload their artistic responses using a particular hashtag. 

As of right now, I have a grand total of ZERO posts on the new account, but I expect that you'll see a pretty constant feed if you check back often. 

Art Show 2014 is in the Books!

I've been rather absent from posting over the last several weeks. Why? Two words. ART SHOW. As all of my teacher readers know, organizing and setting up an art show takes many, many, many hours. Every spare moment I had at school went toward making name tags, organizing work, creating signs, etc. The list of things to do is always exceedingly long. 

The 6th annual Thomas Elementary Art Show was last week and went quite well. Over 1000 pieces of artwork were on display and the 5th grade stop motion films premiered. Attendance was spectacular. It is worth all of the work to see my students proudly telling their parents all about their work. 

I must give many thanks to several 5th grade student volunteers who gave up a week's worth of lunch recess to help with anything they were asked to do. I also need to thank my wife who took a vacation day to help set up the show. Finally, thanks to the Thomas PTO for providing cookies as well as volunteers to help take the show down at the end of the evening. Overall, the show was a huge success. Best of all, it's done now!

My daughter loved her second art show!

A fun Pinterest inspired idea for drawing during the show.

Straight From the Art Room

Sometimes teaching elementary students simply makes me laugh. Earlier this week, a 5th grade girl sidled up to me with her hand in her jacket pocket. She gave me a sly look, then took her hand out of her pocket. She was holding a box of Milk Duds (widely known among my students to be my favorite candy) and several photographs of her pets. She proposed a trade. I draw her pets all in one picture and I get the Milk Duds. Ha! I bet none of you have been paid in Milk Duds for your art! I know all of my art school friends from college will be jealous now.

Delicious Milk Dud candies!

A little reorganization!

Today was a teacher work day. No meetings, no obligations, no students. It is purely a day to work in the classroom and get things done. I love these days. They allow me to take time to do some things that I wouldn't ordinarily have time to do during the regular school day. Today, I graded work, hung a couple new projects in the hallway, and got to a little project I found on Pinterest. 

The pile of scraps before.
Witness the sheer size and uselessness!

I ORGANIZED MY CONSTRUCTION PAPER SCRAPS. Take a bit of time to let that sink in. It was a pretty massive undertaking. I use the scraps all of the time with all kinds of projects. My scraps were starting to overflow in one bin and they were in complete disarray. Too many kids throw useless scraps into the bin which makes it harder for the next class to find good paper. 

I simply went through all of the scraps, got rid of the tiny pieces, and set the useful ones aside into piles of warm colors and cool colors. I then cut all of the pieces into rectangles with the paper cutter. No more dangly parts, rough edges, or random cut-outs. These pieces are all begging to be used. The new rule with my students will be to trim all scraps into rectangles and make sure they are placed in the proper bin. Hopefully this was time well spent!

I made signs (two for each bin) showing which colors are allowed in each bin.
The signs are laminated and taped down with packing tape. (Just try to peel that off...)

I went from a single overflowing bin to two fairly empty ones.
Between splitting up the scraps and getting rid of the useless ones,
my stock is pretty depleted. I'm sure my supply will grow soon.

The bins magically fit PERFECTLY under the table.

The room is ready!

The time has come. School starts bright and early tomorrow morning. I think pretty much everything is in place for another school year. I always enjoy seeing pictures of other teacher's rooms when I look at their blogs, so I'm going to put up a few pictures from my room. If nothing else, I can look back fondly in a few weeks and reminisce about how clean and shiny everything is. 


I made a few changes to my room this year. I dedicated my main bulletin board wall to information about what each grade level is studying. In the past, I have always put up prints and changed out a few as the year went along. I purchased a bunch of vocabulary cards at the end of the year last year that I think will work really well on new bulletin board. 


Another change this year has to do with this blog. I'm going to try my best to attach lesson plan files to each new post. Hopefully this is helpful to people who read the blog. If there are any other requests for things you'd like to see on here, comment and let me know! Happy 2011-2012 everyone!