Monet's Garden

I simply love this project. These examples are first grade. We watched a video of Linnea in Monet's Garden on YouTube and then looked at photographs of Monet's house and paintings. Next, they followed the steps found on Mrs. Picasso's Art Room. They are all so unique and beautiful!

My First Snag

Here I am, all set and determined to transition to TAB next year and I found out one of my schools is changing again. While this is totally fine with me, and was expected with our elementary boundaries changing, the school I am moving to the art room is shared with music, orchestra, and Chinese. I am still planning on implementing TAB, but now I need to figure out how to make my stations easy to set up and store each art day. Stay tuned, I am determined!

Fun Idea

At the beginning of the school year I saw a post on Facebook about a boy whose mom wrote affirmations on each of his pencils. I thought it was a brilliant idea to help promote positive self esteem, so I wrote on all of my pencils in the art room. I wasn't sure if the kids would even notice, but they had joyful looks on their faces and they read their own pencil and then asked the kids near them what their pencils said. It was very fun to watch. 

I use black Sharpie on the yellow pencils, and silver Sharpie on the black pencils.

I learned the hard way that  they must be sealed or the Sharpie will rub off after one class. It is hard to come up with dozens of unique affirmations, so I found this site with a list of positive things to say to students.

Apron Art Room Hack

Here is another great idea to share. I actually saw this at a Home Depot Kids' Workshop. One of the other parents did it for their child and I thought it was brilliant. I have been using the idea in my classroom for years now. 

All of my aprons are adult size, so for the smaller kids I put on waist tie through the neck before tying it. This pulls the top of the apron higher on the child to protect more of their shirt and I don't have to buy two sizes of aprons.