Pouring Slip Molds

  The first thing you want to do is to clean out your mold.

 I just use a plastic dish brush - something stiff enough to get the debris, but not stiff enough to damage your mold.

   Wrap securely with large rubber bands. This small mold doesn't need too much support, so I've had good luck with just one.

   If your mold is large then you REALLY need to secure it. You'll thank me later for doing this! You will be pouring a LOT of slip in the mold and the weight of the clay will push the mold apart.

  Check your mold for additional fills. This hole is on the side, so it will need to be poured at a later time. Keep all pieces wet until you can join them together.

Fill your mold to the top with slip. It's ok if it goes over a bit. Now the hard part - let it sit for awhile! Don't forget to monitor your pour.

 





The plaster will start to absorb the liquid from the clay and you will see the clay go down. You will want to watch the thickness of the sides. If the sides aren't as thick as you'd like them then refill with slip. You can see by this picture that the sides are a decent thickness.




















Turn your mold carefully over your container to drain the excess slip. This is how you get your mold hollowed out.








Set aside to continue draining and drying. You will want to remove your mold slightly before it becomes leatherhard. If you leave it in the mold too long it may crack when it shrinks during the drying process. In my room if we pour at the beginning of the day we can remove the clay from the molds by the end of the day. My counter is directly below the heating vents.


One last piece of advice - it's a good idea to let the molds dry overnight between fills. The plaster loses it's ability to absorb the liquid from the clay when it starts out damp.

Costumes in the Art Room

I LOVE dressing up for class! For Homecoming & Halloween I dress up right along with the kids. When I can I tie in to famous characters. Here are some of my faves (and super easy as well!) Halloween's coming up... who am I going to be? I can't wait to find out!

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo

Bob Ross

Rosie Riveter

Allen House

I was fortunate enough recently to tour the Allen House in Wichita, KS. I have no idea how this Frank Lloyd Wright gem sat right in my backyard for all these years! It is in an area called College Hill, an affluent area filled with colonial style homes. The Allen House was built in Wright's Prairie Style. No indoor photography was allowed, but I doubt I'd have remembered as I was enthralled. Wright was a genius, far ahead of his time!

Gerry Brooks

I had the opportunity to see Gerry Brooks Sept.3, 2017 in Lawrence KS. His videos are hilarious, and his talk gave some background to his videos, which made them funnier. Then he opened this slide up and WOW! When he said that if teachers show up with their classes 5 minutes late they are often taking away 1/6 of the art teacher's curriculum time that week since that is the only time we see them. This was followed by "if a kid is supposed to be somewhere, send them. Don't keep them in your room to finish something for you (meaning classroom teachers). That's not fair or respectful." He obviously respects the arts. 
Respect is probably one of the most important things I try to teach my students. I model this to my students, my co-workers, the parents, and the community. If I see trash on the floor in the hallway I stop and pick it up. How else will our students learn respect if they don't see it modeled for them! 

Gerry Brooks is one of the best speakers I've heard. If you get a chance to go see him do it! 😊

The Disrespected Art Teacher

I was on Facebook reading one of my art teacher pages and a topic of conversation came up on art teachers coming online to vent at the disrespect shown to them. I've been there & I totally get it! I got to thinking this might be a great blog topic for today and I have a few ideas for you to get that respect you deserve!

BE VISIBLE! That's right, BE VISIBLE! Notice how I did that in all caps? That's cause it's that important! If you go to work, do your job, do it well, then go home then you are that invisible art teacher. It's easy to ignore what you don't see. Here's a list of what I do to "be visible".

Art Teacher camoflauge

1. Form relationships! Eat lunch with the staff. Let them get to know you & how awesome you are! Get to know your students - they are the best promoters of your program.
2. Don't be a complainer! Be the positive! When you see someone walking up to you & you just KNOW they are going to complain you're likely to run the other direction. Don't be that person!
3. Get involved. Someone has to be on all those committees. If you aren't on any of them you're probably going to get noticed, but not in a good way. Find something you can do and volunteer to sign up. Let your voice be heard! I'm on the PDC committee & Technology Committee. Both take minimal time, but since administration is at those same meetings they see me sitting at the table giving input on how my students are impacted by the decisions we make.
4. Make your school look good! If they look good, you look good. I promote my program in multiple ways - Instagram, Facebook, the district webpage, our school newspaper. I put an article in every school newspaper (with pictures!). I post cool projects the students really enjoy on our school Facebook & my school Instagram. 
5. Get to know your community. This one is probably the hardest, but getting to know your parents really helps. Know the people on Booster Club or PTO. Go to student events & mingle with the crowd (if your district has staff shirts then wear it so parents know you're a teacher).
6. Use your talents to "WOW" them! I've had students create staff caricatures to hang outside their doors, organized and created videos of the staff to promote learning (we show it to the students before state testing begins), organize the annual staff dance that we perform as a 1/2 time performance at a basketball game, have students create giant canvas paintings to display around the school. I'm an organizer (not to be confused with organized! LOL!) and love getting people together to create experiences.  

Being involved in your school makes you feel connected and gives you a sense of belonging. If you are involved your peers and administration are much more likely to see you as a part of the staff and not as the "support team". Of course there will always be those people who view art as "fluff", and thereby assign your roll in the school as less important, but if you just keep promoting yourself and your program in a positive manner you're sure to start seeing a change. Plus it makes going to work a whole lot more fun!

Art Teacher Hints & Tricks

1) My favorite! I have a huge stack of tracing paper sitting on my desk cut into appx. 3x5" sheets. When a student doesn't understand how to draw something I grab one of those tracing papers, plunk it on top of their drawing & show them what to do. I don't touch their artwork but am able to physically show them what needs to be done.

2) Start the day off with some kind of greeting. I like cheesy ones that starts our day off with a smile, but any kind of "happy to see you" greeting is a good one!

3) BINGO!!! I gave my students a list of vocab words at the beginning of the semester and blank BINGO sheets. They took the vocab list and filled out their BINGO sheets in whatever order they wanted, choosing whatever word they wanted. Everyday at the beginning of class they immediately get out their sheets and when I forget to give them a new word they quickly remind me. I can't believe it took me this long to get them excited about learning new words! I have reviews on Spiral to make sure they are paying attention. Fun way to sneak in that extra learning!

4) Start an Instagram and post pictures of the students! If your district frowns on posting student faces then post their artwork. I didn't even promote mine and had 5 followers after posting just 2 pictures. Students love pictures and they love positive attention and this is a super quick, easy way to give them a pat on the back!

4) It's late & I'll add more tips as I think of them!

iPad Table

A few years back I created this iPad Table for my students to create their own iPad "how to draw" videos. The table was based on something I'd seen online, but I chose to make mine out of a cardboard box I had handy. Originally we used it almost daily, but then it moved to a shelf & was forgotten about. Recently my elementary students all received their own iPads, so I pulled my table off the shelf, gave it a fresh spritz of paint with leftover spray paint, & now it's ready for students! I plan on having them create online portfolios of all their work, and I'm sure one of my amazing little artists will come up with something amazing to do with this table that I'd never have dreamed of!

Setting Up my Elementary Art Room

I teach TAB in my Elementary Art Room. Our elementary school houses grades 3-6, which I see each class (one of each) one time a week for 54 minutes. Since I'm in this room for such a short amount of time each day it tends to get overlooked. Well not this year! I decided to go with the theme "Color Wheel", since I already had my "I SPY" wall and the blocks along one wall all painted nice & bright.

Let's just go by center, then I'll post the whole room. 

Drawing Center

My drawing center is red this year (obviously!) I don't have bulletin boards in this room, so I made my own by hot gluing paper to the wall & using bright border. I don't have my procedures & examples up yet, but they're coming! All my supplies for this center are marked with red electrical tape, even the scissors, pencils, glue bottles and Sharpies. This helps keep students from "borrowing" for other centers and not returning them. I'm super excited about the new plastic see-through crayon boxes for the fancy crayons and the new stencils of gears and people. My little engineers and                                                           fashion designers are going to flip!

Collage Center

Green for collage.  Lots of cool scissors, papers, magazines, & sequins - everything a collage artist might want! 

Puppets, Jewelry, & Masks

This is a new center this year. Actually, I'm separating it from collage due to it's popularity, AND to help promote puppetry (hopefully!) I got some cool new shadow puppet books as a door prize at a workshop. They came from ShadowPuppetStories on Etsy (shout out for these cool puppets!) This one isn't as color coded, & the table is in the middle of the room, but all the supplies they'll need are on the bookshelves on the wall that is partially shared with collage. 

Finishing Center 

 There's not much to talk about with the finishing center. This is where the students bring their sculptures to paint after they've done the shake test to make sure they are well constructed. I put this on the opposite side of the room from the sculpture center to keep the students from going back & forth between constructing and painting. Glue doesn't hold well when applied to wet paint. For some reason my students just don't believe me on this! This one is under my color wheel curtains and beside my old art cart. I just can't bring myself to get rid of that old thing - it's so handy & I have a lot of memories tied up in that box on wheels!

 

Sewing Center

The sewing center is always one of my most popular. Felt and fabric scraps allow students to hand sew small stuffed animals and dolls, and to decorate them in a new cool way. For stuffing we use felt scraps as well as stuffing I purchase and old stuffed animals that we re-purpose the insides.                 

Weaving Center

 
The weaving center is another popular center. Weaving on paper plates, handmade looms made out of cardboard, bracelets, wall hangings, you name it they weave it! I have a lot of unbeweavable weavers! They love to take extra yarn and their loom with them and weave at recess, while the teacher is reading to the class, and anytime they can get away with it! I ask parents for donations of any yarn they can spare so I always have more than enough!

Painting Center

Ok, so I don't have sinks. That dirty dark blue bucket is where my students dump their dirty water, refilling it with clean water from the lt.gray buckets. I have watercolors, temera cakes, and washable crayons/markers/colored pencils for drawing & adding water. I keep the drying rack ready for my little artists! I am opening a liquid tempera center, but it's on the easel at the opposite side of the room. I'm going to introduce it and allow 2 students to work there at a time until I see what problems it presents before moving it over to this center. Monitoring a couple students at a time makes new materials easier to manage!

Sculpture Center

So why black you might ask? Well, that's how I feel about it somedays! Just kidding! I didn't want to reuse any colors to keep it simple and I'd used all the other paper colors we had! Sometimes the real answer just isn't all that interesting! Plus I wanted to darken the light coming in just a bit since I project on the opposite wall & it's hard to see with full light. I have 2 hot glue guns and a massive amount of cardboard at this center. The shelving on the far right students are allowed one each. Cut cardboard scraps they can have as much as they need. All other supplies they are allowed 3. If their idea calls for more than 3 they must talk to me first about their idea and get permission. This is not to keep students from creating whatever they want, but to ensure that one student doesn't hot glue a log cabin together with Popsicle sticks, using my entire supply, only to completely abandon it. This left a LOT of hurt feelings amongst the entire studet body as they wanted those precious little wooden sticks and felt that the girl had been wasteful and selfish. It was just a situation I would rather not repeat. So 3 is the magic number! :) It's nice to have a place to recycle all those egg cartons as well - I have my own cake business and I go through a lot of eggs (and cake mixes - hey, I'm not a baker but I can make a super cool looking cake!)

 Sewing Machines

So this is a brand new center. PTO bought me a sewing machine, and I bought two more at a yard sale. I have some future fashion designers and they are going to flip over this new section! I need to find a tall doll for them to create fashion for - unless someone has a great idea for a model? I don't have enough fabric for them to create for themselves, and at this point we just aren't there yet. 

Games/Critical Thinking

Not much to this one. Just odds & ends puzzles and creative games I've accumulated throughout the years. I allow students 2 days at this center maximum. It's for those days when you just aren't really feeling the creative process. 3 students maximum allowed! 

Overall View

 My room is a super odd shape. It's kind of an "L" shape, but it's not square on the far projection wall. Fitting in all these tables has always been a challenge, but somehow I keep figuring out ways to fit one more center in! I love my "I SPY COLOR" wall - I made that to hide that ugly red fire extinguisher. I thought the fire marshal might not like it but he did! It's taking longer than I thought to fill all that space but it's a fun journey!