Friday, May 25, 2012

End of the Year... well, almost.

today is my last day of finals. I hate giving them but they are needed. After today there is only two weeks left of school and both weeks will be spent cleaning and breaking down my room.

however inventory comes first. I have had a few students stay after school a couple of days a week to help my count all of my art supplies. Now I have been at my school -- this will be my second year now and i have never done an inventory of what i have. I know what I have in terms of supplies but i dont know how much of each item. I realized that this must change in order for me to make my art supply order for next year. Hopefully it is will be helpful.

No new pictures today but i will have some soon.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Free Draw Chaos

I normally would never give my students a blank piece of drawing paper with the assignment to just draw. Doing so is completely out of character for me -- the art teacher who hates chaos. Free draw time or assignments are always a time for students to do what they want and be creative. I just dont like the unstructured time of it all. 

Not having a lesson plan or even a planned idea of what the artwork should look like drives me nuts. Letting the students do their own creative thing is the scariest thing I know of. But having time to be creative is a good thing and can lead of amazing results. 

During Art Club one of my 7th grade students completed an amazing drawing of a flower and asked if we could have free draw time in class this week. Knowing how I felt about this I automatically said no. Then I thought about it. Maybe it wouldnt be so bad. And it wasnt. Giving the students time to just sit and be creative was a great experience for them and myself. So much so that I have decided to let Free Draw be apart of next years project schedule. 

Below are some of the free draw artworks completed by both my 7th and 8th grade students over the past week.