A Day in the Life... of an Art Teacher

• Somewhere between 5:00 and 5:30 I wake up and get ready for school
• 6:30 - Oliver wakes up and watches Disney, gets dressed, and drinks chocolate milk and has breakfast (usually toast and honey)
• 7:00 - I eat breakfast and pack lunch
• 7:20 - Leave the house and head to school
• 7:30 - Bell rings and I monitor the halls until 7:45
• 7:45 - Planning starts. I'm usually getting supplies ready for classes depending on the project. If we are painting or doing collage I make sure to prepare supplies at the end of the previous day.
• 8:30 - Reading group with 4-6 first graders until 9:30
• 9:30-10:15 Kindergarten (currently working on Picasso portraits)
• 10:15-11:00 4th Grade (currently working on perspective and cityscapes)
• 11:00-11:15 small break between classes usually spend preparing supplies for next class/restroom break/ mailbox check/ email check/ sometimes eating lunch fast!
• 11:15-12:00 3rd Grade (currently working on perspective and cityscapes)
• 12:00-12:30 Lunch!
• 12:30-1:15 1st Grade (Picasso portraits currently)
• 1:15 - 1:30 small break preparing for the next class/ restroom/ etc
• 1:30-2:15 2nd Grade (Picasso portraits currently)
• 2:15-2:30 Cleanup/ preparation for classes the next day
• 2:30-3:00 Hall duty while the kids leave school
• 3:00 Head home /run errands/ go to the park/ grocery store/ homework/ cook dinner or eat out/ laundry/ dishes/ plan lessons/ do Oliver's homework/ batting lessons/ checking social media/ uploading Instagram photos/ etc.
• TBall has started so 2 nights a week is spent at the ballpark
• 8:00 Oliver's bedtime unless we are still playing ball
• 9:30 My bedtime!

We art teachers like to stay busy :)

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Picasso Faces

One of my favorite portrait lessons to do with my K-2 students is a Picasso Portrait lesson. They think it's fun to make silly faces! I love the reaction I get when I show my PPT of different Picasso portraits. It's mostly, "Ewww!," "Ahhhh!," "That's weird!," etc. It's always a fun lesson! We discuss how Picasso usually combined two different views of a person and that's why the faces look like they do. I do a step-by-step guide with them while drawing the face and the features. We discuss different way to draw eyes, noses, mouths, eyebrows, hair, etc. We outlined our pencils lines with a black crayon and then I let them color it as wild as they wanted! We then practiced our cutting and gluing skills, focusing really hard on cutting around the head perfectly and then gluing the edges very well. Here are a few examples of one of my kindergarten classes work...

Falling for Foreshortening

As much as I wish I could, I cannot take credit for this lesson. I do apologize because I'm not sure who is to credit because I have seen it on so many Pinterest boards and blogs. I knew when I found this lesson back in August that I HAD to try it with my kids. And they LOVED it! It turned out so, so good! We discussed foreshortening and I gave them examples and had them give me examples. Then we traced both shoes and hands and drew in their self portrait behind the shoes and fingers. I just love how these turned out! I gave them the option to trace their lines using a sharpie or just a pencil, and they could also color all or parts of their self portrait. This lesson was done by my 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades. 

I purchased a couple of new books from Amazon to add to my book collection in my classroom!