Welcome Back to the Art Room!

This is my sixth year teaching and my sixth year in this wonderful little room!  I believe that art rooms should be bright, functional, and inspiring places to create and learn!

I love all of the open shelving in the classroom.  It allows me to be creative when arranging the spaces and supplies and helps to create a colorful studio atmosphere.  I have the tiniest closet, so I have to really make use the shelving.  Having easy access to all of the supplies is also incredibly helpful when teaching.  If I need to change part of a lesson in the middle of class or if a student has a great idea they want to try out, it is simple and quick to grab materials.

New to the classroom this year:

We do have a few new things in the classroom this year.  It's fun to change things up, especially since I have the same kids every year.  It gives them something new and exciting.  

Two additional step stools.  I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier!  Of course more than one student can be at a sink at a time!  This should make things a little faster during our messiest cleanups... 

Palette classroom management system.  ​I wanted to do something different with classroom management and rewards for classes this year.  I found so many art related ideas on Pinterest and other websites, but I loved the palettes.  Each class gets their own palette and they will earn their paint colors over the weeks.  If a class earns ten or more Roars in one class period (we're tigers and the art room points have been Roars in the past), then they will earn a color.  Classes earn Roars by doing things like having a great clean up, sharing well, answering questions correctly, and raising hands.  On Friday afternoons, I will add the color paint splotches to the classes who earned them.  I think this will help those classes that never earned the grade level art award in previous years.  I used to give the top Roar earning class in each grade level and giant wooden paintbrush to hang outside their room for a month.  I think with this new method, all classes will be capable of earning a reward.   I'm thinking the rewards can be choosing their own seats for a day, doing art outside, using modeling clay for the last fifteen minutes of class, or having a snack, etc.

Colorful trays for turning in dry artworks.  In the past, I have used their class folders as a place to put artwork, but we were having a hard time with that last year.  Hopefully these brightly colored trays from Target will help students find their place to turn in work.  There is a different color for each grade level and I labeled the inside and outside with the grade level.   

Clean up visuals:  I clean up six times a day every day, and discussing clean up procedures that often is exhausting.  I try to ask students questions about clean up instead of simply telling them what to do, but I want them to be even more independent.  I found art clean up visuals on Teachers Pay Teachers and they are incredible!  I laminated them and will post them on the white board with each lesson I am teaching.  Along with asking questions, these visuals will greatly help with our clean up procedures.  

New mosaics!  My upper grades kids made these construction paper mosaics last year.  I can't wait for them to see the giant paintbrush and paint splatters up on the wall!  It has become a little tradition for students to help make decorations for the next year.  I love that I can already have some of their artwork hanging in the room on day one of the school year.