Vol. 3, No. 243, August 31, 2018

3243 - Eye Survived.

Today I completed my first week as a Middle School Art Teacher. It wasn't live at first sight, but I'm not giving up yet. Today I introduced my 7th grade students to drawing a realistic eye. We watched a YouTube video and then drew our own on a large scale. Here is my demo the iris will be painted later to look like a color wheel.

Vol. 3, No. 242, August 30, 2018

3242 - Vincent's Vases.

Tomorrow, my Sixth Graders are going to start hanging their van Gogh flowers, which meant that I needed to create the vases. These are the two vases I made and hung for the first two classes.

Vol. 3, No. 241, August 29, 2018

3241 - At It Again.

Today, my sixth graders continued making their van Gogh flowers. Some of them were trying to make rose stlye flowers, but were struggling wiht how to color them realistically. Therefore, I decided that I needed to make an esample. Looking at the finished product, there are somethings I would change, like the shape and placement of some of the petals and a little bit of the shading, but overall, I love how it turned out.

Vol. 3, No. 240, August 28, 2018

3240 - The Museum.

Today was my first day with Kindergarten. I only had half of the class, so rather than doing the standard first day rules and introductions, we read a book. The book was The Museum by Susan Verde. The book ends with the girl painting her own canvas. I gave each student a piece of paper and asked them  to  draw something fun that they did this summer. For my example, I drew fish and seaweed to represent my work at the theater this summer.

Vol. 3, No. 239, August 27, 2018

3239 - Just Because.

While today was the first day of school, I didn't actually make any art at school. Which meant that as I was winding down for the night, I also needed to do a project. I checked National Day Calendar to see if there were any good holidays today, and I found National Just Because Day. The picture on the post was of a peacock. So i thought 'why not?' I decided to cut out a peacock stencil and use my blow markers to make this peacock.

Vol. 3, No. 238, August 26, 2018

3238 - Post-It Palooza.

I decided to begin 7th and 8th grade art with a brief drawing lesson. Tomorrow, I am going to teach them about the history of Post-It notes, and then have each student decorate a Post-It note sharing something about themselves. I made my example tonight. I decided to fill my Post-It with art supplies.

Vol. 3, No. 237, August 25, 2018

3237 - Wolf Walk.

I got a large dose of Miller Time as we all ventured to Great Wolf Lodge for a weekend of fun. This morning we participated in the Wolf Walk, a storytime during which we traveled around the lobby learning about different animals. When the story was over, there was a mystery craft. The craft was making an origami wolf. The Miller Littles loved howling like a wolf and feeding their new wolves some lunch.

Vol. 3, No. 236, August 24, 2018

3236 - Helpful Hearts.

After sleeping in this morning, I conned the Miller Littles into helping me with my project. I wanted to make am example of the school collaboration project, so rather than do it all myself, I had each of the Miler Littles do one section. I had Littlest Miller follow the instructions for the Kindergarteners (4 sections using crayons). Oldest and Middle Miller followed the instructions for the older kids, 5 sections using colored pencils.

Middle and Littlest Miller gave up halfway through, so I had to finish theirs. When each section was finished, I lined them up to reform the heart.

Vol. 3, No. 235, August 23, 2018

3235 - Blended Beauties.

I spent the majority of my day either in meetings or traveling between meetings. The little time that was left over, I spent finishing organizing my classrooms and planning out my lessons for the first day of school. My sixth graders are going to begin with an collaborative project based on Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers. Each student will draw a 6" flower and color it with oil pastels. One of the directions is that they need to demonstrate blending of colors.

Vol. 3, No. 234, August 22, 2018

3234 - Procrastination Pallet.

I had an exhausting day of meetings, classroom prep, and open houses. As I was leaving for the day, I couldn't think of anything "creative" that I did today. I added another table to my room this year, which meant I needed another sign. So I grabbed paper and the stencil to make a new sign.

Vol. 3, No. 233, August 21, 2018

3233 - Getting High.

Each year at Annandale Elementary, the Art department does a collaborative art project. Each student in grades K-4 makes one piece, which the other art teacher and I combine to make some sort of collage.

A lot of work goes into these collages, so I am going to spread the background information out over multiple posts. What I can tell you right now is that this year's collage is going to be made out of hearts. Artie A and I started the collaboration today by creating a heart stencil that could be divided into 4 parts and then we started tracing. We need a total of 192 hearts in order for each student to decorate 1/4 of a heart.

As it turns out, the process of tracing hearts is time consuming and pretty toxic when you are using the wide Sharpies. We only got about 1/3 of the hearts traced before we had to move onto other things for the day, which means that I will be working on it more whenever I have free time.

Vol. 3, No. 232, August 20, 2018

3232 - Back To School.

Today was the first day of teacher workshops. Which also meant it was the first day back in my classroom. after attending a meeting this morning, I spent the rest of the day working in my room. One of today's tasks was to make a new name sign for outside of my classroom. I was planning on making it based off of a poster that a class had given me at the end of the year last year. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the poster. Therefore, the final sign isn't as cool as I was hoping it would, but it good enough to get me through until I can make a new one.

Vol. 3, No. 231, August 19, 2018

3231 - OCD...Occupational Color Display.

Today, I continued spray painting my supplies for school; bowls, trays, cups, and bins in all of the colors of the rainbow. I guess now I am ready for school tomorrow.

Vol. 3, No. 230, August 18, 2018

3230 - Spray School.

In my classroom, I like things to be color coded to match the tables. To color code, I could either pay a lot for colored plastic bins, or collect my own for cheap or free and spray paint them. Being money conscious, I chose the spray paint route. Today's task was painting my paint brush cups. I had collected yogurt cups last year, and had wanted to paint them them, but never got around to it. I thought that based on the shape of the container they would be cute if they were painted as crayons. However as I was spraying, I had time to think and realized that nobody cares how cute the paintbrush cups are. I ran out of yellow paint, so I will have to finish that one tomorrow.

I currently only have 6 tables, but I decided to paint all of the containers that I had, just in case I get more tables.

Vol. 3, No. 229, August 17, 2018

3229 - Cat's Game.

Today was my last Nanny day for the Miller Littles, as I go back to school on Monday, and we had a full day planned; Zoomobile at the Library, school lunch, play at the park, watch theater camp 1's play, get gas and go through the carwash, McDonald's for snack, clean out my car, including taking out all 4 carseats, play #2, family dinner, park outing #2 with family friends. All of these activities took until about 8:30 PM at which time my famiy decided it was game time. As we sat down to play, I asked my sister what I should draw. She suggested a cat; this reminded me that it was Black Cat Appreciation Day today. So I drew a black cat sitting on a wall.

Vol. 3, No. 228, August 16, 2018

3228 - You Name It.

Back in February, I enjoyed some Miller Time at Crayola Experience. One of the activities you can do there is working with Model Magic. We decide to take our Model Magic packets home to us on a "rainy day" this summer. Well, on the rainy days we had, I forgot to take it out, so today, on my second to last day of summer, I decided that we would sculpt. Tomorrow Oldest Miller and Middle Miller have their theater camp performance, so I decided I should make them flowers. I made 6 different flowers, so that they can each have three. As the flowers were sitting in a cup drying, Littlest Miller started asking me what the flowers were called. I didn't make any specific kinds of flowers, so I encouraged her to name the flowers herself. She started naming them after characters from Seussical; for example, the red and orange flower is Mayzie.

Vol. 3, No. 227, August 15, 2018

3227 - Professional Awesomeness.

Everyday for the last week and a half, I have had an hour and a half of alone time with Littlest Miller, when Oldest Miller and Middle Miller are at theater camp and Miss N is napping. We spent some of the days just resting in my room (that's a treat, because she only gets to go in my room when invited),  and watching TV. Today I decided to switch it up, I brought her to my room to choose an activity from my craft bin. She chose sidewalk chalk, solely because I had a piece of doughnut shaped chalk.

CC and CAT, having missed hanging out with me everyday, showed up just in time to go outside with us. We all made our own chalk pictures. CAT drew the Peace Sign; CC drew the flower and the beach scene; Littlest Miller added a shark to the beach scene; and I drew my chalk rendition of Starry Night.

Littlest Miller looked at my drawing and was stunned, shouting out, "That's Awesome!" During supper, Mama Miller commented on the "professional" art.

Vol. 3, No. 226, August 14, 2018

3226 - Splish Splash.

Yesterday, I took the Miller Littles to the splash pad in Litchfield. They were having so much fun running through the water, I decided to pull out my phone to snap some pictures. Today, I decided to keep my project simple and I turned three of yesterday's pictures into a collage. The cuteness of these pictures is making me excited for next year's county fair.

Vol. 3, No. 225, August 13, 2018

3225 - Toothless.

Growing up, I liked the movie "Toothless". Tonight, I got to be the toothfiary. Fortunately, I didn't need to almost dot to do so. Middle Miller lost his fourth front tooth the other day, but his parents have been busy and didn't get time to make a toothfiary delivery. So, I volunteered for the job. I took advantage of International Left-handed Day, and wrote the letter with my left hand. Of course, a letter from the tooth fairy wouldn't be complete without some glitter, so I pulled out the glitter glue and spread some on the corners as well as the money. Tooth Fairy payout has really gone up since I was a kid, I only got a quarter per tooth, the Miller Littles get two dollars.

Vol. 3, No. 224, August 12, 2018

3224 - Summer Style.

As I enter into my final week of summer vacation, I decided it was one to finally get my nails painted. I got two shades of green nail polish as prizes at my cousin's bridal shower, which inspired me to paint watermelons. Since my toenails are really small, I only put details on my big toes.