The Destitute Teacher

This post has been a long time coming... Last year our school had an art exhibition, where each child needed to produce an artwork to show. My class of seven year olds was eternally optimistic and wanted to produce FOUR smaller artworks, in a mixed media study of owls. We didn't quite make it to four, but gave it a good shot. Our first project was to produce a salt dough owl. Each child got a handful of dough (I think I used about 3kg of flour in total) and we followed the tutorial here Be warned- it took two days to bake 21 A5 sized dough owls enough. And baking salt dough smells kinda funny. Once baked, we looked at the process of painting our owls. We under-coated them with white, and slowly layered our paint. I wanted to emphasise the importance of getting the maximum effect- waiting to dry between each layer meant that we didn't end up with a horrible mess of brown paint. This process took a long time. In the end, to get it done I would have a painting table set ...

I have craft envy. I troll Pintrest and other blogs looking for sweet ideas for my own classroom, but as I do I am hit by the availability and affordability of crafting supplies in America and the UK. We often get supplies in NZ after a long delay, and it takes even longer for the supplies to become cheap. Of note I have noticed that more and more dollar shops are beginning to stock teacher specific supplies- borders, certificates etc. Have a look around as there is some pretty neat stuff out there. Spotlight has a range of affordable classroom decoratives in some stores. A hunt through Geoffs Emporium on Dominion Road in Auckland resulted in a roll of patterned duct tape for $3. Major score! Not in love with the pattern, but excited by the possibilities I chucked it in the basket and trundled home with it. I inherited some dilipdated A3 clearfiles at the end of last year... perfect beginners project! These folders needed some love, as they were scuffed and torn, but not ready to be...

This year's goal is to re-vamp my reading tumble activities. Last year I spent a lot of time seeking out and making resources for independent Math activities/ tubs, and poor old reading got the short stick. One very successful tub I have had in my reading tumble is the box of 'Mini Books'. We all love mini things... mini mars bars and mini bottles of liquor that you get on a plane are personal favourites. The kids have really enjoyed having 'Mini Books' as a reading task, so over the summer holidays I have added to the resource and spent some time repairing older books. All the books in the tub were sourced from op-shops for a minimal cost (mostly 10- 50 cents each). There is a good stock of books published by Ladybird in their small format, but also a range of books that seem to have been from Happy Meals, or given out at B.P. petrol stations. Either way, a fabulous source of engaging reading material! I fully recommend a strip of clear packing tape along ...

Today we had such an awesome art lesson that I have come home on a Friday afternoon to blog about it. Yes, it was that awesome. And simple. And easy. Let's not forget effective. Craft foam prints were made this afternoon, and the over all effect is just stunning. The photos do not do the prints justice. I purchased a packet of A4 craft foam from the local dollar shop. There were four sheets in the pack, two thick and two thin. I've put the thin pieces aside for another day, and we used the thickest available. This meant that our prints were lovely and clear and the foam did not rip. I cut each sheet into 4 (A6 size?) to make it go a little further. The students used ball point pens to 'draw' their image onto the foam. It didn't matter if the pen didn't work... we just needed a good, clear indentation in the foam. Today the children had 'free choice' on what (school appropriate) pictures they wanted to draw. They went to town on it. ...

As mentioned in the post before, this term we have an Arts focus. So I inquired of my students... what area/media would you like to focus on? 21 lovely littlies all put their hands up and said... knitting. Now I love crochet, do knit some times and am an avid crafter. I must admit I was thrilled that they want to tackle knitting, and immediately began to plan the unit. I plan to integrate content on primary/ secondary colors, brights v.s. pastels, and how our color choices suit our purpose. I hope that we will get to start off with making some small finger puppets as a learn to knit project. Teaching 21 six and seven year olds to knit is quite daunting, but i'm hoping that we will get to the dizzying heights of yarn-bombing before the term is through. Perhaps a little too ambitious. I decided that inspiration was key, and so have set about yarn bombing our own classroom with hand-crocheted items.  Rainbow bunting now hangs along our back wall. The wall is divi...

This term we have an arts focus, and I am almost beside myself with excitement. I have such large ambition for our artwork, and so little time... we need to get started! Last week we were lucky to begin our art unit with a trip to the local art gallery. This was a truly fantastic visit. We we guided around the gallery by the world's most amazing educator (I spent my time rhapsodising over her behaviour management and questioning skills), and then got to make our own artwork. The gallery provided some lovely heavy-weight watercolour paper. We did a very quick and simple line drawing of a local mountain/ocean scene. The painting was then completed with a lovely set of watercolours.... you know the kind that are a dry block on the palette and then you add water and it works? They came out just gorgeous. I love the way the watercolours have those swishes of colour through them... even the least artistic of us all had spectacular results! I mounted them on black paper a...

A while back we did a short unit on pattern making. I was absolutely blown away by some of the patterns that the students made, and just had to share them with you here! Color patterns with buttons (some children used them to make repeating patterns with size e.g. small/big/small/big) Number patterns with dice. Color patterns with Jovi's. Creative patterns with classroom equipment. Increasing patterns with unifix cubes. Unfortunately I can't find a photo, but one student made number patterns using playing cards as well. Love the affordability of these manipulatives!