In the eye of the beholder

I sailed into uncharted territory today. Elementary school Art! Middle/high schools are distance learning today – just because, not because there is a Covid outbreak or anything, so my choice was a day off or elementary school. When I saw art, I jumped for it immediately.

I’m so endlessly positive. That’s the only way I can think. (positive positive positive!)

I had 5th grade first. I stopped in with the regular teacher to check on some IEPs (Individual Educational Plan) and found out one student wouldn’t be coming to class because there was a sub. It would throw him off too much. I was willing to try, and I commend the staff for going the extra mile to take care of him and not put him in a situation where he was bound to fail.

Unfortunately for me, they did send the five shouters. One of them seemed to intentionally be trying to be disruptive – given his topics and vocabulary – but the other four just seemed like their factory settings were on 11. The regular teacher had said the class was loud and that next year middle school was going to shut that down. I said usually middle school gives a bit more freedom and the kids can get pretty loud there. I stand corrected. Sixth grade is going to shut this group down – no doubt. We made Zentangles, and by “we” I mean me, too! I didn’t get to watch the videos (I think teachers always think it is easier for subs to just have the kids individually watch instructional videos rather than having the group watch or having the sub explain something. For me, this is always hard. Some, or most, students just drift off on their devices – or put it on super high speed and get nothing out of the video. I’d prefer to teach or to at least watch together – but I am kinda a control freak, so it is what it is) so I didn’t get to see examples, but the printed explanation said don’t plan and don’t draw something… I didn’t get to do it during class, obviously – there were shouters, afterall – but I did do it during lunch (I packed every not-necessary-to-heat item we had and I had a great lunch. I was so surprised).

Next up, first grade! They are not as little as you might think. We were learning about Georgia O’Keefe. (She was born in Wisconsin in 1887, lived in New York, Texas, and lots in New Mexico, liked to paint flowers and other items from nature, liked to FILL her canvas – large gives power – and let her subjects go off the page. She lived to be 98. She certainly saw a lot of changes in her lifetime!) Then we drew flowers that WENT OFF THE PAGE! That is haaaaard for first graders, but it was really easy to make them laugh about it. We used oil pastels and talked a lot about blending them (and not getting them on our clothes) (we pushed up our sleeves before we started. There were four sweatshirts left behind on the floor). It was a complete success. The trickiest part was getting them to actually wash their hands. They wanted to wash their hands, but they all seemed to think that putting foamy soap on dry hands, then putting their hands immediately under running water, rinsing away the soap, then scrubbing was the way to go. I had to go hands-on to get them to actually use the soap to remove the pastels from their hands, but we made it!

Kindergarten!! Woo Hooooo! The lesson said they should glue their bug onto their grass from yesterday. Then I should do something else with them. What now? And by that I mean WHAT NOW? (At one point that would have been totally in my wheelhouse, but kindergarten was a long time ago for Alexander. Oldie.) Luckily for me, they didn’t get to gluing yesterday – several hadn’t gotten to cutting their grass…which was all they did yesterday…so today we glued. With glue sticks!! (There was a different sub yesterday. The art teacher didn’t know gluing grass hadn’t happened when she wrote the plan.) Given the amount of glue stick glue everywhere I am so so so lucky that we weren’t using regular glue.

Lastly, I had second graders. They were really struggling to not tell me everything about themselves (which I get – new ears) and everything they had ever thought as we started (Keith said that he might be a second grader). I taught them to be SILENT when my hands were pressed together in front of me, then louder and louder as my hands stretched apart. They LOVED that. We did it for a couple minutes – fast and slow – and they got the noisies out of their system. (Total win for me.) Our lesson was about symmetry. I demonstrated a hot dog fold – they told me they totally knew how to do that (only five folded it the wrong way), I showed them how to NOT cut on the fold (only seven did that), I showed them how to draw half a bug so when we cut it out there would be a whole bug (WHAT? What madness was I talking about? When I unfolded my bug, I was MAGIC. It was so absolutely darling!), and we talked about how we were going to use scrap paper to decorate our bugs (and pick up our scraps from the floor) (nobody did that). And in the end, it was outstanding. Before that, however, there was PANIC! The bugs were NOT looking like what they wanted. They wanted wings, but didn’t draw any, so there weren’t any. (That happened a lot more than you would think.) Somehow, several wanted a different color bug than the color of paper they chose. (I can’t even quite get that one.) A couple just drew caterpillars on a piece of paper. (Very proudly) (huh) After the panic subsided, they really got into it. A few kids were “done” very, very soon. I said okay, but then you just have to clean up your table and sit in your seat. They decided to continue adding details, except for one kid. He cleaned everything up, and sat pleasantly in his seat for almost 15 minutes. I gave him a special commendation for best follower of directions. His regular teacher was delighted. (Not sure if she is going to delighted if they teach her the be loud/be silent game. Could go either way.)