elementary painting: organization + smooth sailing!

Hello again everyone! I wanted to talk about elementary painting and the little tricks and organizational skills I've picked up over my first 3 years of teaching art.

Painting in the elementary classroom can be very daunting, especially when you start thinking about painting with the little ones. Even the fifth graders can be scary to hand paint over to! You never know what they will do...or paint. I had a little kindergarten artist paint A WHOLE CHAIR yellow once and fifth graders paint "warrior paint" on their faces.

I try to be brave with my little artists and allow them to start experiencing painting at a young age. The younger you start them--the more experience they have with that specific medium--the better they are when they are older. I am noticing this with my little 1st graders. They are some of the best painters in my school because they are my little ones that I've trained in paint with my techniques since the beginning of their experience with art. I find my older ones harder to paint with.

I have a system. Often times I will have students gather to my carpet as I demonstrate what I'd like my students to do, even when painting. This keeps them focused on one thing at a time and to really understand the step I am wanting them to do. No playing with paint brushes, fussing with or touching the paint, and no mess--YET.

Me: We hold our paintbrushes...

Little Artists: LIKE A PENCIL!

Me: Do we scrub or stroke slowly through the paint?

Little Artists: STROKE SLOWLY!

Me: Do we make little strokes or long strokes?

Little Artists: LITTLE SHORT STROKES!

Me: How many colors do you want to see?

Little Artists: TWO OR MORE!

This is just an example of the dialog I use with my students before setting them loose to paint. It helps to reinforce what my expectations are for when they paint a specific step.

With my little ones I control the distribution of paintbrushes + paint in two separate ways depending on how we are painting:

1. Squirting paint colors directly from bottle onto the paper
2. placing little trays of paint in little lidded cups on tables

For my older students I provide them more ownership and responsibility with some verbal + visual guidance:

1. paint in little cups color coded to colored paper
2. different sized paintbrushes in containers
3. students are responsible for cleaning and returning brushes

I have by my sink a tray of different containers. This is primarily for my use. Clean a brush, place it into the proper container, right by the sink--super easy, organized, and little movement about the room. Although messy, it works for me. I love the different sized brushes I have, each for a different + specific purpose. I teach to my students large brushes for large areas and small paintbrushes for small areas or details!

Watercolors are a lot of fun for me, but I really prefer the thick tempera or acrylic paints over water color with students. It looks like a more quality product when we're finished. When I do use water colors I set up a tray:

1. For my little ones we use the big tempera cakes
2. My older kiddos use Prang Watercolor ovals

I really like to use trays to help keep things contained with a specific, visual boundary to help with messes. Although it doesn't always stay clean, I mean it's an art classroom, it sure does help.

If you have any suggestions or successes on painting in your classrooms please share! I'm always looking on ways to improve and make my little artists' painting experience a better one!

art classroom behavior management.

The art classroom is a wonderful place to relax, enjoy, learn, and explore art. It can be a very fun place, too. Unfortunately, like all areas of our world, the art classroom has some special expectations and guidelines (otherwise known as RULES) to help it run smoothly! Remember: we're talking paint, papier-mache, chalk + oil pastel, MESSES, and clean up all while 25 little artists are trying to make beautiful, quality pieces of art. To help my art classroom run smoothly and to allow my students to be successful and the absolute best they can be in this part of their world I have a few expectations and guidelines in place.

I'll go into better specifics about my specific rules in a later post, but this post is going to be all about managing the wonderful and artistic chaos of 20-25 students at a time, 35 Kindergarten-fifth grade classes, equaling about 800 students total.

This is what has been successful for me so far during the 2 & 3/4 years that I have been teaching. I have a behavior section in my classroom. As you can see in the image above I have a CLASS behavior management system and a STUDENT behavior management system in place.

whole class management: The golden coins help me monitor whole class behavior. When the class as a whole is talking too loud, choosing to talk during a teacher guided lesson, or choosing to not meet expectations they get a golden coin flipped around to show warning #1, warning #2, warning #3, and VOICE LEVEL 0. These golden coins can be rewarded back. When a class has 3-4 gold coins at the end of class they earn a daily coin (10 total) for a whole class reward day or ART PARTY!

student management: Now I know that disciplining as a group all the time is unfair to those individuals always doing the right thing, so I also have a student plate system that helps visually show myself and the student how many times I've had to redirect or talk with them. The student will receive two verbal warnings from me and will move their clip down. The third time I redirect the student moves their clip down to the red plate/MARK plate. It is always so hard to recognize those students doing the right thing, so for positive reinforcement I have added a S.O.A.R. plate to allow those kiddos to raise their clip to the top plate for recognition. These students earn a S.O.A.R. ticket (school student money to cash in for special prizes) at the end of my class.

Beside my student monitor system is my personal art behavior binder. In this binder I have all of my classes listed and spaces to allow me to write down any marks given out during that specific day of class. This is where I document grades and marks for each of my students.

You will also see in this photograph my art room voice level chart. This is a system we use all over our school, which is really nice since the expectation is wide spread. My classroom is generally around a quiet voice level 2 (low flow/table talk). Beneath the voice level chart is my Mona Lisa. I use Mona Lisa for my little ones to teach them my expectations for sitting in my classroom; mouth closed, voice level 0, hands still, eyes on teacher.

I know this is a boring post to start off with, but I think it is very important and one of my favorite things to figure out in my classroom. Once you have behavior and expectations set in place you can have a well oiled classroom in beautifully working condition (with a few hiccups every once and again of course).