1st Week of School!

First week of school was a success! It was so exciting to meet every student in the school and start art activities on the first day. I made a Prezi going over my expectations in the art room and some house rules but I also got a chance to introduce myself to the students. For grades Pre-K through 2nd grade, we listened to the animated version of the book, "The Dot". Pre-K and Kindergarten drew their best dots while listening to The Dot song and I had 1st and 2nd grade paint on the first day. The book is about a young girl named Vashti who started out not having a lot of confidence in her artwork. Her teacher told her to make a mark and see where it takes her, so she made a dot out of frustration. The teacher ended up framing her dot and Vashti then wanted to prove to the teacher she could make a better dot than the original one. Throughout the book she experiments and tries different painting techniques that inspire her to be an artist while encouraging others to do the same. I have read many other art teacher blogs that have said they always use this as their first day of school activity.

http://prezi.com/naffpwu_g_uw/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

^^^Here is the Prezi I shared to all of the classes

Here is the animated video of The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds

Here is The Dot Song

And finally here are the students masterpieces!!! I only hung up 1st and 2nd grades dot paintings because I did not have room for all the grades and some of Pre-K and Kindergarten took theirs home.

I had 3rd-5th grade make skecthbooks after filling in a worksheet about themselves. I had them pick out a color of construction paper for their cover(which they could decorate if they finished early) and then they stapled copy paper inside with the "I Am An Artist" worksheet as their first page. I included some drawing excersizes like the "This Is Me" frame where they were supposed to draw a self portrait. Also "This is my favorite food" and "My favorite thing to draw is..." they would draw out. The "My favorite past art project..." they were allowed to draw or write in. This gave me an idea of what they have already done and what kinds of projects they enjoyed! The "My biggest dream for this year is..." they could also draw or write in the bubble. I included this prompt because our theme for Evansdale this year is "How big can you dream?" I went through and read every students sketch book to get an idea of what they like and to help me try and remember some names!