First few days of school...

The schedule for specials was different than the rest of the school year. We basically had our Monday rotation schedule Wed., Thurs., Friday and Monday. For example, Wed. and Thurs. I had my week 2 classes, Friday saw week 3 classes and Monday I will see my week 1 classes. The schedule was like this so that each specials teacher could see every student in the first few days of school. Tuesday we all start the normal routine schedule.

What did your child do in art the first day? Since this was the first time I met your child, I taught them a couple standard procedures when arriving to art.

         1. I will always wait at the door for them to arrive.
         2. I will invite them to walk in and have a seat on their own square on the carpet. (The carpet is made up of 5 columns of squares: red, orange, green, blue and purple)
         3. After children are seated in a square, we will read a message on the easel. The message will tell your child what they will be learning in art that day.
         4. Your child found out which table they will sit at during work time.
         5. I introduced the bell. When I ring the bell 1 time, children will freeze and put their hands on their head. I will then give clean up directions/reminders and then will ring the bell 2 times. When the bell is rung 2 times, children can unfreeze, take their hands off head and start cleaning up.
          6. Children will remember to push in their chair and line up on the black line. We will count down from 5 to get us ready for the hall. When all voices are off and eyes looking my way, I will open up the door for their classroom teacher, which will then invite them out of the classroom.

In between learning procedures, I read the book, "Beautiful Oops" and we discussed how sometimes mistakes happen. I told the children that I don't like to call things mistakes. Instead, I like to call them beautiful oops or happy accidents because we can almost always fix it. I reassured the children that my job is to help them be successful in the art room especially when something can be difficult.

I also had the children draw a family portrait. I am going to save these drawings until the end of the school year, where the children will create another one and we will glue them next to each other. It will be amazing to see how much they grow this year in their art skills.