Circles and Mandalas, Painting on the first day of Art!

   Week 1
     This year I decided to start all of my classes creating circle paintings. Yep! Painting the very first day of art. First and second grades are creating radial design paintings using line, shape, and color. Grades 3-5 are creating personal mandala paintings.  We do have many new students to our elementary school, but so many return, I figured, they know the art team routines and my expectations, so why not?  I was so busy getting back into the flow of teaching, that pulling my phone out to photograph the action did not happen. Just trust me that each class was able to paint their paper plate (a perfect circle) one solid color. (4th and 5th could choose 2 colors)

     The inspiration for this lesson came from the circlepainting.com

 I love their website and their many photo albums from their events. If you have the means to host a circle painting project, it seems worth it to me. I did not show the images to the students, but did adapt the ideas to what I am teaching to my students.  

    The second website that I found information and images for this project is the mandalaproject.com
There is so much information and so many images you won't have the time to look at them all.

Week 2
    Now that I have three days under my belt I am getting back into the swing of things. I have worked out the timing and the flow of routines. All is good. (I met kindergarten this week, they are not ready for painting, more on those cuties later. . .) 

Fifth graders enlarge their favorite sketch to their painted mandala.

We should be finishing these circular beauties this week.

What's new this school year?!

Selfie with new headset.

I finally have a sound system for my extra large classroom.  I have used it for the first three days of school, and, I love it.  I just have to get used to wearing the over the ear headset with my glasses. My hair keeps getting caught in the microphone wire and there is no where to tuck my hair, because my ears are busy holding up the headset and my glasses. I am sure I will come up with something. 

The art order finally arrived on the first day of classes, well, half of it, of course. You can also see that my white board has been installed. Now I can begin to use my new Mimeo for presentations of new material to students. 

The art order finally arrived! 

Tour of my art room

I love my art room. Large windows, high ceilings, plenty of shelves, it is a peaceful place. It is my home away from home. I took these photos during my first week back, so as I make changes I will

try to take more photos. The calm before the the crazy energy of creation enters!

The drying rack is tucked into the corner. The wooden rack is used for
miscellaneous storage, peeking out behind the wood rack you can see the
study carol that I use to organize class portfolios by day of the week.

The work station. The custodial staff put my desk near the computer,
I decided I liked it that way. The computer has to be where it is, which is a
shame because it is in front of the only mirror, a cool enhancement to the art room. 

Shelves shelves shelves! I love all of the shelf space. 

Most of our daily supplies are stored on these shelves. The helper table
can easily reach and distribute. 

Classroom management. The Give me 5 is for K and Pre-k, so
that is not always on the board. 

Amazing Artists Classroom management system. Each class has
a labeled circle. Each amazing artist gets to sign the circle, add reward
poms to the class jar, earns a PBIS gold ticket, and helps to line up
the class for dismissal. Works like a dream!!

 Amazing Artists signs. 

Elegant Fits: Arts Integration in Action

This morning five of my fellow art teachers and Arts Integration cohort members presented our Action Research projects to 28 Baltimore County Art educators. It has been three months since we completed our projects, and we can now fully appreciate what we accomplished without the stress that we experienced during the process. It was gratifying to share with our colleagues the projects that we created. Next stop MAEA Conference in October.


Explaining how I incorporated process drama techniques.



Kate, Ms. Mayor, teacher in role



Dana and STEAM

Carrie explaining process drama techniques



Caitlin discusses Conceptual art and student writing.



Arts Integration Rocks!

Collaborative Circle Painting with Teachers and Staff Members

Teachers and staff gathered in the art room for an hour of collaborative painting on our second day back to school. This year we have seven work days prior to the arrival of students. I had the opportunity to share with the staff how much fun we have and how much we learn in the art room.  I adapted our collaborative murals from the work of circlepainting.org. I also took the opportunity to share the artful thinking strategy, Looking 10x2, that teachers could easily introduce in their own classroom, to use with whole group, small group or centers. Check out Project zero for many Artful Thinking routines.



Kindergarten team begins creating immediately.




Teachers begin creating circles of various color and size.




Looking silently for 30 seconds.



Two of our beautiful circle paintings and the groups Looking 10x2 pages.




Variety, Rhythm, Unity, oh my!!





Some entered a bit tentatively, but they left relaxed accomplished painters!!



Introducing

My name is Tracy Skeels and I am the lucky art teacher of Essex Elementary School in Baltimore County, Maryland. This will be my sixth year at Essex and I am very excited that the school year is right around the corner!  I have thoroughly enjoyed my summer with my family, my husband, my three children and our sweet dog.  This year the art room will be bursting with creativity and collaboration.  I have many new ideas to share and can't wait to see my friends!

Peyton, Anna, Archer, and me at Animal Kingdom Lodge