art room upadate

We have just finished our first full month of school and are on yet ANOTHER new schedule. As of Friday afternoon they were changing the schedule yet again. Even more annoying is the fact that my supply order for the year has STILL not been sent to the district. Our oil pastels are inch long, we are digging the last little bits of paint out of the watercolors, we have one or two bottles of tempera in each color. We got a small donation of supplies at the start of the year and I am trying to make them last as long as possible. I've already had to buy about $70 worth of supplies for my middle school and life skills classes. They simply need different supplies than what is available. The school secretary swore that she would put the order in this week. We will see. Sometimes it takes up to a month to get the supplies after the order has been put in.

This is putting a bit of a cramp into my "art around the world" plan. The 6th-8th graders are done with their cave art unit and are in the middle of their Australian art unit. To recap:
CAVE ART
*Online web scavenger hunt (well liked)
*PowerPoint of cave paintings
*Painting with lights out, under tables with only fingers and sticks as brushes and instant coffee mixed with water to make the paint. (most kids enjoyed the experience, the art produced was so so)
*PowerPoint 2
*Practice drawing three cave animals
*Brown paper sacks and oil pastel cave animals (very nice)
*Paper machie "rocks" using celucaly and this lesson . Students really like making their "rocks" we made them on half sheets of transparencies. The backside of the rock worked with with oil pastel and some paint. The bumpy side was too bumpy and we got very mixed results with the quality of work. The students really enjoyed it though. One large bag (cost $11 with my 40% off coupon) took care of two classes of 20 students.

I don't feel the celuclay was worth the money. After we used it I found a lesson that uses regular clay with some sand pressed into the top. I have also seen people use sandpaper. I will use the clay with the 5th graders (if it comes in on time) and brown paper sacks with the 4th graders and 5th graders if the clay is late.

4th grade looked at the cave art power point and started practicing their animal drawings. Some were really negative about the project. They get really caught up on their perfections nature to have everything look perfect. Fifth grade is two weeks behind and will start cave art NEXT week. That gives the clay three weeks to show up.

3rd grade is finishing up a pattern fall leaf project and trying to salvage the bird/bird house project this week. We will do cave art with them starting next week.

2nd grade....yah they are still having a rough time, just like last year when they were 1st graders. They will not be doing the art around the world unit. They will be doing slightly harder versions of the k-1 projects or just random stuff till they get control of themselves.