Man the poor 1st graders are getting the short end of the stick this year. We have been in school for 14 weeks and I have only seen the classes 7 times! Most classes I have seen about 25 times.
A strange and unfortunate mix of assemblies, field trips, days off of school, assemblies and teacher double booking has robed the kids of art class. Unlike most grade levels at my school 1st grade only comes to art once a week for 20min instead of twice a week for 20 min at a time. Let me tell you it is hard to get much of anything done with 29 1st graders in only 20 min.
The only project we have completed that I feel good about took us 4 of the 7 classes we have had together. I'm a bit late putting up the photos but this is our harvest collage. A merging of our non Halloween, Halloween pumpkin, a painted paper gourd and a ear of finger painted Indian corn. Along with the help of a hot glue gun and a collage student who needed to get some volunteer hours we added the corn husks that you would usually use for making tamales.
These were influenced by the harvest collages lots of different schools did but special thanks to Holly at Lines, Dots and Doodles for her idea.
click to enlarge
I thought my kindergarten 30 minute classes were too short! We see each class for one hour a week. What a difference between public schools. You'd think even if we can't get a common curriculum that kids should be getting the same amount of art time. This is terrible! 20 minutes!
ReplyDeleteI can't fathom a 20 minute class. Mine are 40. For a while I had the K's for 30, and I fought to get those 10 minutes back. It makes such a difference. I can spend time reading a story, reviewing after a demo, and especially teaching the kids to clean up, which I didn't do so much w/30 minute classes. They learn to wash their brushes, wash the tables, put away materials, and it really helps. So I think the work you post is spectacular for the time frame you are working with!
ReplyDeleteGreat blog! I was reading you most recent post and can sympathize with the 5 day cycle for students having art. I had that last year and my Monday classes got seriously short-changed. This year I'm on a 6 day rotating schedule and it sooo much better :) If you have time, check out my blog artmuse67
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