Sunday Comic

I'm starting clay whistles and maracas this week... this cartoon always reminds me of when I used to say, "Oh, I like how your cat is turning out!" and my students respond with, "It's a horse..." Now I know to just ask what they're making.

Courtesy of Adventures of an Art Teacher. Enjoy :-).

A Look At Current Events

With the Wisconsin union situation an ongoing, seemingly interminable mess, Jon Stewart took some time during the opening of The Daily Show to analyze the protagonists of these protests: the teachers fighting for collective bargaining rights.

So if you missed it, here it is: Jon Stewart Exposes The Lavish Lifestyle Of The American Public School Teacher

Collaborative Color Wheel

 

Materials:

- Magazines

- Scissors

- Gluesticks

- Tagboard divided into 6 equal sections

Micrographic Thumbprints

Materials:
- White Drawing Paper
- Tracing Paper
- Pencils
- Erasers
- Extra Fine Point Sharpie
- Skinny Markers (optional)
- Ink for Thumbprints

Are you sick of highly paid teachers?

A chain I've received: 

  Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

     That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours).

     Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day...maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET'S SEE....

That's $585 X 180= $105,300 per year 

(Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

     What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year. Wait a minute -- there's something wrong here!

       There sure is! The average teacher's salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student--a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even educate your kids! WHAT A DEAL!!!!

Make a teacher smile; repost this to show appreciation for all educators.

Snowflake Snowmen

 Materials:

- Construction Paper

- Scissors

- Glue

One Fish, Two Fish

 

Materials:

- Page Protector (one for each child)

- Colored Tissue Paper

- Mod Podge

- Paintbrush

- Scissors

- Permanent Markers

- Fish Tracer

- Googly eyes (optiona;)

- One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss

Sunday Comic and In Need of Some Help

Courtesy of Adventures of an Art Teacher. Enjoy :-)

On another note, I teach a Life Skills class every Monday and this past Friday the teacher had asked me if I could do a lesson on Dr. Seuss. I was thinking along the lines of "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" and making fish... but I'm not sure how to color them.. any ideas? We've done sponging and tissue paper-ing and ripped construction paper collages... just wasn't sure if anyone had other suggestions?

Other inspirations:
- Green Eggs and Ham
- Maybe a Life Skills appropriate way of making a Dr. Seuss hat?

I see them only once a week for about 30-35 minutes, and I do a new "theme" every week that is appropriate to what they're teaching in class, so it would have to be a one 30 minute lesson. Any ideas...?

Double Take

Materials:

- White Drawing Paper (2 sheets 5" x 7" for each child)

- Tagboard (1 sheet 5" x 16" for each child)

- Markers/ Colored Pencils

- Rulers

- Scissors

- Glue Sticks

- Pencils

- One piece 5" x 11" Construction Paper for each child

Stylish Blogger Award

 

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Slinky Lizard

Materials:
- Construction Paper
- Markers/ Crayons
- Scissors
- Gluestick
- Premade Feet and Head Tracers

Sunday Comic

 

Courtesy of Phyl, Enjoy :-). 

10 Lessons the Arts Teach

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. 

Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solutionand that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts' position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.