I am really happy to see all my wonderful Beauclerc students at school every day! We have had art classes for just two weeks now and I am really impressed with how they handled a higher-level, critical thinking activity we did during the first class. Even the first graders really caught on! We have been working on Tree Maps, which basically mean putting things into categories based on similarities. I passed out groups of cards that had museum objects and paintings on them. We began with a broad topic such as Sculpture, then broke it down further and further into categories, like Made of Wood, Made of Metal, Figures, Objects People Use. Most students thought we were playing a game!
Oh, that wasn't the chaos! The chaos has been for me - my office off the cafeteria has been leaking water from the large air conditioner units in the ceiling above me. Every day I have had to move everything off the shelves and onto the floor, because I have no where else to put them. Three times workmen came out and said they fixed it, but the next day, after I put all my things back, the water leaked again! The last time it happened the water soaked my Teacher Editions, my transparencies, and other books that I had put together for art lessons. They are drying out in my office right now.
All this moving of things is really putting me behind in getting student materials ready. I suppose it will mean staying late every night to do so.
I have some interesting lessons planned for students, however, this year once again the resource budget gets smaller. Instead of seeing students every other week I will only be seeing them once every 13 days. This limits what I can do. Also limiting what I can do is being on a cart this year. Projects will have to be smaller and not as much "messy" things will be done such as painting.
