The teacher across the hall asked me yesterday if the room now felt more
like my own, after a year in the building. I hadn't thought
about that as I worked for ten days organizing, scrubbing and de-cluttering. I was more focused on getting the room functional, but the truth is, it does!
For some reason I decided to empty the cabinets that contained
"supplies" and organize what I found. What a mess! My goal was to stock the cabinets with
everyday materials like markers, glue and colored pencils, so that I
wouldn't have to go into the main supply closet (where you can't see the
classroom) if we ran out of something. I think I've met my goal,
but the real test will be when we really start creating.
Since I was able to take some of the daily supplies out of the main supply closet, that needed to be reorganized too! Less clutter!
As inspired by Mrs. Impey at Art Room 104
I too spray painted some of the caddies the previous art teacher had
purchased. They are way too big, and too few, to sit on the tables for
supplies. So I color coded them to match two tables and my thought is
that at the end of class, the tables can share the cleaning supplies
that will be in the caddies.
Excuse the blurriness, but this is a shot of the hood in the closet between my room and the room across the hall. When the building was first opened, our two rooms at the end of the building were science labs, complete with gas lines and this hood! I guess when they took out the gas, they forgot about it. My mentor, who taught in my room for five years, told me it was there and that its great for spray painting! It proved to be super convenient!
To also cut down on the clutter, I organized newspaper and magazines. I now have twelve drawers full of National Geographic, Smithsonian, Time, Newsweek, Home and Gardens, woman's interest magazines and Architecture Digest. I was also able to stash a lot of my recycled materials behind the newspaper and laundry basket of smocks. The two boxes of National Geographic above are filled with editions from the sixties, seventies and eighties. I have removed those from classroom circulation!
Watching Project Runway on the laptop and painting signs!
Inspired by an image on Pinterest!
Unfortunately the original link is not working. I know a lot of visitors to my blog came to check out my old rules that spelled out ARTIST. I wanted to free up some bulletin board space and make the rules more prominent, so I created this banner. It spans the entire wall!
I am also really proud of my Bloom's Taxonomy board inspired by Pinterest.
The original link brings you to a literacy blog and has some other
great ideas for elementary reading. I plan to refer to my board while
going through the creative process, learning about art history,
critiques and artist's statements.
Even my desk, with my plant from home and my old red sweater in case I get cold, feels more like my space. I can't wait to get started!
I'm really enjoying everyone's posts as they set up their rooms for the new school year. It seems really strange to me, as here in Australia we are winding up our third term! (I also don't have a room to call my own, being an itinerant working out of 5 different schools, so I'm quite envious of your beautiful rooms that you can make your own!)
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