Snow recently struck our neck of the “woods,” and like any other “sane” school district/county south of the Mason Dixon line, we had a 2 hour early release last week due to the potential 1-3″ of accumulation. As any teacher (art or otherwise) can attest to, once the word gets out that WE’RE GOING HOME EARLY!, the day is pretty much shot in regards to getting anything productive accomplished. Couple that with the fact that it’s a week before Winter break, and, well, maybe you can understand why I trashed my plans that day and allowed the students to play art games and take part in other free choice art activities. I only feel slightly hypocritical.
And follow that 2 hour early release day with a 2 hour delay day, and, well, not much was accomplished that day either. I mean, how can you start anything new when you have only 12 out of 20 students show up, it’s the last art class before break, and the students are cracked out on snow? Which is why I let my 3rd graders make *gasp* holiday cards. And now I feel completely hypocritical.
Happy countdown to break. What are your plans for the final few days?
Art Teachers Hate Glitter 
Don't worry sister of the palette knife, we all cave once in a while. I just made an awesome fireplace with a big TV box for our winter program and then it was cancelled. I could've been hanging student work in the halls…
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I don't think there's anything wrong with letting the kids dive into the scrap box and make cards for their loved ones!
Over the years I've done many things w/kids on those oddball days before Christmas vacation. Here's a few: twirling pipe cleaners or putting beads on pipe cleaners to make candy canes (why do the kids LOVE this so much?), playing Color and Shape Bingo (stickers for prizes, and if you let the kids take turns calling the games, you can take a break), having an art room cleaning day scrubbing tables and sink, sorting yarn, and testing/throwing away dead markers,etc. Also we play what we call “funny foldies” where we fold a thin vertical paper into 4 horizontal sections, and each person secretly draws part of a person on it (silly of course). We make it an elf for extra holiday fun. (The surrealists called this game “Exquisite Corpse.)
And snowflakes – I teach kids how to make “authentic” 6 pointed snowflakes starting with a circular piece of paper.
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Truer words were never spoken.
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I always do weaving projects before the holidays…. the kids seem to be engaged in the threads… I don't know why it works… it just seems to!
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I'm not an art teacher, I can't even make a decent stick figure, but as a mom, we love getting those holiday cards, twirly pipe cleaners, etc. We'll pull them out in 15 years and get all nostalgic and it didn't even take that much planning on your part! Bonus!
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I'm doing perspective drawing with my sixth graders…nothing like an intense drawing lesson to keep their attention!
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My kids checked out two weeks ago and I had no fight left in me for the last week of school. We did centers, how to draws, plate rubbing, stencils, construction paper center and an uno center (so I would have something to do too). Although 5th grade was forced to work instead of play due to horrid behavior, lol!
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