Housekeeping: Topping up White Glue

Hi Teachers! White glue is my go-to art material (after scissors) because they make crafts stay on for a long time. The longer drying time compensates for its function. I no longer use those commercial small bottles of white glue. At least not in school but I personally still do. The caps get clogged easily and it is also time consuming to top up many bottles with a narrow neck. I recycle these small containers which used to contain air-dry clay. As these containers are not air-tight, I just half-fill them with white glue. The last time these were used with glitters, it created quite a mess so I let the last bit of glue dry up over the school vacation and clean them up by tearing them off! You heard it right, watch the video to see how it's done.

Housekeeping: The Indispensable Tool

Hi! We all have that one (or countless!) essential tool in the art room. I use the scissors quite frequently and I can't imagine depriving the children of the opportunity to practise cutting just because we want to 'protect' them (from getting hurt). I shared about a scissors safety lesson and I'm happy to say that most of them do remember the rules. 

Recently, the scissors are re-arranged to not just to appear neater but to track their whereabout and ensures that all scissors are returned after use. This layout allows me to see at a glance that all tools are in place. It's especially useful if you need to run to another class and counting all forty takes time. 

Art Class: Painting Routines

Hi! The children have started painting with water. I like using the coloured crepe papers for this lesson to talk about the painting routines. So when we are ready to proceed to using the actual paint pigment, the children are familiar with the routines and movement:

• clutter-free desk
• half-filled water container
• water container placed in the top center of the desk
• given only one paintbrush
• must place recycled paper underneath the watercolour paper
• tear the 'magical papers' and keep them under the water container
• hold the recycled paper lengthwise with both hands and bring to the drying rack
• rinse the paintbrush and water container

Instructions such as the amount of water to use is learnt through practice. Some children need more reminders so rest assured after a few practices, they will remember the routines. Take swimming for example, you can listen to explanation after explanation and watch many swimming videos. By not getting into the pool, how would you learn to swim? When all the children are in their painting mode, you could hear the pin drop! But the silence doesn't last long. 😹 

Housekeeping: Art Trolley

 

Look at the bright colours on the trolley! Chances are if you are an Art teacher, you would start to be pushing cart this year. Initially, I tried to stuff my big bag with art materials but my shoulders are screaming for help. Get a sturdy trolley *cough* not this type from ikea *cough* with quality wheels and you can fill the art cart with enough materials for back-to-back classes. Most of the basic materials are owned by the students so I'll only provide other materials to individuals or those that they had forgotten to bring. 

Housekeeping: Keeping Markers Intact

I'm so happy that this markers hack works! I saw this artroom hack some time ago and I thought I should try it too. It's too silly to worry over the lost of markers' covers or duplicate colours in a set. Sometimes, you have the whole set dropped on the ground and the markers seem to have a mind of their own. They can roll under the children's giant Smiggle lunchbox or fall into their school bags. 

Despite all my tellings, you just have that set of markers that are not in place and you can spot them miles away but no time to fix. I removed all the unnecessary packagings and secure them with Duck Tape (not kidding, that's the brand). It's also easier to sanitise this way. The neon tapes are so brilliant and blinding no children can miss returning. 

Just a word of caution, you can't cut the tape with scissors as the adhesive is too strong. NO MORE MISSING MARKERS! YAYY! 

Housekeeping: Covering up Noticeboards

Last year, I was a recorder at a school for PSLE marking exercise. The fabrics covering the noticeboards in the classrooms caught my attention. The hooks and eyelets on the fabric seem like a good idea. In case you were wondering about these, teachers have to remove any posters or students' works prior to the examinations. You can imagine the time taken to put these up and bring them down considering the number of examinations we have. Perhaps these plain-coloured fabrics can double up as a table cloth for prize-giving day.😉 

Housekeeping: Early Finishers

A friend who just started to conduct art classes asked how I track the progress of the different classes. As the classes spread throughout the week, some classes would miss their art lessons due to mandatory school programme such as health screening or accumulated time loss due to snack time embedded in the curriculum (a lot can be done in 10 min!). Thus, we have to plan for buffer time to ensure all children can still complete the curriculum. For my students who have completed their task this term, they will be helping to do up the art room by referring to the above video for a quick lesson. 

Housekeeping: Early Finishers (New!)

Take these tongue depressors and think of some wacky scenarios! I'm always on the lookout for quick to clean up activities for my early finishers. These activities can be placed at an easily accessible spot and doesn't take up a lot of time for maintenance. Students will draw a stick from a container and complete the task.

Housekeeping: Lesson Packages

Hi teachers! I've been collecting my lesson resources and teachers' samples over the years and keeping them in envelopes like these in the resource room. I think it's essential to accumulate more resources and refine them for future use. Keeping them in opaque envelope would preserve the original colours of the painting. I have some samples of string art and watercolour painting for future reference. It's also useful to prepare simple activities for relief teachers in case there is a need. 

Art Club: Ceramics Preparation

There! I've recycled some clay containers for the glazes. By labelling multiple containers of each colour, students will have an array of choices for their bisque-fired clay. Previously, I had a variety of colours in ice-cube trays for each group but I find them quite messy and due to the close proximity of the colours, they can cross-contaminate easily.

Housekeeping: Cleaning watercolour cake paint set

Reusing these watercolour paint set means getting them ready for the new cohort of students. The most efficient way of cleaning them is to put them under running water which I never recommend children to do until these sets get really dirty. I usually ask the children if they ever wash their ice cream and if they don't, then they really don't want to wash their watercolour sets. 

Housekeeping: Repurpose cardboard egg tray

The cardboard egg tray is perfect for holding paint, especially acrylic paint. The children would throw them away by the end of the class to minimise washing time and make more time for learning and making. Here's a video showing how to prepare them for use:

Housekeeping: Artwork Display

My colleague, Faiz, has nicely set up the projector so I could fix the hold-up display rails accurately! These rails would allow students to display and remove their works very quickly. A gallery walk can be conducted or art appreciation talk in the midst of the artmaking process. 

Housekeeping: Coloured Markers

Discovered another way of managing and distributing markers to the different groups. The toilet roll tubes were hot-glued onto the cardboard trays. It would be great if I could spray paint the tubes to match the colour of the markers.  

Housekeeping: Drawing on Fabric

The process of preparing children's art installation (on fabric) is mostly very calculated. My colleague and I measured the hallway doors, amount of fabric needed, suitability of the quality of the fabric and even sewing. The colour choice of the thread that will complement the fabric has to considered too. We were in luck when our colleague has a hemming machine and she brought it to school to sew! So we were done in no time. 

Housekeeping: Art Display

Some time ago, I stumbled upon a commercial art gallery that has a series of artwork suspended with curtain tracks. It's such an elegant and neat way of displaying artwork! I thought that perhaps my school could have something like this too. It seems like such a fine way to display art indoors but we can't replicate exactly what I see because the school compound is semi-indoors so strong winds could tear suspending artwork or tangled long strings. 

At home, this is how I support my creeper plants using Daiso plastic nettings. Perhaps the final idea of art display ended up synthesising after incubation. 

Let's view the installation process! The contractor helped to source and fix the infrastructure - plastic nettings suspended from curtain tracks. Some prominent places near newly-erected walls were 'choped' first. Prior to this, we usually use blu-tac to hold up students' work which I find too labour intensive especially when we have to roll up four blu-tac (like boogers) for each work. When we remove the works, the whole process has to repeat and because the walls have multiple layers of paint through the years, sometimes the blu-tac just don't stay on very well. Thus, we think to hang the children's work with craft clothespins work better. Recently, we tried to make do with paper clips, a cheaper alternative and it means we are looking at a tougher time to remove them. Will keep you posted for new solutions! 

Thanks to my colleague, Candice, for scaling the heights!

The view from inside the art room!

Housekeeping: Managing Paint

I'm very lucky to get two stainless stain sinks in each artroom with this depth! Perhaps they would remind you of a surgical sink, but in fact, it is quite common in art schools. This sink facilitates washing effectively and the most important thing is that it acts like a backsplash which otherwise would result in slippery floor. Imagine forty children doing washing and if one causes a little splash, it would be a significant amount of water on the ground towards the end of the lesson. With back to back classes, it is a substantial mental load just to ensure everyone's safety.

Another thing that I like doing is to minimise the amount of paint staining our new sink. I like children to clean their dirty paintbrushes on a recycled cardboard first before they do the washing. A picture says a thousand words:

Housekeeping: Artroom Display

Look at what leftover paint and gesso primer do to plain-looking mache letter! The art room wall is slowly filling up. Thanks to my fearless colleague, Candice, who can balance on the wobbly ladder and put up the letters with neon tapes :D

Art Class: The Colour Experiment

Behind the scene...

Substitute palette paper with freezer paper. I got mine from the supermarket. It works as well, is a cheaper alternative and you can customise the dimensions. In this case, I'm using my art room tiles (x2) as my measuring ruler :D

For my P3 pupils who will be learning about Diversity, we began the class with a story The Colors of Us by Karen Katz. This unit introduces socially-sensitive issues about racial identity through self-portraits. While most of the children in my school are mostly Asians, a number of them belong to cross-cultural families or second-generation immigrants. When we held discussions about skin colours, a boy aired his misconception that a person's culture can be determined by his/ her skin colour. Another talked about the evolutionary reason of the skin responding to the sun. 

I collected the lids of the paper reams and use them to distribute acrylic paint to the groups. Throughout the lesson, no water is needed. The children will clean their paintbrushes on the cleaning paper (which are essentially the wrappers of the A4 printing papers) and throw them away after use.  

The children were given a worksheet to record their tests and observations like an artist/ scientist. Their task is to try to get a shade of skin colour but not necessarily theirs. We had a discussion of some of the children's observations and getting them to articulate their thoughts instead of just doing the experiment as a means to an end which I think is more meaningful. Painting is definitely interesting, it encourages sensitivity to colours by rejecting the idea of teaching children culturally-agreed object colours.

Art is more than merely the expression of ideas and expression. In the development of artistic competence and enjoyment, children are encouraged to explore the potential of materials. Their ability to control these processes are learned through the freedom of spontaneous expression which can deepen their understanding, failing which, would produce a sense of incompetence and frustration (Robinson, K. 2008). 

Last month's issue of Nat Geo is such a coincidence!

Listen to photographer Angélica Dass on how her work challenges the way we think about skin colour and ethnic identity here.


Dr Ken Robinson, 2008. The arts in schools: Principles, practice and provision. Lightning Source, UK.

Art Club: Game Makers

This is such an apt scene from our community library - A robotic book drop. It travels along a guided path using sensors and it stops near the entrance to allow visitors to drop their returned books. Then it goes into a staff-only room where people will empty its bin and it comes out only for the cycle to repeat itself. Save the humans from the monotonous chores and hard labour.

The children are encouraged to read more to deepen their understanding of electronics. A list of books available in the public library is compiled for them. There were a lot of group discussion in the process and the projects were written as ideas first. I'm looking forward to sharing their survey result and thinking about collating their thought process. 

Batteries Storage