raheem tech

  Well, today was my third art class with my kindergarten friends. If you wanna see what my first day looked like, you can visit here.   I always start my school year with kindergarten the very same way: get 'em in my art room, get them to learn the "cmon in and sit down on the floor" procedure and GET THEM TO MAKIN'! On that first day, they are just too young and curious and excited and afraid and ALL THE EMOTIONS (same for their art teacher!) to be learning rules and routines. So we save that for the second week of art. Instead, we begin our line unit with our line sculptures. You can check out our first day here:  The second day looks very similar but I introduce how to make a zigzag and a spiral line. On the final day, I start learning a little bit more about the class and how they work. I learn the names of the students by the third day and start easing them in to our routines. One of the things I introduce them to are our Quiet Critters. This idea is from my ...

This week I've had kindergarten for the first time! They are all kinds of wild, crazy, fun and squirrelly! I recorded a class on their first day and thought I'd share it with you. We ALWAYS do these paper sculptures on the very first day. They LOVE it, everyone is successful and it's great fun. Here's a video of me teaching this lesson: If you want all the details on this project, then be sure and check out this blog post ! I go in to great detail on just how I go about teaching this on the very first day.  Y'all might recall that this is a lesson that I did with everyone last year...but I did it as a Getting to Know You activity. You can read all about that here.  I have a lot to say about kindergarten as they are the toughest but funnest (says me) group to teach. You can read more about kindergarten in my art room here.  After two 30 minute art classes on these sculptures, we jump into our LINE unit! Y ou can read all about that right here!  

This week, all of my students in first through fourth grade started painting. It was their third day of art (you can see how we spent our first two days of art here and here ). Keep in mind, with 30 minute art classes, cramming is as much as I like is tough. Our focus on this first day was to learn my painting procedures...all while making beautiful art. I won't go too much into it here as I have a big ole podcast episode all about it. Take a listen:   If you are like me, you wanna see how the lesson is taught. So I recorded myself and I thought I'd share with you. What I always learn when watching myself teach is that I TALK TOO MUCH...but on that first day of teaching painting, there is so much to learn! So here you go: On my Instagram this week, I've been sharing a lot of my painting set up and supplies. Because I got a lot of feedback about those shares, I thought I'd create a little Art Teacherin' 101 video all about my favorite supplies for painting:  From h...

Hey there, friends! Just popping in to share my second day of art class with my students. If you recall, I shared my first day here (with video!) if you are interested . My classes are 30 minutes in length and we have SO MUCH TO COVER. I filmed a video of what I (mostly) cover on the second day and thought I'd share it with you: Now...here's what's not included in the video...after covering rules, I show my Art Room Etiquette video which is this: It's just a fun and quick reminder of my routines and procedures. From there, I have the kids file to their seats as a reminder of where they sit. We spend short bit chatting about emergency drills. We line up for  fire, tornado, room clear and an intruder drill. To end art class, we all gather around my drums (yeah, I got a drum set) and we each take a turn playing a fill. This is what the kids will play if chosen to play the clean up drums.  This insures that each child knows how to play a fill on the drums during clean up ti...

Last year, my third grade students worked with their table groups of four friends to come up with positive four letter words that describe our school. Guess which lame-o and lazy art teacher JUST HUNG THEM UP THIS WEEK! That's right...this gal right here.    This collaborative is one that I think would be a wonderful back to school activity. It really inspired conversations on just who we are as a school and who we strive to be. As a class, we sat on the floor, looked at the work of both Jasper Johns and Robert Indiana. After a discussion of their work, I asked the kids to help me brainstorm a list of four letter positive words. Once the list was complete, the kids were to go to their seats and work as a team. Their assignment: settle on their word and who was going to paint what letter.    I had purchased 8" X 10" canvas boards for each student. However, matte board works just as well or even cardboard primed with some gesso! Then my students used carbon paper and a...

  I love a good ole fashioned DIY...don't you? A week ago, I hit Goodwill and went COMPLETELY NUTS. I purchased a whole bunch of things that I just knew I could reinvent, rainbow-ize and breathe new life into. And here they are! I'm sharing super quick DIYs on each of these here today...as well as some of my favorite Goodwill finds that I wanna encourage you to keep an eye out for!  But first, let's take a look at the BEFORE...   Need a little DIY-inspo? How about a good ole fashioned time lapse? Here you go: Painting things rainbow-y is just about the easiest thing. I now have my rainbow peace sign hanging in a formerly blank spot and my cork board hanging on my door with my schedule pinned to it! Now let's see if that I can keep up with my ID and my keys with that keyholder! Magic eight ball says "no."  I did also scoop up some things that I can use around my room...these are things I always keep my eyes open for when I hit the thrift store. Here's a lit...

I've been sharing so many classroom management hacks on my Instagram lately (and getting such a great response from teachers, thank you!) that I thought I'd put 'em all together in a video! These are the classroom management hacks I use on the very first days in art class...and they help me out so stinkin' much. I hope you find them helpful too. Here you go:   Also, if you wanna hear about what my first day(s) of art were TRULY like, take a listen to this podcast. I didn't exactly practice what I preach (insert eeek-face emoji!):   In my hacks video, I fail to mention that one of my fave hacks are showing some videos that I've created. I do chat about these in the podcast episode. Here are the videos I share on the first and second days of art: First day Rules and Routines video! Second day Art Room Etiquette video!   I got a LOT of requests for these questions but, honestly y'all, there is nothing magical about them! They are literally random questions I a...

I have been talking SO MUCH on this blog and on my podcast about the first days of school. You can read all about how I set up my art room  (complete with a video room tour), my very favorite (and easiest!) classroom management tool , my favorite first day of art projects , my art room rules , and my art room routines by clicking any of these blog post links! It's all wonderful to hear about how folks do things but I find it's even better to see it in action. So...today I'm sharing a video of all the things we run through on the very first day in art (keep in mind, my classes are 30 minutes in length.) Here's what I do: * I do my greeting, which you'll hear. * We learn our Art Class Catchphrase. * I introduce the Word of the Day. * We talk about the Open/Closed sign. * We talk about the Happy/Sad board.  * We watch this video: * We stretch! * We greet each other and I ask a list of silly questions (more on that in an upcoming blog post!). * We get our assigned seats...