Does Anyone Need to go Potty?

Happy spring, everyone! I’m back with a long-overdue blog post. It’s been longer than I intended since my last post (six months), but I’d rather post something meaningful, even if it means posting less often. Today I will share some photos from my job at a local preschool, as well as some photos of my own art.

Let me begin with work. It has been eight months since I started working at preschool, and I’m happy. I still miss my students and the teachers from my old job as an art teacher, but I’m healing and I’m glad to be where I landed. I feel comfortable, liked and respected.

When you work with two-, three- and four-year olds, the phrase you say most often is, “Does anyone need to go potty?” We say it many times each day, especially on the playground, where fun activities sometimes distract kids from heading to the bathroom on time. 

               

For the last three months I have been teaching preschool art in our wonderful outdoor art studio. The school used to have art studio time twice a week and my boss decided to bring it back in February. I feel so lucky to work outdoors, surrounded by tall, mature trees. Of course, some days are cold or rainy, and then we move indoors. But mostly we do art outdoors, with chirping birds as our background music. You really notice the turning fall leaves and the new spring growth when you spend hours under the trees. 
 

         

                  

Our art is mostly process art, with the kids’ exploring materials without the expectation of a finished piece of art. But sometimes we make a permanent piece of art, like this painting for our recent school fundraiser. I had the kids put their handprint on a canvas I’d painted of a sunset, and I like the different colors and the collaborative aspect, too. 

Preschoolers make art with true joy. They don’t pressure themselves to have specific results—they are simply in the moment, trying out new materials and discovering what happens. It’s a good reminder for all of us. Have fun! Explore! Experiment! Play! 

 

After art studio, it’s lunch time, and you will find me folded onto a tiny chair made for preschoolers, knees pressed up against a kid-sized table. The kids bring their own lunches, in plastic or aluminum bento boxes. The latches on the lunchboxes may be the creation of NASA designers. The boxes are vacuum-sealed, and the chances of one opening accidentally are one in ten thousand. Have you ever wrestled with the latches on a lunch box? You begin with a quick stretch, then bend your legs for maximum leverage, bracing for the battle ahead. Five sweaty minutes later, as you’re trying to catch your breath, you realize (sheepishly) that you were trying to undo the permanent hinge at the back, which looks exactly like the opening latches. 

back of lunchbox

front of lunchbox.

What, we can’t get someone to stamp “open” on the front end? I have written a letter to the Lunchbox Federation with my recommendation.

Anyway, once the jaws of life pry open the lunchboxes, the kids exclaim with glee over Pirates Booty (“I have that, too!” someone squeals), sliced cucumber, squeezable yogurt and shiny pieces of fruit. Some kids are fast eaters, and some are slow eaters. Some devour every last crumb, and some take two bites and declare themselves finished. Negotiation ensues. Three more bites? We need energy for the playground!

Recently, I was sweeping up after lunch and glanced down at the dustpan, noting the colorful mix of glitter and macaroni.

Side note: “Glitter and Macaroni” was my original title of this post. This combination almost sums up preschool. Lots of kids bring pasta for lunch and a few pieces land on the floor. These kids have a sophisticated palate for two-year-olds. Some have penne with tomato sauce. Some have fusilli with spinach. There have been several pesto sauces spotted. One three-year-old brought sushi!

And glitter—have you ever known a kid who doesn’t love glitter? It’s shiny, festive and colorful. Kids love it—because they don’t have to clean it up. No matter how much you sweep, you will never get all the glitter off the linoleum. I’m considering dumping a whole container of glitter on the floor and sealing it with polyurethane. It’ll be colorful and any glitter that falls will blend in.

As you may know, kids say the funniest things. Here are a few memorable things the kids have said to me:

Why are you wearing blue stuff on your eyes? Will it stay forever?

Why does your hair look like that? It’s so much higher today.

Why do you have a Band-Aid on your hand? I have a band-aid, too!

Will you be my teacher forever? (Every time you are at preschool, yes!)

I need a purple Hot Wheels car. (I find one.) No, a different purple one. (I find another.) No, one where some wheels are big and some are small.

I’m going to go have a conversation with my water bottle. (This from a very talkative two-year-old.)

This shaving cream smells like juice!

Why is your skin so dry?

You’re always funny! (Thanks, Austin!)

Once I began working at preschool, the little ones quickly got used to me. Depending on their ages and speech ability, they call me variations of “Sarah,” including “Miss See-Rah,” and “Math Sah-wah.” It’s awfully cute to hear a little child say your name.

If they are feeling a connection with me, they give me things. When you are two and three, there are various forms of currency. They have given me their “treasures,” shiny plastic sequins that we sprinkle around the playground for them to hunt.

They sometimes give me drawings, and there was that time a child gave me her sparkly mermaid sticker to put on my hand. Stickers are beloved by preschoolers, so I was flattered. 

One amazing thing about working with two-year-olds is watching their vocabulary grow. To hear a two-year-old string together five words, when she used one or two words a few months ago—that’s a wonderful thing to witness and encourage.

To help me learn more about art and preschoolers, I’m taking an in-person Child Development course at a community college. The topic is process art for young kids. Below are a few photos of assignments--the art activities I invented for young kids. Having fun is one goal, but there are also learning fundamentals to incorporate, based on age and development. We have learned how to tie in an art project with another concept from a different branch of education, like math or science (this is called “an extension,” in case you want to bring that up in conversation later). 

This is a project I designed for class. Kids can use a dish
brush to apply paint to a train track I drew on cardboard.

My track before paint.

Track after the kids used brushes
and then hands to paint the track.

I also gave the kids a chance to paint the train track using trains as their brushes. Big mess = big success!

The next project needed to be 3-D, so I created an activity zone called "Sandy Land," which allows the kids to play with kinetic sand, sculpting it, and pushing it on swings and down funnels and slide. 

The class is interesting, and I’ve learned some helpful things. But I’m ready for the end of the semester. It’s a lot to juggle work, class, my family, health, self-care and all the odds and ends of life.

 

When I’m not at work, with family, or chipping away at my chores, I’ve been doing some art of my own and below are some of my creations from the last six months. Most are acrylic paintings, but there is one sculpture, one experiment with printmaking, and several collages. Collage is rewarding because you don’t have to be exact. If you don’t like the effect, keep layering until you like it. I save lots of things for collage, including junk mail, scraps of patterned origami, food labels and barcodes.

Many of my paintings are small (6” x 6” or smaller) but a few are larger. Sometimes I’m too tired to do art at night, but when I have the energy, it refills my cup. 

Adventures in printmaking...

My homage to sculptor Tom Fruin, who makes
colorful structures you can walk into.

Another project I’ve been chipping away at is a floor mural in our backyard. The concrete pad was here before we moved in, and I finally decided to turn it into the painted koi pond I’d imagined. I started it in October, and here we are in May, with it not quite finished. It’s about 90% finished, and I’m showing it here now, because waiting for it to be complete may take another few months.

 

Although it seems wild to me that I haven’t finished the koi pond painting after seven months, I am giving myself grace. In the life of a busy adult, certain projects are put on hold when the laundry piles up. And that is okay!

It’s spring and there are signs of new life everywhere. I’m enjoying the magic, and I hope you are, too. Until next time, find some joy, and shine on!

 

 

M-ART-ch Madness!

It's the final day of March, so I am making my March post deadline with only hours to spare. March means Mardi Gras, shamrocks…and I think some kind of basketball tournament. Well, my version of March Madness involves putting the “art” in M-ART-ch—and my creative students rose to the task.

In other springtime news, have you noticed black and orange caterpillars scurrying around? At school one day, I saw a spiky black caterpillar, approximately ten feet outside the art room door. A short while later, I found the caterpillar inside the art room! This was either a brave or foolish critter, as there were more than thirty fast kids racing into the room. I’m glad I spotted it five feet into the room, as we have dark floors and it was nearly camouflaged. It was put it into a cup and relocated onto a tree. Apparently, there have been a lot of them around school, and we soon discovered that our caterpillar had a friend. A first grader told me we should name them Max and Jax (J-A-X, he spelled out, in case I was considering an alternate spelling). I’m not sure how we are going to tell Max apart from Jax but maybe we can make tiny hats in different colors for them, like people do with twins. Problem solved.

Back to art. My students have been working on lots of projects, including some for St. Patrick’s Day.

My youngest class is Kindergarten. I had them color in a coloring sheet I made (I drew the outlines and they colored in the scene). It has a St. Patrick’s Day theme, and as you see, the gold pieces in one pot of gold are happy. I love how the Kindergarteners think!

First grade did St. Patrick’s Day art, too. Their project involved taking a quarter of a paper plate and turning that into a rainbow. Paper plates are such a handy art supply. They are inexpensive and stronger than regular paper. Plus, if you are coloring rainbows, you have the right shape even before the caps come off the markers. One kiddo decided to make a full rainbow, ending in two pots of gold. I think he was hoping for a double dose of luck.  

My bouncy second grade class also decorated shamrocks with lots of pattern and color. 

In third grade art class, the kids colored shamrocks, and experimented with patterns like stripes, polka dots and geometric shapes. Pattern makes everything more exciting, I say. Then the kids rolled long strips of paper into coils to give a three-dimensional quality to their art. Yes, there were rivers of glue, but it was worth the extra fun.

The fourth grade made art that looks like giant postage stamps. I wore some stamp accessories from an outfit I made over a year ago, just to add to the spirit. 

I explained that postage stamps are like tiny pieces of art, and that we would design our own stamps, but much larger. I asked that they put the monetary value in the upper right corner, and that they cut out the scalloped line around the stamp, like real stamps have. Didn’t they do a super job? These are some imaginative kids.

My fifth grade students had a good time creating watercolor paintings of shamrocks and rainbows. This group of fifth graders is very creative. 

In sixth grade we did a project I haven’t taught before, so it was new to all of us. The kids used oil pastels to make a scene or an abstract design. I advised them to make the layers of pastel thick and colorful. We then washed a diluted layer of black paint over each drawing, waiting a few minutes to let it soak into the paper. Last, we rinsed off each piece and the effect is wonderful. There are irregular accents of black—it has the look of batik fabric—and it has an antique look. The colors pop a lot against the black, and it was a great project to try. The technique is not my invention—I found it online and adjusted it slightly for these kiddos. It’s called oil pastel resist art, because the oil pastels resist (do not absorb) the black paint.

My seventh grade class also did the postage stamp project. As you can see, they chose a variety of subject matters, and made some really impressive stamp art.

Finally, eighth grade. I gave them the privilege of using air dry clay, which is not something we do often as it is crazy messy and it is more expensive than other materials, so it is a rare treat. I told them they could choose their subject matter and that we would paint the clay next time, after it was dry. A word of caution: if you are teaching teenagers to sculpt clay, expect the unexpected. One boy raced to the sink to rinse his mouth during class, and he explained that he licked the clay and it tasted gross. I didn’t realize I had to tell teenagers not to eat clay, but okay—my bad—I reminded him it was not edible. Five minutes later the same kid raced to the sink again. He’d licked clay a second time (perhaps thinking it is an acquired taste?). He still didn’t like it. Well, third time is the charm, right? No. No more clay licking for him. Also, another word of caution: if half your students are painting their dried clay, and half are still sculpting wet clay, you will have a very, very messy classroom to deal with once they leave. Wet clay and paint and thirty three teenagers is…also an acquired taste. Mostly kidding. I love those wacky teens.

And this wraps up another month of amazing art from my wild and wiggly students. Thanks for checking out what they made, and I’ll see you back next month with more art. (Caterpillars optional.)