Art Club: Introduction

Children from my school has an option to sign up for Co-Curriculum Activities (CCAs). It's great because the children who chose to take up the CCAs do so due to interest and it's not imposed on them. Thus, the children who bonded in a CCA due to interest and suddenly their abilities (or grades) or age are unimportant. Art Club sessions are held weekly for one and a half hours, it is conducted by school teachers after curriculum hours (8am-2pm) and we have the autonomy to plan/ conduct activities. This year, we have exposed children to a number of excursions and artists' talk. More photographs to follow in my next post!

Housekeeping: Storeroom

I have these God-sent white tubs in the storeroom. Just ignore the lonely tub that's labelled because I forgot to budget for more labelling tape.

These wired baskets are great for sorting out supplies in the art room. Supplies are placed within reach of the kids for easy retrieval.

Our school just bought some new guitars and thanks to the music teacher who donated these boxes for art cause :D

It's the last week of school and the kids helped to cut the cardboard into smaller pieces!

A friendly reminder for the future successor of the art storeroom placed behind the door.

Art class: Printmaking

Between June and October 2016, our Primary 4 students have an artist, Mr Ernest Chan coming to class to share his expertise with us. This event is possible through the Artist Mentor Scheme and the school's support. It's a pity not all the Primary 4 classes got to meet the artist due to the scheduling. Nevertheless, everyone have experienced printmaking. 

Making our collograph using recycled materials

Making collographs with foam

Mr Chan sharing about his work

Critique session

These pragmatic children asking for Mr Chan's autograph

Housekeeping: Collection of recycled materials

In art room utopia, all your students would bring any materials to art class when they are told to do so. They would be so considerate to even bring an excess of those just in case someone else doesn't.

I'm still waiting for this day to come.

In the art room, I have wired baskets to collect recycled materials for art class all year round:

Divide egg trays into small containers for holding paint.

Egg trays collected from the canteen vendors. Temporary holding area is the office until I find some space in the art room :D

Reusing the packaging from reams of printing paper.

Toilet roll tubes from the toilet of course!

Housekeeping

I may not be the best person to talk about organisation but I guess you can have an excuse to be untidy if you were just serving yourself. In a school with a few thousand kids, having an organised art room or store room stocked with art supplies is a big deal. If you spend less time looking for things, it leads to more planning and thinking time. Besides your students, you are also helping other teachers to acquire emergency supplies for some events.

Depending on your energy level, it's important to conserve energy and directing them into something more useful. Every little obstacles (e.g technical issues or mediating pupils' friendship problems) we encounter every day consume bits of our energy, by the time we got home, whatever is left (if we still have any left), is reserved for our family. It doesn't have to be this way because our family also deserve our time and attention.

Thus, the first step to ensuring sanity is to stay organised. 

Let's start packing!