Whew it has been a crazy two weeks! During the first week the internet was being awfully spotty in my classroom and I had the hardest time uploading pictures. Then we were out for a Professional Day. The next week started with a day off for MLK Day and then I had two more days off for doctors appointments and other meetings (Baby Lily is growing just fine BTW and will be here this MAY!).
I am excited and ready to get back into the swing of things.
First up I want to talk some about professional development(PD). I am so lucky with my district. When we have district wide PD days our awesome Art Supervisor always schedules meetings for all the art teachers. That way we get to update each other on whats happening, learn about contests, and do some hands-on activities.
We spent the first part of our day covering the basics, checking in with new teachers to see how their year is going, and discussing Artbreak our big local student art festival. I can’t wait to tell you more about that in the next few months. Then we got down to it with our hands-on activities.
This time we all did fiber art. Weaving was the main goal but a few people who are either very proficient weavers or who just hate weaving made stitching designs or worked with paper. We were asked to bring anything we might be interested in using, but that was optional and we all knew there would be plenty of goodies to pick from.
I’ll let the pictures explain the rest. I know these are not the best pictures, but I will get better!
These are progress pictures of my weaving. I don’t weave with fabric and recycled objects often. Usually in class we will use paper so I stuck with a cardboard loom provided by another teacher.
There were a lot of loom choices. Branches were very popular. There were wire hangers that could be bent into different shapes. Some teachers made their own cardboard looms by cutting slits into large pieces of cardboard. The teacher using the wooden box loom brought it from her school. It was built by a student! We also had plastic looms like you would use to make pot holders and even embroidery hoops.
When it came to the materials there were plenty to pick from. Our supervisor has a deal with JoAnn Fabrics. Anything they can’t sell they donate to him. Every time we have one of these PD meetings he has a second room full of boxes of supplies and materials for us to go through and pick from. There were ample amounts of yard, string, embroidery floss, and other thin materials. One teacher brought a big box of old t-shirts and taught everyone how to cut the shirt to make one long piece of yarn.
Many of us raided through our bins and brought beads and other small dew-dads that were sewn or hot-glued on as well.
We usually will complete two or three hands on activities during these meetings but everyone was so involved weaving that we spent the whole day working on them. I love that we get to do this!
