Dressing for the job

I am sure my Tuesday Book Group noticed I nearly always have the same outfit on: jeans and a white cotton shirt. When I go to Kaiser School(on Tuesdays) to work with the First Graders, I am prepared for what ever we will do.  If they paint, do paper mache, use markers, whatever, my clothes will survive.  White cotton can be bleached and you can't hurt denim.  Teaching elementary school is dirty work. I am not real sure how my clothes survived in my early years teaching.  I wore suits or dresses, stockings and heels.  That was the dress code.

Back to now.  If I wore colored shirts the markers would not come out.  And you ask how they get can get markers on me?  They hug me, pull on me for attention, they point with the markers and the markers seem to frequently touch me.  We once were making hand prints by placing hands in paint and then pressing their hands on paper.  One little girl grabbed me as I walked by, blue paint all over my shirt.  It came out in the wash.

So I was ready Tuesday for the paper mache globes.  They were still doing the layers on the balloon.  I hope I am there the day they paint them.

This is a few of the globes drying.

More globes drying. The magic ingredient to make paper mache is in front of them, starch.

Later in the morning I read a great book to the children. The Sissy Duckling is about being allowed to be different.  It shows everyone has a right to be themselves.  It is beautifully illustrated and very well written.  The book is longer than most books we read. I was afraid they might get restless. The children were locked into the book.  One little girl had to go to a different class in the middle of the book.  This happens often and the children don't seem to mind missing the book.  Well, she did not want to miss a word of the this book.  I promised when she came back I would read the rest of the book to her.  And I did.

There are lots of YouTube videos of the book.  But I think they are pirated, too short and voice quality poor.  The story began as an 51 minute animated movie.  Major actors voice it: Ed Asner, Estell Getty, Sharon Stone, Kathy Najimy to name a few.  I am going to track it down, maybe on HULU, and watch it.

Update on the paper mache

Last month just before spring break I posted about my first graders making paper mache globes. After drying for a week, the children painted them blue.  I had great pictures of the globes.  But after my phone went swimming while we were in San Diego, I lost the pictures.  They were the only thing I had not transferred to my computer.  But now I have pictures of the globes with the oceans and continents on them.  I really wanted to take pictures of the children working.  But not cool to post pictures of children without the parents' permission.

Tuesday the class as a group colored the continents (which were on a worksheet) and then cut them out.  Ms. H had her own blank globe and a real globe to show the children.  She then walked them through each step.  Besides me helping, we had two mothers helping. 

Ms. H held up her globe by the tied end, that was the North Pole.  They had already marked the equator.  They looked at the real globe, decided where the equator cut South America and began to glue. And then on to the next continent.  The adults walked around to slide continents up or down.  We also wiped up glue from the desk, their hair, and the globes.

After the continents were glued on, the names of oceans were added.  The really amazing thing was they did this together.  And they finished together.  The children who never keep up with the group were on this.  They colored, they cut, they glued, they kept up.  Yay for the first graders.

This is how we started out.  Balloons with torn newspaper and a glue flour paste smeared on.

Here they are painted with the continents and ocean names glued on.

Look at each picture and each globe.  The coloring skills and cutting skills vary greatly.

More for comparison. 

Here are all the globes.  One student was absent, so one globe has to be finished later.


Using scissors for many first graders is really hard.   It is a muscle development and experience thing.  Again I go back to the "old days".  Girls cut out paper dolls and their clothes, little boys cut out decorations for their balsa wood airplanes.  We cut out snowflakes and connected paper dolls.  We had no TV, no video games.  We used our hands differently than do children today.  Neither one is better or worse.  Skills are developed today by young children that are different from the skills I learned as child. No way can I use my thumbs on a video game or to type on a phone.  They can.

That said, paper mache has been around for centuries.  Little children use it to create as well as do artists.  Some things don't change.

I don't always work on Reading and Math skills.

What is in this pot??????

When I walked into the classroom today, all the tables were covered with newspaper.  Ms. H. laughed when she saw  my face.  I knew we had an art project, and that is not one of my strong points. When I took Art for Elementary Teachers, the teacher told me my projects looked like a first grader did them.  It hurt my feelings, yet it was so very true.

So back to the picture, it is a pot of glue, flour, water  to use with paper mache projects.  The children are making paper mache globes.  They have applied one coat of glue and newspaper to a blown up balloon.  Today we did the second coat.

 Above is a sack of carefully cut rectangles of newspaper.  The children had plates with glue, swiped the paper on both sides in it, and applied to the globe. 

Each globe is drying while resting on a plastic container.  When fully dry, they will paint them, placing oceans and continents on them.  Remember these are being made by first graders.  I am impressed every year when they do these.

I really wanted to take pictures of the gluey children, but not really a cool thing to do.  It was interesting to watch them work.  Some jumped right in, slapping paper on and let the glue fly.  Some hated touching the glue and "icky" globe.  And who were these neatniks?  They were all little boys.