When you want to set up your space for 31 student artists simultaneously, planning is key. Here is what I do to put the focus on maximizing brush-on-paper time, and minimizing dropped palette-paint-on-clothes-bumping into each other time.

First, get yourself a ton of plastic pint quart container lids. The teacher next door to me has a yogurt obsession and saved a garbage bag full of them – so useful! I line them up on the counter top and add paint accordingly. Fill a 5 gallon bucket with a squirt of dish soap and 2 gallons of water. When kids are done with their palettes, have them drop them in the bucket and walk away. I used to try and wash my other palettes between classes, but once when I was pressed for time I let them soak overnight, and when I picked one out of the bucket the next day, the old paint just slid right off and it barely needed a rinse to be considered ready for use again. When you have enough lids to serve multiple classes, then you can do a lot of soaking to waste less water and reduce your time bent over a sink.

It looks heinous, but the non-soapy brush water gets poured on some flowers in boxes outside Portland recently went through a dry spell (like 3 months with no rain!) and the flowers didn’t seem to care that they were being refreshed with non-toxic tempera paint water. I fill a small tub with water and leave it in the sink and call it the brush bathtub – I ask kid to drop in their brush and walk away when cleaning up. It’s an easy instruction for the kids (the walk away part is to reduce splashing/sloshing some are wont to do) and makes it so there is no line at the sink. I give all the brushes a quick swish once the kids are back in class.

I had kids fill out an “order form” for paint choices during our recent lesson on value (the amount of lightness or darkness in an artwork). After looking at various examples, I let kids know I would provde them with white and black for creating tints and shades, and insisted they choose 2 analogous colors to include in their painting. This let me know who understood analogous colors (we reviewed the terms before I gave them the form, and I provided each table with a color wheel for a visual prompt) – a few students asked for green and red as their 2 choices, and I was able to review the idea with them before handing out their yogurt lid of paint.

Newspaper is a must – I actually get the Oregonian, which provides endless under-painting protective mats, plus a place to wipe your brush or test a new color. The papers usually last at least twice – I let them dry and then flip them over for the kids the next day, unless someone got super enthusiastic or there was a liquid spill. After they become slightly cruddy I put them in the recycle bin and refresh my selection.

Students raise their hands if they need more paint, and I come to them with one of my squeeze bottles. I transfer washable tempera into Sally Beauty bottles (kind of like the ketchup and mustard bottles you’d see at a barbecue), because I can add a little water to increase the flow and some dish soap to increase the washability (hot tip from my mom). I like to come to them, so I can compliment a technique or shade they’re trying out, redirect those who might be tempted to misuse the materials, and avoid kids walking around the room with a stain-producing yogurt lid.

The kids at this school have had limited exposure to blending colors and are more likely to paint in a coloring-book style – discreet colors, with no overlap. I often only provide the primary colors and black and white to force them to experiment with color creation and the results are richer and more visually interesting than if I were to provide 8 separate colors.

I leave one or two clean wet rags on each table for kids to wipe down hands or table surfaces with – again, I don’t want a long line of kids waiting to use the sink. If they are super messy, or are cleaning off a sneeze, then they can use the sink, but the clean wet rags eliminate 95% of sink usage. I have a laundry basket where I ditch the used rags. I got the washcloths from SCRAP – they get them from Legacy Emanuel’s waste reduction service, where they try and reduce usable clean items from their hospitals that end up int he landfill. Unused but discarded OR towels serve as hand towels by the sink in my classroom.

Pencils without erasers sit by each student space, to make sure names get put on artwork! I will hand out bowls of erasers if the projects call for them, but I like using pencils that have been discarded by other teachers, and when trying to get kids to just sketch, or work “mistakes” into their artwork, the lack of erasers serve a purpose.

I always display artwork all over the school… making fancy bulletin board displays is enjoyable for me and the kids look forward to seeing their work on display. I keep a giant set of charts detailing artwork on display of each child, so eventually everyone will have had their art in the cafeteria, in the hall, in the office, in the public library, or more than one of those places. Kids know I am fair, and if I don’t choose their artwork this time, it won’t crush them since it just means their turn is coming.

I hope you enjoyed the contents of my brain and my reasoning behind the choices in my art room. 🙂