When You See Everyday Items: THINK OUTSIDE OF THE BOX!

Look closely. What do you see?
Paintbrushes
A tray of paint
Paper
A jar of water
An electric drill.

Someone shared a video of kids painting with a cordless drill and I just had to try it. I came home from work that night and showed the video to my husband. "Can I borrow your drill?" 

It does not work to use the drill like this

I am blessed with a husband who is willing to help me, with my out of the box ideas. He disappeared and returned with this drill. A quick lesson on how to use the chuck and chuck key and a little coaching on how to select the proper size brush and I was ready for work the next day.

Let me give you some tips. The shorter the brush the better. You are fighting gravity, motion and turning ratio. A long brush works but quickly falls out of the drill do to the momentum at the end furthest away from the drill. Hang the paper up on an easel. It is harder to paint with the drill pointed down at a table. Try it first yourself with out children.


Trust me this is fun! I didn't want to share, and I am a grown up. My coworkers didn't want to share and they are grown ups too.

Introduce the drill to the class.
Use open-ended questions to find out what they know about drills. 
Warn them it might sound loud to them. 
Let them feel the weight of the drill before it is running. 
Teach them how to hold it and stay close, this is a power tool.

 Wash the brush between colors and dry on a towel.  I helped the kids do this.  You get neat spiral patterns as you paint.  There is lots of movement and texture created in these paintings.

Some of my favorite pictures: 

Snow Day!

I went to bed last night planning on going to work.  Don't get me wrong I love a snow day just like anyone else.  Growing up they were very few we got.  I attended a school district that prided itself in rarely being closed due to weather conditions. 

The superintentand once proudly stated, "I wait to be last to make up my mind until I see what the other school districts decide."  He stated this at a school board meeting I was attending to address bus safety and inclement weather.  You see, we had, had a severe icestorm.  Roads were wicked, but the school district deemed it safe to be open and sent lots of children to stand on street corners to wait for buses. 

Buses only made it to a few stops in the district.  Ours never showed up. I watched a classmate be struck by a car that could not stop its slide towards us.  All but one of us made it away from the corner of the yard we were standing in, before the car hit my friend.  A few kids slid down the street to my house to get my mom while we waited with the one who had been hit. Two others were injured slipping on the ice to trying to get out of the way of the car.

My friend was blessed.  Bruised and a cut to the back of the head but alive and no real major injuries.  My mom rounded everyone at the stop up and brought us home to our house.  She collected the driver of the cars information to pass on to the my friend's parent.  He waited for the police to arrive and give the report. Once home coats were hung to dry, hot chocolate was made and TV was turned on to keep us all busy.  Mom called the school district.

She was informed buses were having trouble being started; and those that were started were having trouble getting to their stops due to poor road conditions.  She was told to send us all back to the bus stop in 20 minutes and if the bus was not there an hour later then we could go home and not be counted truant.  She refused, saying she had already seen 3 injured children due to poor decision making by those hired to protect them.  She would be calling all the other parents to see what they wanted her to do with their children.

Thus the school board meeting I was at a few weeks later.  I would like to say that changed policy, it didn't.  I would like to say that superintendant changed his way of making those decisions, it didn't.  What it did was cause my parents and many others to make safety choices based on their own instinct. 

You see the school board meeting was because they wanted to penalize the many children who did not make it in to school that day.  Many children from many bus stops had injuries sustained from trying to get to the bus stops to make it to school.  Thankfully only one child was hit by a car.

To me a SNOW DAY is not another excuse to get out of work.  I miss my kids, I look out the window today at the beautiful sun and best fresh snowfall we have had in months and think of all the fun my class and I could be having.  A SNOW DAY tells me the people hired to protect the children have their safety in mind.  My husband, a country kid, gets so mad when he hears well the country school districts have to close to keep their kids safe. 

He always says, "The country kids are not on busy roads.  The country kids usually wait in their house until the bus arrives at their drive way or in a warm car sitting near the end of the drive way, not standing on cold slippery streets, and crossing streets with large projectiles slidig all around them. The country kids would be kept at home to help with farm chores and not sent out to be in danger."  Interesting perspective.

So yes, I have a Snow Day.  I am using to do classroom work, work on continuing education, write this blog and I am sure I will sneak in some reading or drawing, but it is not because I want to get out of work.  I want my children cared for by the people we trust to make those decisions.  As I look out my window a 2 hour late start probably would have been ok, BUT knowing many that many teachers in the district live out of the district means that their safety is important to the superintendant too and he was basing his decision on the safety of travel for them.

Our decisions impact many people.  Even the decision to call a Snow Day.

St. Paul School Buses Delayed Stranding Some Students for Hours