Funky Polymer Clay Earrings

I haven't been teaching long, but the longer I do, the more I embrace my art teacher vibe. Maybe it comes with being in my, gulp!, mid-forties--I'm just gonna embrace who I am!

I LOVE dress up days at school and often dress up the entire week of Halloween and the entire month of December. I have at least a dozen ugly sweater and five totes of dress up clothes--just in case. 

Yep. It's a thing.

I also LOVE funky jewelry. It used to be just colorful jewelry, then it was big jewelry, and now it's totally funky! The students LOVE seeing my weird jewelry and it's fun to link my jewelry to the day's lesson or my mood (coffee and donut earrings are my favorite to wear when I just need a boost to get through the day!). 

I make polymer clay earrings out of the little scraps the kids at school leave after their projects--it's amazing how little polymer clay you need to make earrings! I'm no expert--I envy those artists who can work so small! I'm thankful for my OttLite and my reading glasses.

This time I made a few new pairs of art-teacher type earrings:

Mmmm...hot dogs.
Food-related earrings are a favorite of mine!

And I love me some Bob Ross!

I also made some fun squiggle earrings inspired by the amazing earrings from Argia Jewelry Designs I saw on Instagram @argia_jewelry_designs. Argia Jewelry Designs is a trio of siblings that make and sell polymer clay jewelry. Here's a photo of some of their designs for Pride Month:

My children saw me creating and got into the game too--my daughter made some rubber ducky earring and my 19-year-old made some tiny jet ski earrings for his girlfriend (that girl is sooooo patient and listens to his obsessive talk about fixing jet skis and remote control cars, and well, all things mechanical. All. The. Time.). 

I hope you are inspired to embrace the funky and have fun with your wardrobe!

Enjoy!

Planning Your Classroom Design? Look at this research...

Well, I've been busy this summer taking one of my last Graduate courses--Research Design, and it has been pretty neat. I've actually enjoyed reading about educational research and it's given me some things to think about as I move into my student teaching this Fall (YIPPEE!! SO thrilled!).

If you are blessed to have a teaching job and a classroom to plan, check out this study called, "Visual Environment, Attention Allocation, and Learning in Young Children: When Too Much of a Good Thing May Be Bad" written by Anna V. Fisher, Karrie E. Godwin and Howard Seltman. This article was originally published in Psychological Science May 2014. 

Here's the Abstract:
A large body of evidence supports the importance of focused attention for encoding and task performance. Yet young children with immature regulation of focused attention are often placed in elementary-school classrooms containing many displays that are not relevant to ongoing instruction. We investigated whether such displays can affect children’s ability to maintain focused attention during instruction and to learn the lesson content. We placed kindergarten children in a laboratory classroom for six introductory science lessons, and we experimentally manipulated the visual environment in the classroom. Children were more distracted by the visual environment, spent more time off task, and demonstrated smaller learning gains when the walls were highly decorated than when the decorations were removed.
(from http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/05/20/0956797614533801.abstract)

If you don't want to purchase the full article, check out this online write-up from The Association of Psychological Science that summarizes the article.

This study really got me thinking about the visuals that are in the classroom and how they affect student learning. As a graphic designer and a visual person, I get distracted easily by clutter and "stuff" all over surfaces and walls. I also need to be able to know where my supplies are. I felt like this was also true with the students in the middle school art classroom I substituted in this past Spring. I tried hard to organize the classroom to have zones and label drawers and cabinets neatly so that the students (and I) could find things and work efficiently. I also tried to keep visuals to a minimum and have them relate to the project at hand. I think in my future classroom, I would make some adjustments to that even more--I'm always learning!

I hope you enjoy this study as you plan your classroom for the fall!

P.S. If you do want some kick-butt posters for your classroom, check out my free posters here. ;-)