art with a grade 3 class

My daughter has a great teacher this year and I've often thought I should be volunteering more to help out. I think teachers are amazing to take on the job of teaching a group of 20+ kids...especially eight year olds.

Last year, I volunteered to help out and the teacher asked me to give each student a test on prisms. For those of you that know what a prisim is, good job! I honestly had to google what it was before the test. I thought this year I'd offer to come in and do an art project with the kids, something I knew a little about. Classrooms aren't set up to accomodate messy, paint throwing art projects, but I thought I'd give it a go. What's more fun than throwing paint around and being messy? It was a great morning and the kids had fun. I even had one girl ask for my autograph (great for the ego). They were all eager and open to being abstract impressionists that morning, full of energy and emotion. We moved the desks to the edges of the room, covered the floors with plastic, the kids wore garbage bags, rolled their pants up and took their socks off. Not much direction was needed, they're kids after all and loved the idea of not sitting at their desks. I told them the only rule was that they couldn't use a paint brush. I'd brought in straws and other kitchen untensils. Most used their hands or squirted the paint right out of the tubes and went to it like they were little Jackson Pollock's.