Right, so. I never, ever planned on teaching a class at our homeschool not-a-co-op. I happily involved my children, paid or traded for the class fees, and made myself comfortable on one of the sofas in the lobby to get some work done during the 4 – 5 hours we were there.
A little before the winter semester, however, a handful of classes were cancelled at the last moment. That, combined with my 10 year old finding out there were other kids his age teaching classes resulted in a last minute scrabble to submit a class idea. I’m a little sad to have my peaceful lobby time cut short, but I am happy to help my very excited and passionate son teach something he loves and further nurture his entrepreneurial spirit.
Art, geography, and history were all subjects he’d have liked to teach. As I’d be involved, I voted for art, and we began making lesson plans last week. On registration day, our class was full to bursting within 4 minutes! At $45 per child, my son made almost a thousand dollars in just a few moments. He was thrilled. It was an excellent lesson (though a little tough to learn) for him as we tallied up the costs of teaching a class:
$990 earnings
- $99 tithing
- $145 class fees for himself and his siblings (we agreed that these monies would pay for all of their classes, thanks to trades it wasn’t a huge piece of the pie)
- $100 teaching materials and class supplies
- half of the remainder to mom
= $300 profit for my son
We’ve opened his first savings account, and he’s debating whether or not to buy his own Kindle or save up for a laptop. Sadly my portion is buying boring old groceries. :o)
We wanted our focus to be learning a little about the master artists, and creating art pieces inspired by famous works. But we thought we’d kick off the class with an introduction to color by doing some color wheel projects.
I made a simple, blank color wheel in Photoshop, which we tried out ourselves the night before class.
(You can download a printable blank color wheel right here, if you’d like.)
The idea was to have the children paint the primary colors in the three largest circles, then mix neighboring primary colors and paint the result in the medium circle between the two. For example, mixing red and yellow, then painting the medium circle between the red and yellow circles orange. Then of course, they could mix their orange with a bit more red and make a red-orange to be painted in the smaller circle between the orange and red. And so on around the circle.
However, with 22 children in the class, this was a bit easier said than done. Lots of children needed help, and I have a brand new appreciation for the work our public school teachers do to wrangle a class that large all day long.
The kids seemed to have fun mixing colors and painting the circles however they pleased while I was busy running around the room trying to help:
Not exactly how I’d envisioned, but it seemed like fun anyway. Perhaps it was a little too difficult for the younger of our age group (6 – 9, with one 5 1/2 year old), or more likely difficult due to my lack of explaining or demonstrating. I didn’t want to show them the finished work so they didn’t feel like they had to copy — but that maybe would have been wise. I had one little boy melt down after he realized he’d painted his mixed purple between the red and orange. Whoops.
We weren’t certain the color wheel would fill the entire 90 minute time slot, so we planned another color mixing project based on this idea.
They were to paint three circles in the primary colors, and set aside. We then helped them fold another piece of art paper into thirds. J. and I ran around the room helping them get paint blobs on each section to mix:
red + yellow
yellow + blue
blue + red
They were to set that aside, and then use up the remaining paint on their brushes and in their paint trays to paint a final sheet of art paper however they wished. I thought we’d then clean up and let the papers dry, but did not consider just how THICK little children paint. And clean up took forever as the sink in the room does not have great water pressure. The children were lined up for an eternity waiting their turn, and some of our cute boys started painting each other during the wait.
So we came home with lots of painted circles and rectangles and we’ll have to complete our project next week.
PHEW. We learned a lot. Things we need to change or tweak:
- We need another table in the classroom for additional elbow room.
- We need to get into the classroom early to set up, and cover the tables with paper or plastic to cut down on the (gigantic) mess.
- I need to have parents sort through their children’s art supplies and unwrap brushes, peel shrink wrap off new paint, etc… helping them simply open their supplies took up a ton of time.
- I need to have the parents send them to class with *only* the supplies we’ll need that day, there isn’t enough room for them to dump their whole art kits out and spread out searching for scissors.
- I asked for things to be labeled, but I need to reiterate it, we had load of paint brushes and paint trays without names, and my ‘lost and found’ after one class is immense!
- We need to paper the window in the classroom and keep the door shut, other classes get out a half hour before ours, and children kept thinking it was time to go when they saw their friends at the window or door.
- To cut down on the time for clean up, I think I might have the children bring a big ziplock bag. They’ll have to just place paint-filled brushes and trays into the bag and clean them at home. We just don’t have enough time, and that sink leaves a lot to be desired!
- We need to re-evaulate our lesson plans for ease of execution, and I think I need to demonstrate and show examples before we begin; the children kept thinking they were done after each step. I hate to squelch individual creativity by showing them my completed project first, any seasoned homeschoolers or teachers out there have some input on this?
Still, I think it is a fun class, and seeing my son in his element was really entertaining. He has NO qualms about getting in front of a large group and sharing his knowledge or giving instruction. I’m not sure how I managed to give birth to someone so completely opposite from me, but there you go.