I spent all week getting back into the swing of nicoleioma.com, inputting about a million grades, cleaning my art classroom and seeing The Five Year Engagement (Jason Segel ❤).  And our boat is back in the water!  Next week is my last week at my school.. bring on the emotional rollercoaster.. AH.  I also found a few interesting links to share..

• Only 25% of Americans consider themselves emotionally healthy?!! That’s… not okay.
• This. I wish I could send this article to a few people without them being offended.  Kinda like offering them a dignity breath mint?  Would that work?
• I’ve just discovered the Paper Source online store and it will be the downfall of my bank account.  On the bright side, I got some cute Mother’s Day shopping done YES!
• 20 Things An Elementary Art Teacher Will Never Tell You.  Um, yes.
• Oh my goodness.  PINATA COOKIES.  I’m not doing Cinco de Mayo this year (family in town to run the mini!) so I need to think of another excuse to make these, asap.
• Sarah Storer (aka The Naked Redhead) is doing a 30 Days to Sanity Challenge.  She is awesome.  And hilarious.  And other awesome people are doing the challenge too.  So get on it, people.
• Teaching for Artistic Behavior.  Something interesting to think about.. I’ve learned a lot this past year about what it means to balance my art classroom between what is ideal and what is realistic.  I should probably write a post on that…
• Are you following Pictureless Pinterest on Twitter?  I cannot think about it without laughing.

Have a wonderful week, party animals

I made a sandcastle with some leftover cardboard dreidels I had made for a holiday music production (picture them upside down..) and starfish from this tutorial with sponge painted construction paper.  The seaweed was made with this plastic wrap stuff that a retired teacher left for anyone to take, and somehow it all came together YES.

I want to go swimming.

We focused on layering, creating depth, filling the space, and breaking down images into simpler shapes to make them less overwhelming and easier to put together.  It was a LONG project but the students really enjoyed thinking of new & original ideas and figuring out how to make it work on their own – they’re awesome.

Photos of the display later this week.  It’s my favorite.  (I built a sandcastle for it, sooo… )

HELLOOO party people.  I don’t even want to THINK about how long it has been so I’m not going to.. instead, let’s pretend that I never left.  Sound good?  Awesome.

I have about a million projects/lessons/displays/random things to tell you all about (to those of you who never hit the unsubscribe button even though I vanished, THANKS!  You are loyal.  I appreciate that.)  I’m almost finished with my first year of teaching (whoaz) so I will be talking all about that and how my life has changed a LOT since I last posted (I’m becoming a zumba instructor?  I’m single?  I play softball?  What?) so STAY TUNED.  It’s gonna be a lot more fun over here, I promise.

Also, it’s almost summertime.  Get hyped.

This is my first display as a real-life art teacher, ohhh my.  My fifth-graders did it and they were so awesome about it.  Since I started my job in October I didn’t have much time to pull together a Halloween-esque project, but all of my fifth-grade classes did these “Haunted Masterpieces” in only one class period.   I mounted them on orange, black, and purple construction paper, made some 3D letters for the title, and threw it all up there during the afternoon I had to stay late for parent-teacher conferences.

First display = success =)

Thoughts?  I have good news about the inspiration behind the project, and that is that I finished the mini-marathon that I ran in May.  And I ran the whole thing.  I KNOW.  I couldn’t believe it either.  Since then I finished student teaching (so sad), substitute taught the remainder of the school year, and taught art all summer at a camp.  I have been searching endlessly for a job teaching art but haven’t found one yet so I am back to subbing and searching.  I now have teaching licenses in both Indiana & Illinois so hopefully something will pan out soon!

Oh and my friend Karyn has started a blog to document her first year teaching, go look!

Hope everyone is doing well =)

As of last Wednesday, I’m officially done student teaching – so sad.  I’ll do a student teaching recap sometime soon!  There’s lots to say.  For now I’m working on finishing up the things I need to do to get my teaching license, applying for jobs, and substitute teaching.  Subbing is a lot of fun so far, but we’ll see if I still think so after working with middle school kids tomorrow.  They are the most intimidating age group by far… dun dun dunnn !!

Hope your weekend was wonderful!!  woooo =)

See #1 here.

So… about that mini marathon that I mentioned I am running.  It is one month from today.  Yup.

I will be running 13.1 miles and to be honest, the more I train the more I wonder why people do things like run crazy long distances.  It just… doesn’t really seem natural, you know?  But regardless, I am going to do it.  And I’m not backing out like I did a few years ago.  I’m only getting older, right?  (Though apparently I look like a high school kid!  What.)

I’ve been tracking my progress with Daily Mile and love it.  I used to use Runners World, but I like how simple Daily Mile is, it tells you how many donuts you’ve burned while running (this is essential info) AND it’s a social network which I really need to keep me on track.  There’s a feed that shows the workouts of my friends and they also see the workouts that I post, which is a huge motivator.  Especially because my two brothers follow my workouts there and they are also training to run the mini (though, when they throw in their 10 mile runs and comment that they were “easy” it gets just a tiny bit frustrating.  But lets me know where I should be.)

Anyone other runners out there?  Training for any races?  Does anyone know why I started to get intense knee pain once I started running 5+ miles?!  (Yes, I know, I should get it checked out.)

Let me know if you’re on Daily Mile too =)