Back In The Saddle

Welcome back, art teacherin' friends!  Due to having a student teacher, I haven't been day-after-day teaching since mid November.  I was a little worried about the pace of the day--would it seem so fast? Would I be exhausted?  Yes and yes, but no more than normal.  Because I'm totally new to teaching I've taught SIXTEEN YEARS, I decided a really smart thing to do would be to lecture all morning (introducing new cultures/art history periods) and paint back-to-back with 2nd, 1st and K.  Yeah, genius idea. You know how after a long break you get back into it and think "wow, this is really awesome?" Even with a strained voice and chapped hands from washing out paint brushes, that's the week I'm having.
Meanwhile, I have a very small adaptive group this week (3 students) and we've been working on painting some fish that we will later lace around the edge:

Gave them templates, they traced and cut them out.

Cutting with a para's help.

We glued them to another paper before cutting them out again.

Painting our fish.

Today when they came we were a para short (due to no sub), and the other para was also a sub, but a retired para, so I've known her for a while.  So this sweet, quiet little group is painting their fish and I'm just talking to them (they're SO QUIET) and Disney's Frozen is a favorite.  I was asking about different characters and Olaf was discussed.  I said "Snowmen don't talk! Oh, I guess Olaf does, and Frosty" to which the student said "Yep, but Frosty's drunk and Olaf. . ."/something I don't remember because the para and I looked at each other quizzically.  The para mouthed 'drunk?!' and I nodded.  So there it is, friends, and it explains so much: Frosty was a drunk.  Must be why he was so jolly.