the upside of teaching art

As some of you know, I have a part time "day job" teaching art in a local school system to kids in grades 1-5. It has it's ups and downs, but there are some neat things about it, for sure.

Here's the first:


This is a little picture that one of my third grade students made for me at home. I really think it's cool. What you can't see is that she wrote: I heart Mrs. H on the little heart. My students all call me "Mrs. Heiniger" even though I'm not married. I've tried, (but given up) getting them to say Ms. Heiniger. It was just after Valentine's Day when she gave me this, so I thanked her for the Valentine. She quickly set me straight that, no this wasn't a Valentine. I really can't figure out what goes on in those little heads sometimes.


Here 's the other cool thing about my job: people give me old things all the time. They clean out their houses or the other teachers clean out their classrooms and they give me all kinds of junk and also very cool stuff, asking "Can you use this?"

I got this book Copyrighted 1960 yesterday from one of the teachers at school. I love it. if I ever get my eBay page of vintage stuff up, though, it's going up for sale. The cover is vintage 50's...
Front cover:


Back cover:


There are some tips on manipulating hand puppets which are quite amusing, and some are actually interesting. Here's one on "Listening": "Puppets should have good listening manners. A puppet should not move while another is speaking, and he should face the one who is speaking."

Well, there!