Cleaning Brushes Using the 3 Bucket System
The students in my elementary art classes all want to clean brushes -- and they usually do it badly--each one making a different kind of mess in their own special way. Not to mention all the water they wasted. Without a sink in the room that means wasting water hauled in buckets across campus from the sink in the teacher's room. One day, while hauling water and dreaming of being a child again under the free and open skies of summer camp, a solution popped into my head.... how simple! (Note to parents: summer camp really does prepare a child for life). At camp each camper washed her own dishes -- rinsing, washing and rinsing again down a conga line of 3 buckets. In the art studio it goes like this: Line up the early finishers with brushes in hand. Set the pace with a quick round of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" (it takes about 20 seconds). Students sing again while 1-2 kids move down the line swishing their brush in each bucket along with the song. B