A teacher I student taught with (at the elementary level) had buckets of
water at each table for the kids to do initial brush rinsing in. Then
she had them put them in a wash basin in the sink. At the end of class
she would spray the brushes off with a sprayer until the water was
clean, then lay the brushes out to dry.
I was mean a couple of years ago. I sent a note home to parents saying
I'd demonstrated proper brush cleaning techniques to their child, and
that I had a rule for checking if brushes were clean...they had to wipe
them off on their pants. I also included how to get our tempera paints
out in the wash, and asked the parents to talk to their child if they
came home with streaks of paint in their pants. I didn't have one single
upset parent, and had the cleanest brushes ever those two years. But my
patience for it wore out, and I just found it easier to re-wash brushes
in bulk when we did major painting projects.
Brookings Middle School
From: Woody Duncan [mailto:firstname.lastname@example.org]
Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2006 8:25 PM
To: TeacherArtExchange Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [teacherartexchange] paint clean up
24 students at two sinks trying to clean brushes never worked.
I assigned two students to clean brushes on a rotating basis.
One student from each table brought dirty brushes to buckets in the sink
where the two brush cleaners were. The cleaned brushes were sorted and
stood bristles up in various containers, (according to sizes - S, M and
L) for the next class. We used acrylic a lot so cleaning was very
important. This was Middle school.
On Nov 6, 2006, at 11:01 PM, Chantal Pinnow wrote:
> I am curious about what clean-up procedures some of you use for
> painting (especially cleaning brushes). I teach middle school and high
> school. Some kids are very careful with the brushes they use, but
> there are always those that bend the bristles every which way and
> leave paint in the brushes to dry before I ever discover it.
> -How do you make sure everyone is cleaning brushes properly?
> -Do you keep your brushes divided by sizes?
> -How do you keep community areas like sinks cleaned up?
> -Does anyone use the divided water buckets? How do you clean those???
Woody, Retired in Albuquerque