The Power of Art

I am so sorry I have kept you, my limited public :), waiting! I have been so busy with our new school year and I've been having a blast! I love my babies! Have I told you that yet? :) Ok, so let me tell you about something great I do with my kids that they love and I love. Some teachers in the younger grades have "Fun Fridays," where they spend the last 30-45 minutes of the day doing something fun to break up the monotony and hard work of the week. Well, I do it too, but our "fun" is art! We are not lucky enough to have an art teacher or an arts program at our school. We do have Music, thankfully, but no art. So, I do the art teaching. Art is so important to a child's education because it teaches that creativity does not always come in the same package. It allows students to develop of love for art and learn about the many different ways to express themselves.

Ok, so there is my short version speech about why I think art is so important in school. Here's what I do. When Fun Friday rolls around, I have picked out an artist for us to study. I introduce the students to the artist, tell them who it is, where he/she is from, about when he/she lived, and talk about the artist's style. I will then show them samples of work created by the artist. Usually I limit the art samples to the style I want to focus on that day. For out very first artist study, we looked at Piet Mondrian. We talked about his style, the word "abstract," and how he used thick and thin lines to create boxes of different sizes, and only a few colors. I showed them several samples of his paintings, the ones that included only primary colors as well as some others which used a sampling of other colors as well. After the study, we created our own art in Mondrian's style. I gave each child a ruler and markers. ( I was not ready to dive into paint yet :) ) I let the students draw lines on their paper, as many or as few as they wanted, both vertically and horizontally to make boxes like Mondrian did.  Then they traced the lines with black markers, making some of them thick if they wanted to. Then I told them they could only pick out 3 colors or less, and then choose which boxes to color. The kids had a blast! They loved every minute of it. I will say again what I said last school year when I started doing artist studies on Fridays; It doesn't matter who is your class, one who is super well behaved or one is off the wall, regular ed or special ed, when we do art, everyone is there. All the students are into it, all the students are performing, all students are learning, all students are having fun, and you have the most well behaved class in the world. That, friends, is the power of art. It makes every kid proud and engaged.

Ok, next week comes around and another Fun Friday comes. Who did we study? Henri Matisse! But wait? didn't he do some not so child friendly art? Some, yes, but he also did some spectacularly child friendly art, particularly in his later years. I taught my darlings about Matisse, told them about his life, showed them some of his early works and talked about that style, the focused my attention on the meat of my lesson, his cutouts. We looked at a bunch of his cutout artworks, which were as diverse in pattern and style as my kids are. The kids really liked looking at them and talking about what they thought his pictures looked like. Then it was time for them to get to work. I had all this scrap construction paper that I was "saving" but never used. (C'mon, you know what I'm talking about, you've got a box too!) Well, I don't anymore. I placed a bucket of scrap construction paper at each group and let them go to town. The kids love that I tell them art has no rules when it comes to creativity, they can make whatever their hearts' desire! You would not believe the different pieces of art that came out of this activity. I am going to get the picture of the finished products and post them. They are so diverse, not a one is alike. I was so proud of my babies!

Aren't they having a ball!! They loved it!

This last Friday we studied Andy Warhol. The kids loved seeing Marilyn Monroe in different colors. (even if they have no clue who she is) We talked about pop art, what it was, and saw several examples of it. Then I gave students a blank piece of paper and had them divide it into 6 sections. In each section, they drew the same basic image, then colored each one with different, bright colors, just like Andy. Of course, they loved this activity too. I just love art! And so do they! This is the power of art my friends, and I encourage you to find its power as well! It is not nearly as hard as you might think to start teaching art in your class. Don't let it scare you. In the words of Ms. Frizzle, "get messy and have fun!"