“I’m not good at art” “I can’t draw” “I never took Art in high school.”
Sound familiar? These statements are incredibly frequent during my conversations at parent/teacher conferences, and even among my peers. Why, among adults, is a talent in visual arts so black and white? To answer this you have to start at the very beginning.
When we had our first art classes, the vast majority of students (myself included) enjoyed the free-experimentation of basic “kid-friendly” art materials like tempera paint, safety scissors, crayons, Elmer’s glue and construction paper. Depending on the art teacher leading the class, the students were either encouraged to create and use their imagination, strictly observe, or create seasonal crafts. Many of these activities lasted right on through from kindergarten to sixth grade.
In middle school, everything changes, and a more formal art curriculum is taught, focused on pencils, ceramics, acrylic or even oil paint. Observational techniques and tips such as modeling with shading, atmospheric, one and two-point perspective, portraiture and figure drawing are introduced. The problem is that at this point, only students who make room in their schedule will receive this seemingly secret wisdom of the ages. Art is now merely elective in the student’s education.
In high school, the divide is even more vast, where in my experience, the students taking art classes are most likely planning to major in art or art education in college, taking courses like AP Art, and studio credits. Students now imbue their work with meaning, go on trips to local museums, talk about the cultural context of masterpieces, delve into defining what art is, and debate the legitimacy of groundbreaking new pieces.
Why are these essential activities reserved for only for those students who have chosen art as their career? Why are these skills introduced only after ten years of “experimenting”? It is after this period of time that the majority of students plateau in their artistic skills when they choose not to continue in middle or high school.
How can an adult understand how to draw a self-portrait, if they have never learned the basic proportions of the face, and how to draw the facial features using simple geometric forms? How can they hope to create a non-objective sculpture that expresses joy if they have never previously stretched that muscle?
Students as early as five years old can understand the importance of an art critique. They can judge whether a thing may or may not be “art.” They can understand the concepts of the horizon line and cast shadows. They can study anatomy and translate the workings of the human form into detailed drawings. They can speak extensively about the meaning they gather from their own work and the work of their peers.
At this critical time of development we need to teach elementary students what art can be in all of its confusing, inspiring, and complicated glory. Any concept that might be taught in high school or university can be presented in such a way that a first grader might gain basic understanding, and that a fifth or sixth grade student can devour completely.
Welcome to a new and exciting year at the Kingsley Montessori School Visual Arts program! In addition to our dynamic curriculum, we have some fun new projects: Upper Elementary portfolio prep for middle school interviews, opportunities to stretch photography and writing skills in the Yearbook committee, interdisciplinary links within each student’s classroom, art exhibits, and our third annual Create-A-Day Challenge beginning on October 3rd and culminating in a gallery showing on November 10th!
Our curriculum this year will begin with Art Criticism and Aesthetics, which is to say that we will ask the question “What is Art?” and attempt to answer it. Art Criticism is really just a fancy way to say that we have discussions about artwork. Every student from Kindergarten through Sixth grade will practice the skills necessary to view artwork and have an informed conversation using advanced art vocubulary. We will also discuss context for the artwork we view, placing artists and art pieces in their time period and culture to understand and extract meaning and purpose.
Our studio work will span most techniques of professional artists, beginning in observational drawing, then tackling sculptural forms through clay, wire, and even cardboard. We will then incorporate color theory before jumping into a painting unit to synthesize the skills of observation, shading, placement, color mixing, and creating the illusion of space. In the spring, our lessons take on a more conceptual feel, as we focus on meaning more heavily than the actual appearance of things in the world around us. We will experiment with media such as film, photography, animation, puppetry, and bookmaking.
One very exciting change is that we have a student teacher joining us until December. Marissa Poole is a student at MassArt, and she is very familiar with the Kingsley community through babysitting work for the Soderlund and Wheelan families in the Early Childhood program. From her frequent visits at dismissal, Marissa grew to know and befriend the faculty at the Fairfield building and decided to explore the Elementary program. Below, Marissa explains the philosophy behind her studio work.
I have always thought about how sixty seconds equals a minute, and sixty minutes equals an hour and that turns into a day, which turns into weeks, months, years. My work is based around this idea of little moments that add up to make a life. I normally see something or find something that adds to my day and take a photograph of it. From there, the photograph itself either gets incorporated into a painting/collage, or I just use it to fuel whatever it is that I need to make. This is an example of a photo I took that turned into a transfer collage.
It’s that time again. Springtime. In my mind, spring is the time for sock puppets. I love sock puppets. Sock puppets transcend age and skill level. Anyone can make an awesome sock puppet. Sock puppets can be whimsical and imaginative, sock puppets can take the form of self-portraiture, or your favorite person. Sock puppets allow you to create a dramatic rendition of the history of the impressionist artists in under an hour. They are cheap, expressive and accessible.
My kindergarten students are planning their sock puppets now, using the planning sheets that you can download below, which outline who their puppet is, what they like to do, where they live, and even special powers! This planning stage is preparation for character development exercises they will perform later as they progress in the Lower Elementary drama curriculum. Currently, the puppets that the Kindergarten students are imagining create quite the cast of characters: a dog, princesses and queens who eat sparkle cookies, racers, little girls, “keratas” that live in caves, aliens, and many more.
To begin constructing your puppet, gather these materials: glue gun (adult operated), single socks (can be found under your bed, or next to the dryer), buttons or googly eyes, felt or foam sheets, and any other material that will help you create your character, such as yarn, pom poms, pipe cleaners, old costume jewelry and scrap fabric.
You can easily make a great puppet simply by decorating a sock, but adding a piece of felt or foam to your puppet will help little hands open and close the mouth, and be a guide for placing facial features. The following directions will show you how to make a puppet with an inset mouth.
Heat up your glue gun as you cut an oval shape from the foam or felt that is approximately 3 inches long.
Lay your sock flat on a table and use scissors to cut a line following the sock’s toe seam.
Open the sock up at the toe end, from the slit you just made, and glue the edges of the sock to the perimeter of the foam or felt oval. This is a little tricky to do the first time, just make sure you glue around in the top half, attach the upper “jaw” part of the sock, then finish gluing the bottom half, and attach the lower “jaw.”
Now, the fun part! Using a needle and thread, velcro, tacky glue, or hot glue, add a face, clothes, even arms and legs or wings to create your ultimate puppet buddy!
I’ve seen time-lapse painting videos around, and had never tried my hand at it until now. This has some exciting potential as a medium on its own, as well as a pre-painting tool, to teach layers, and have students share individual techniques with their peers. If only you could narrate, too!
This is a “drop everything and check this out now” website!
smArt History was just suggested to me this evening, and I can’t believe that I hadn’t seen or heard about this amazingly rich and wonderful resource!
It has a wealth of art images, links, blog commentary, videos, podcasts and lessons. The site is navigated in an incredibly user-friendly way. Even their “about us” page is fabulous, and describes this tool in a way that I am loath to paraphrase:
In smARThistory, we have aimed for reliable content and a delivery model that is entertaining and occasionally even playful. Our podcasts and screen-casts are spontaneous conversations about works of art where we are not afraid to disagree with each other or art history orthodoxy. We have found that the unpredictable nature of discussion is far more compelling to our students (and the public) than a monologue. When students listen to shifts of meaning as we seek to understand each other, we model the experience we want our students to have—a willingness to encounter the unfamiliar and transform it in ways that make it meaningful to them. We believe that smARThistory is broadly applicable to our discipline and is a first step toward understanding how art history can fit into the new collaborative culture created by web 2.0 technologies.
I hope that you will share this with your family, colleagues and classrooms, it is as entertaining as it is insightful and educational.
During the month of January and February, all of my students will begin a journey though the land of color. Our unit will begin in the same way for each class, a simple color wheel. Students must create the hues of the color wheel; Red, Red-Orange, Orange, Yellow-Orange, Yellow, Yellow-Green, Green, Blue-Green, Blue, Blue-Violet, Purple, and Magenta using only the primary colors Red, Yellow, and Blue.
Color theory and optics are vital parts of every art student’s education up through the collegiate level! There are many wonderful resources on the web that can help enrich your understanding of color, and here’s a quick sampling of my favorites:
Causes of Color is a fabulous site that explores color from many different angles, including the science of Optics, and explanations for color in nature.
Color in Motion is a wonderful interactive media site that includes animation, games, and activities, that focus on the feelings and symbolism evoked by primary and secondary colors.
Color Theory by Worqx is slightly more text heavy, but also incredibly full of straightforward information with helpful diagrams.
This Color Mixing Game invites the player to match the hue of the bouncing ball by clicking on different colors to add. This is a great way to practice color mixing skills for painting!
It is important to note that many students do not experience color in a way that the majority of the world does, and these people are often categorized as “color-blind.” These students can participate in color theory lessons in a modified way, and have much to share with the class regarding their different visual take on the world
Color-blindness is the inability to distinguish the differences between certain colors. This condition results from an absence of color-sensitive pigment in the cone cells of the retina, the nerve layer at the back of the eye. Approximately 1 out of 12 males and 1 out of 200 women are color blind.
Sculpture at home may seem like a daunting idea, but many sculptural materials are not only easy to use, but inexpensive and tidy.
I love wire!
Wire is a great choice for elementary age artists, as the wire represents line, which makes a familiar link from two-dimensional drawing to three-dimensional sculpture. Students can clearly visualize how a drawing can become a wire sculpture by following the contours of their drawn lines.
There are many varieties of wire, ranging from thick aluminum to fine copper wire, and also colorful plastic coated wire more suited to younger artists, as it dulls any sharp wire ends.
Wire is also forgiving of mistakes and changing ideas, allowing for untwisting and re-twisting many times before the wire becomes too tangled to use again.
Below is a video tutorial demonstrating how to make a wire figure sculpture. You can create this and display as-is, or glue it to a base, add clay, aluminum foil or plaster to create a realistic figure with more volume. Try it at home with your family!
Hello, edublog community! It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and this is mainly due to having a busy school year without my fabulous co-teacher Kristin. On the upside, I am running the show, and finding tons of pleasure in crafting a curriculum that I’ve been wanting to implement for years.
One fabulous part of this school year is the opportunity to reach the community with classroom blogs through my school’s website. I can finally share all the work we’re doing in art class with parents, hurrah! So, without further ado, here’s my first post for parent viewing:
Welcome to a new and exciting way to communicate about the Visual Arts program at Kingsley Montessori School. This page is intended to give parents a better understanding of what goes on in the art room, show concepts behind skills and techniques, shed light on the “Big Picture,” and share artwork as well as digital media, such as audio and video, more frequently. This will also be the place to find links and resources to help continue learning together at home.
The Arts have many curriculum links into the Montessori Classroom as the year progresses, and we hope to enrich each child’s understanding of the world through song, drama, and art.
New this year in the Elementary Visual Arts program is “Choose Your Own Art Adventure,” where students can pick self-guided art activities, ranging from art criticism, to comic book creation and sculpting. The goals of this set of activities are three-fold: enabling students to independently choose work as they would in their Montessori-style classroom, to allow more valuable learning during “free-time,” and providing an environment for students to discover individual styles and talent through continued experimentation.
As the year begins, our curriculum focus in Elementary Visual Art will be on building an understanding of over-arching concepts in Art such as Aesthetics, Ethics, constructive criticism, and communication through visual media. We will try to answer the question, “What is Art?” and dissect what we like, what we dislike, what we do not understand, and why.
Due to the overwhelming popularity and success of our Drawing-A-Day Challenge and exhibit this past February, we will have another similar challenge during the month of October, with a corresponding celebratory exhibition to share our work in November. Details will be posted very soon!
This animation is just so clever. I’ve just received an awesome gift that should make creating projects like this a snap- a flip mino camera. I’ll post some samples of the video soon- so far I’m finding that it’s a great little tool that my students will love using.
I was lucky enough to attend a day of the November Learning Conference yesterday, which was an inspiring experience. After hearing some of the fabulous ideas at BLC08 today, I’m impatient to start planning for this coming school year. Unsurprisingly, one presentation that made me wiggle in my seat thinking about new possibilities was Joyce Valenza’s allegory of Pandora- where she challenged her audience to open their boxes, to ensure that all of these new tools are available to learners, that we invite our students into the teaching process, and do it all while practicing ethical use of information and media. It’s funny, I must have had what was similar to parental pride while watching my mom present, observing the excitement and admiration of the crowd. She was fabulous.
One issue I’m expecting to encounter is the wait, however. It seems that sharing our work is a “no no” in my school right now, while we decide as a school community what our policies are for online media. I find myself trying to think of ways to get around parental and administrative concerns through things like audio podcasting, which was beautifully illustrated in Bob Sprankle’sRoom 208 Podcasts. How do you skip around the safety and anonymity concerns in your school while still sharing and collaborating with these wonderful new tools and strategies?
There are many people, not in the teaching profession, who counter tales of woe from the education trenches with the phrase, “Yeah, but you get the Summers off!” to which many reply, “If you were a teacher you’d know that there is never a real Summer off.”
Well, for me, this Summer, it is real. Aside from a handful of week long gigs, I’m taking it easy until school starts up again. What am I doing with my time? I’m gardening, raising more praying mantids, unpacking my new apartment, and taking a family trip in August. In the art world, I’m taking a figure drawing class, and will be painting and scheming ways to get my artwork shown around the Boston area. I’m looking forward to planning next year’s curriculum with my music teacher buddy, especially our super secret ukulele unit! It took about two weeks to finally feel like I wasn’t playing hooky, but now I am blissed out from the free time I have. I am living the dream.
Teachers, if you take a Summer vacation, what do you do with your time? If you don’t, what keeps you working?
As the self-portraiture unit draws to a close, I can’t stop looking at these amazing in-process paintings. I am in awe, yet not surprised, at the creativity, skills and energy that our third graders have poured into their work.
In reference to a previous post, in which I sung the praises of risk-taking, this was a major risk. I had never done self-portraiture on this level with students so young before, and they had never attempted an acrylic painting this structured. Despite my fears, my students happily rallied to attack this challenge! (Note to self: don’t fear challenges with this group any longer!)
I’m tempted to put them on display, just as they are now:
Ukuleles are not, in fact, magic as I had previously devised. They require practice, which is the sticky widget for me, as I’ve never been one to practice any new hobby for an extended period of time (eg: piano, knitting, archery, yoga, bento…)
I’m trying to stick to this one, because I actually enjoy practicing. Hopefully my roommates and neighbors can say the same for my practice sessions- thankfully the ukulele is a fairly quiet instrument.
A music teacher and friend, Anne Sheridan, created this unit as part of her master’s thesis, and I love the intersections of dance, music, art and history. While her unit is geared towards middle school or high school aged students, the themes transfer easily to any age level.
This is a great example of how teachers can use voicethread to make a beautiful presentation, collaborate with colleagues, and organize lessons.
This project is one of uncountable scores of “instructables” on Instructables.com which proclaims that it is “The World’s Biggest Show and Tell.”
When I feel that I am lacking inspiration, I snoop around on this site and get excited about all the wonderful and strange things I can learn to create. This is a great resource for teachers in all subjects- instructables are all sorted by categories such as art, technology, science and music.
And in the spirit of Earth Day today, there’s also a set of instructables that are green.
(While this site is great for adults to browse, it is not always kid-safe, so make sure you check the content before you share it with students.)
Welcome to a new and exciting year at the Kingsley Montessori School Visual Arts program! In addition to our dynamic curriculum, we have some fun new projects: Upper Elementary portfolio prep for middle school interviews, opportunities to stretch photography and writing skills in the Yearbook committee, interdisciplinary links within each student’s classroom, art exhibits, and our third annual Create-A-Day Challenge beginning on October 3rd and culminating in a gallery showing on November 10th!
