Winter Collages

For Art Exploration on Saturday I had my students tear paper and glue it down to paper that had diluted blue, black and purple paint rolled onto it. We added daubs of white paint and finished off with oil pastel drawings of animals on clear adhesive shelf liner 

My demo piece for the lesson

 I especially love the drawings of each animal. This class contains mostly ages three and four yeatrs old and their drawings are always so much fun to see

Back Into The Swing Of Things

Not that we've been out of the swing of things... perhaps what I mean is getting out of the Halloween imagery:

and onto something less holiday specific.

One of the challenges I'm finding with my Painting and Drawing class this term is the range of ages that my young artists fall into. I've found myself adjusting my lesson plans so that my younger students don't feel frustrated by their skill level and again so that my older students will still be engaged with the lesson. It's a thrilling juggling act and one that I take very seriously. I want my young artist friends to get as much out of our hour together as possible.

The images in this post are from a Painting and Drawing Pro-D camp I taught last week where the age range is about the same as for my weekly class. Regardless of what age my students are I am always able to talk to them about a part of their process that I watched them work through and what about their finished work I am really excited to see. While they are working I am also able to guide them in how they are approaching the project, sometimes giving them some insight that they might not have seen on their own. In some cases they have a very specific idea in mind and their finished art exceeds my expectations with very little input from me. Those are my favourite moments as a teacher; the ones where I get to learn something from my students.

As we move into November I've got some great new projects lined up for the Preschool classes and a multi week project for my older students that I am very excited to get started on.


If you are an art teacher how do you balance lessons with a varied skill level class room? Please share in the comments below.

And Just Like That

We are at the end of October.

In the spirit of All Hallow's I had Artsparks, Arts Enrichment and Art Exploration classes create Itsy Bitsy Spider Mobiles in the style of Rebecca Emberly. My Painting and Drawing students used charcoal and very thinned tempera to create Fox and Crow paintings and for All Hallow's We're revisiting The Fox and the Crow and adding a dash of bats for Art Exploration.

Painting and Drawing used The Fox and the Crow by Manasi Subramaniam as inspiration to paint these works of art. All of them are frameworthy.

I'll be revisiting this book today with my Art Exploration classes in character as the fox.

Pro-D Camp Eve

I have finished art from the last handful of classes to share. And I will but my schedule has been hectic and I haven't had a chance to get the images uploaded yet. they are coming I promise.

In the meantime here's a time lapse of what I've got planned for my Professional Development Camp tomorrow morning. I've got two very big groups to work with tomorrow!