And The Schedule Is Still Full

I think that by the time I'm able to get caught up enough to post regularly it will be Winter Term end and Spring Break Camp. 

I apologise for the lack of posts while I try to get acclimated to the full schedule. I'll try to at least catch up with some finished art from the classes I've been teaching over the last few weeks. Below you can see a few. I've branched out into low relief and sculptural elements. 

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

Camp

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week i taught the Winter Break Camp at Artspace. Camp lessons are an hour and fifteen minutes and planning for them involves more steps and detail than a regular hour long class. There is nothing I dread more than hearing thirty minutes into a class than "Teacher, I'm finished"

Of course I hear the dulcet sounds of that phrase nearly every lesson I teach  the younger groups (aged 3-6) so the dread is in the anticipation of it as much as in the utterance. I've gotten pretty good at redirecting back to the art but there's a good chance that the I'm done will be so complete for whatever reason (it's the last day of camp and it's two days until christmas and I'm just done already!) that I have to allow for it and hope that it's not contagious which it can be and then am I ever in for a bout of mild chaos.

This camp was no exception and I was prepared with an extra project on day one, the instruction to make another and as many as you can get to on day two and a fresh sheet with all the colours on day three.

So camp rundown:

Day 1:
multi step painting and collage of a winter forest sunrise to celebrate the Solstice

End of Term Catch Up

Blur. The last tow weeks are all a blur and a whir and something else that rhymes.

Fall term ended with altered portraits in Art Exploration. I'd love to share the final art but I don't want to violate the privacy of my students and their families. I can say that every one had lots of fun drawing and painting on top of each other's pictures.

From end of term I leapt right into a Parents Night Out class. I had my group create baby monsters from mixed media materials. With a group with ages 5 to 10 I'm pretty pleased with the outcomes.

Where's The Elephant, Cat Paintings and Pro D Camp work

It's really tempting to go in depth with each lesson I teach. Sometimes i's nice to just let the finished art speak for itself. 

Where's The Elephant? Art Sparks

Paint scraped over oil pastel cat drawings Arts Enrichment

Leaf Paintings Painting & Drawing

The Way Way Upside to Teaching to the Toddler and Preschool Set

Every child is an artist. 

The problem is how to 

remain an artist once we 

grow up. Pablo Picasso

And how you do that is by making a point to make art with toddler and preschool aged children as often as possible. In the two plus years that I've been teaching art to children and the two or so weeks I've  been posting about teaching art to children here; I've mentioned a smattering of times that my expectations for the final artworks for each of my art lessons is always exceeded by my little artists. 

It's how they approach making art that really does it. And it's really not that they all approach art making in the same way because boy do they not do that. What I mean is that they walk into the studio excited about making art. Even my highly anxious young artists dive into making art. Sure there are days that are better than others, there are days that the materials we use and the subject matter doesn't really do it but even on those days there is some form of visual expression that they can get behind. Even if it's just the first few minutes of class with markers and sketchbook the act of making art makes them happy.

In this week's Art exploration lesson I was treated to some serious observational skills from one of my young artists. An exploration of the materials and techniques used in the class that pushed outside the really good moment, pulled it back and pushed it further combined with a unique application that gave the creator's a super finished art work.

The lesson incorporates one of my favourite paint application techniques: gift card paint scraping and rolling. We also stamped into the painting with contrasting white paint. I pre-cut cat shapes and chalk pastel was used to add detail to the cat before it was glued down to the painting.

Perfect Square

This time last week I was steeling myself for the possibility of only one class on Saturdays and I am pleased to now have two sessions of Art Exploration classes for two age groups Saturday mornings. Art Exploration as the name suggests an exploration of art materials and elements for toddlers and a caregiver and for children aged three to five. Last week we explored oil pastels and paint on paper with leaves. This week we're looking at things from the shape of a square

A few years ago I was in the library looking for a picture book that had a focus on circles for my very first art class at Artspace. While looking for a circle book I saw sitting on the shelf a book about a square. I of course picked up this book and brought it home all the while wishing that my lesson was about squares (because back then I was a little more rigid with my lesson plans; I was a new teacher and very far out of my comfort zone so keeping within my plan was all about coping). This Saturday class will be based on the illustrations in that book and that book is called Perfect Square by Michael Hall.

In the past I've taught this lesson in two parts. Students would paint a rainbow onto mixed media paper and then in a second class the paper is transformed with scissors, folding and cutting into a picture that has it's inspiration from one of the pages in the book. This time around, because we have an abundance of pre painted paper at Artspace we'll be creating our art from the stock of painted paper. Focus was on choosing papers that appeal to the artists, composing an image onto paper and practicing scissor and glue skills.

The purple pieces were done by my toddler artists. Each one of the artists was fully engaged in the process of the art today. During the lesson I was talking abut how focus in the  lesson is getting engagement from our artists and not looking for anything specific within a composition, I went on to say that often allowing the freedom to engage with the materials brings out some very amazing finished artworks. Today's lesson illustrated that point to a T. Each of the artists in the toddler class was allowed to compose their image with very little involvement from their caregiver. My favourite parts of the lesson was watching the thinking process in where things were placed on the page. In all cases the artists made very specific and engaged choices for their work and it shows.

The Blue backed art was done in the Preschool class. In this class we had the same focus and engagement. Each artist approached the project in very different ways. From the deconstruction of the backing paper into a new shape (which referenced our inspiration book) to the minimalist compositions and the compositions that used multiple layers and or broke out of the image frame. I was very pleased by the outcome of each class and love that I get to share the work here with you.

More Flowers and Balloons

Just like last week I kept Monday and Tuesday lessons pretty similar. Since our Tuesday students are a little older and have a longer lesson than Monday, I added a few changes to extend the lesson. We started the lesson with a reading of the picture book Rose's Garden by Peter H Reynolds. I decided on a different book for this group because it was a little more involved than yesterdays while still keeping within the same theme.

My little artist's started their project by learning how to hold and cut with scissors; this is a skill we will revisit again and again with this age group. It's always a tricky lesson for me to teach and for the little ones to learn but it's very important for later when the same grip is used for holding a pencil. each child was given a piece of construction paper with a teapot shape pre-drawn on it. Following the instructions for holding and using their scissors each child cut out their own teapot. Every teapot is unique to the artist who cut it out. Some were given a little help by myself or my co-teacher, howeverthat number was considerably less than I anticipated. Given that the class size is quite big we did quite well with our cutting. We decorated our teapots with white glue and fine glitter and set them aside to dry.

We used balloons to create our flowers again filling our whole page with balloon impressions. Once our pages were covered in flowers we glued our teapot on top referencing the final illustration in Rose's Garden where the heroine's giant teapot sits as if floating on a sea of colourful flowers.

Ohika Collages and Assemblage

Today was a Professional Development day in the school district and instead of regular Friday lessons, Artspace ran full and half day camps. As I mentioned in a post this morning I taught campers a mixed media art exploration class.

We used the art of Magaly Ohika as a jumping off point for the day's project. Students used chalk pastels. painted papers, fabric scraps and yarn to create Ohika-esque figures. A handful of my campers took the opportunity to create purely from their own imaginations. 

Campers are split into groups based on age; With my older campers we turned the collage project into assemblage with the addition of circuit boards to the composition. I loved seeing how and where each camper placed the board into their art. 

My younger group focused on the collage aspect of the project. The project was fill of colour, pattern and texture.