Friday, September 30, 2011

Art is in the eye of . . .

. . . whoever’s gonna buy it.  Oh, I mean, all art is beautiful and amazing . . .
This week I got my first introduction to teaching . . . art, that is.  I am the Art Corps teacher in 2 of the three girls’ classes, and a helper in the other class.  Today I taught 2nd grade line drawings where they drew monsters and helped with 4th grade line drawings where they created solar systems.  Now, for someone who is a strictly paint by number person, I had absolutely no business teaching art, and here’s my pregnant, potato head line monster to prove it.


But, here’s what I learned about teaching art to children:
1)      When you tell a class of 2nd grade children they will be drawing monsters, there MAY be a huge shout of glee and excitement from the boys in the room while the girls can’t decide whether they’re excited or horrified at the thought of drawing monsters.

2)      When you teach children about lines, make sure you clearly articulate that scribbling in order to fill up the white space is not quite what you mean.  The Ego (middle child) got tired and bored by the end of her drawing and she decided that in order to fill in the rest of the page, scribbling would work.  Now, as her mother, I was inclined to scold the laziness, but as the art teacher, I had to tell her that it looked fantastic!  Now my tongue is bleeding from biting it all morning. 

3)      When the 4th grade children are asked to draw solar systems, and one of the items needs to be large and the focal point of the drawing, all the other children will draw planets, suns, or rocket ships.  Not your ubercreative 4th grader . . . oh no, your 4th grader will decide that the focal point of her solar system is an alien with a comet coming right toward it’s head.  I gotta give that girl credit . . . you never know what you’re gonna get!
I do have to say that Art Corps is an amazing program that is easy for parents to teach and in these times of significant budget cuts, this is a way to ensure that our kids are still getting art in the schools.  If you live in San Diego and it's not in your school and you want to learn more, visit www.artcorpssd.com.
And on a P.S., I had to include the picture below from my birthday on Tuesday.  The girls and their daddy made me a cherry coconut pie and allowed me to have Scooby Doo as my birthday candle.  It doesn’t get any better than that!

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