Things I've learned starting a school art program

(Klimt inspired, gold paint and pastel)

Hi! So many things that make kids into happy adults are impossible to measure: people skills, grit, and I believe an appreciation for beauty and trust in their own ability to think creatively. Whatever we can do to nurture those things in children is time well spent, don't you think? We are in the third official year of the Parent Art Docent Program at our elementary school. I feel like I've learned a lot through trial and error in the last few years about getting something like this going, so I thought that I would write a little about my experience in the hope that it might save someone out there wanting to do a similar thing a few headaches. (Warning - it's super long and rambling).

First of all, in California, our state budget is in dire straits and our district has had to make huge cuts to survive the last couple of years. There is no money for art education (although we are still very fortunate to have a music teacher at our school), so four years ago I began volunteering in my son's second grade class each week teaching art history-based art lessons that I found in books or on museum websites. It was really fun and not as hard as I'd worried and everyone had a great time - me, the kids, the teacher - so at the end of the year I went in and talked to the principal about starting an official program where parents came in and taught art-history based lessons in as many classes as possible. She was on board and so I spent the summer putting together binders of lessons, mostly from museum websites, and powerpoint presentations for visuals to go with each lesson (all of our classes have LCD projectors that hook up to teacher laptops) that could be emailed to the teacher before the lesson was presented.

(animal mummy, before getting wrapped in gauze and decorated. clay)

The first official year was okay. We had a small but enthusiastic group of volunteers (the volunteers have been incredible. When I say "okay" that is in reference to my work figuring out the program, not to our volunteer docents) and at the end of the year we had a tiny little display of art in the school cafeteria. I hadn't done a great job of organizing the art during the year, so some of the art ended up not having names on it which I felt so badly about. We have since implemented a really obviously simple way to keep track of the art: we buy a bunch of poster board at the beginning of the year, and every student participating in the program gets a portfolio (poster board folded in half and stapled on the sides). All art made during the year gets put in the child's portfolio, and the portfolios stay IN THE CHILD'S CLASSROOM. Before the spring art show the kids choose their favorite piece to display, and at the end of the year the portfolios go home.

Another thing I learned: the binder lesson system I slaved over for the docents was totally unnecessary. Many of the volunteers discovered that they loved researching and finding their own lessons - which is so great! - so we ended up creating a school art docent blog, where we put pictures of finished pieces and links to lessons that we found online that worked with our supplies and classroom set-ups. There are zillions of amazing blogs out there that art teachers around the world maintain, which really have been our very best resource. A few favorites that always deliver: deep space sparkle, incredible art department, and art dish. Lately I've also been finding great ideas on pinterest.

Last year was much better. The program became clearer and simpler in its goals - mainly, to provide each class in the school with a parent art docent (hopefully regularly, but for sure at least once), and to have an art show at the end of the year to generate interest for the program and celebrate the students' work. We had 12 dedicated art docent volunteers who volunteered in classes all over the school and at the end-of-the-year art show, we had over 800 pieces of art displayed (and labeled!). We really struggled to determine the best way to display the art (to mat or not to mat?) but in the end we had such a small budget that we simply mounted the work by class on bulletin board walls lined with black paper. Simple and effective. Lots of families came, and the kids were so proud to show off their work. We recruited a string quartet from our local high school to play, and had free cookies and a donation jar. It was low-key but nice.

Speaking of budgets - another issue to work through is fundraising for supplies. We have a supply closet in the main office where we store our collective supplies, and in order to keep it sufficiently stocked we've partnered with restaurants, had a bake sale, sold t-shirts, and solicited donations. A couple of other great ideas: one of our docents last year came up with the idea of asking parents to "sponsor" lessons, which works well (she made a list of her lesson plans for the year, with the amount of money that it would cost for the class to complete each activity next to each lesson on her handout. For example: a lesson about Matisse, where the kids make collages with scissors and construction paper, costs only about $4 for a whole class. So it's fun for a parent to send in $4 and feel like they are facilitating a great experience for their kids, without it being crazy expensive). Every little bit adds up and helps! And second - a couple of weeks ago my friend Liz came up with the great idea of collecting leftover halloween candy, and making candy grab-bags to sell at school functions. I bet we can make over $100 this way over the next few months (for free!). Again, every little bit helps.

(inspired by Andy Goldsworthy)

(inspired by Monet's Magpie, watercolor and salt)

So there it is an a very long-winded nutshell. If your child's school doesn't have the resources to provide art, don't be afraid to jump in there and fill the need. You don't have to put a perfect program out there, just do your best, use parents in your community, and it will get better and better. Something is always better than nothing! It's been such a great experience, and every art lesson I teach inevitably ends up totally making my day. Not only that but I am so inspired by the other parents that work so hard to add their effort to our school's program. Amazing!

Are any of you involved in school art programs? And do you have any great ideas for me? (...ideas to somehow tie art into community service?)

pick up your brush

(Natural Patchwork giveaway winner is...

VIOLET MUNDAY!

email me and I will ship it off to you!)

Dear Melissa,

I always, always struggle to come up with meaningful teacher presents for my kids' teachers. They work so darn hard and get paid so darn little that I feel like I really want to do something spectacular for them when their birthday or the holidays or the end of the year roll around. I don't know if this is that spectacular thing or not, but it's one of my efforts that has now become somewhat of a tradition for me: the book of portraits.

I always do it on the day I teach our little portrait lesson (the main thing we do is to diagram a face on the board so we can talk about human proportion. It is amazing how helpful it is for children to show them how eyes are actually in the middle of that face oval - and that ears are similarly half way down one's head.)

Then I make the teacher be our model. Can you tell that my daughter's teacher loves the Oakland A's? And wears TONS of eye make-up? (kidding about the last thing. this picture is my favorite of the bunch)

They always turn out great, I think. Isn't this one above so Modigliani? Very graceful. While the kids are drawing I creep around the room and ask them on the sly what they think is the most beautiful thing about the teacher. Then I write that thing under their drawing. It is so sweet, what they say. Second graders love, love, love their teachers.

Love,

Lynne

Winter Landscapes

We don't get snow in our part of California, but I love looking at winter landscapes in January. Two favorites are Monet's Magpie, and John Henry Twachtman's american take, Winter Harmony (above). (Isn't this painting so peaceful? It totally reminds me of that muffled silence you feel walking in the woods in the snow. Beautiful.)

On this note we did a fun lesson in my son's class last Friday - the ubiquitous winter birch tree watercolor lesson. There are many variations of this concept online and I went with Patty's version (I think she is so creative, and her lessons always seem to work out really well).

Isn't this fourth grade landscape (below) spectacular? The second graders produced equally lovely paintings. Throwing salt on wet watercolor work was especially exciting for the kids (and me). This would be super easy for any parent to do at home, as well.

(By the way, I totally recommend using liquid watercolors rather than the cheap-o ones in the pan. The colors are so much more vivid and the kids' paintings come out beautifully every single time. It is well worth the trouble to track them down if you do any amount of art with your kids at all. Here's where we get ours, and keep in mind that a little goes a looong way. I use them pretty much weekly in classes of 30 kids and am only half way through each container of color. That's a lot of paintings! :) )

Blue Willow

"Blue Willow" is an animated short film made by New Zealand filmaker Veialu Aila-Unsworth, based on the old chinese fairy tale of Blue Willow. See the beautiful trailer here... and please tell me if you have any idea how I can see the whole film.

Doesn't it look lovely?

I found it when researching for an art lesson about blue willow ware, which was incidentally really fun to do in fourth grade last week. Go here for the original lesson, and if you'd like a link to the slideshow used to present the story to the kids, go here.

Paul Klee Landscape

We did Paul Klee in my daughter's second grade class this week - it was really fun. Here was my lesson plan, in conjunction with this slideshow that I've shared on slideshare (note: I have about an hour to teach the lesson, and I aim for our discussion/slide part to last for about 5 minutes, so it's not super in-depth. Also the kids are seven. :) If you were doing this with older kids, you could add more detail, etc. to the discussion.)

Paul Klee & the Color Wheel: slide discussion

-Understanding color is important as an artist. If you learn the language of color, you can use it to convey a feeling, provoke emotion, highlight certain details, or even to give your picture a temperature.

-Three colors - called primary colors - are the basis for the color wheel. These three colors can be mixed together (along with black and white) to create pretty much any color you can think of. RED, YELLOW, BLUE. (If there are kids in the class who happen to have shirts on that are R, Y or B, it's kind of fun to have them come & stand in front of the class).

-When you put opposite colors against each other, it makes the other color POP (complementary colors. Again, you can call kids up based on the colors of their shirts to demonstrate - for instance, put a kid wearing an orange shirt back to back with a kid wearing a purple shirt)

-Warm colors are red, yellow, orange; Cool are blue, green, violet. Warm colors feel like they are moving forward, while cool colors tend to make things look further away. (Have the kids close their eyes and think of the coldest place they can think of - and then have them describe the colors they see in this place; likewise with a hot place. These kids were talking about how your lips turn blue when you get cold, and how volcanos spit out red fire.)

-An artist who loved color was the great Paul Klee (1879 - 1940), a swiss artist who painted in the 1900’s. He used color as a language, to create a sense of place in his pictures (the Tunisian watercolors) or of temperature (The Nile painting - the blue and white squares tell the story of a cool river - we know it's water looking at it, even though we don't see the shape of an ocean or stream). We can guess how he felt about what he painted by studying the colors he used.

Project:

materials: small piece of watercolor paper (about 4" x 6"); Red, Yellow, Blue and Gold liquid watercolors (you just need a TINY amount of this kind of paint. We passed out little cups, with about a tablespoon of paint in each, and put one cup on each child's desk, with a paintbrush in it. The kids shared the colors with the kids sitting around them. Note that the paintbrushes stay with the paint, not with the child, as the cups move around so the colors don't get muddled), brushes (small are best); little cups or bowls to hold the paint

1. Pass out paper, & have kids write name, teacher, and grade on the back. Then have them draw a grid. (Note: in the interest of time, you may want to guide the kids to make about six lines total. Lots of lines make a more detailed painting - which is awesome - but it will take longer to finish). No one needs to worry about their lines being perfectly straight or even - imperfect is best with this project.

2. Creative thinking: have the kids take a second before they start painting to think about what they want to say with their art. Do they want to make a picture of a hot place? Or of someplace cold? Or of a place that's both of those things? Or make a picture that feels happy, or serious? Do they want to add any shapes like Klee did (look at the Tunisian paintings to see the domed roofs, or the volcanos...). If they want, they can create a horizon line to separate the earth from the sky...

3. Let the kids go to town painting. Guide them to try and use different colors in every square so they play around with mixing the colors right on their paper. The liquid watercolors are so vivid that it's really interesting to see what you get when you layer them on top of each other.

Water lilies

This last Friday in my daughter's class we made water lily pictures, inspired by Monet's.

We used water color pastels, which are so kid-friendly: I had the kids fill their whole page with color (the more complex their color combinations, the better), and then with water and a brush, turn it into a wash.

After the pictures dried a little (they were really wet!) they layered in lily pads, and flowers.

I thought their pictures were dazzling. I know we see Monet's paintings everywhere, all the time, and I think that over-exposure sometimes dulls me to how brilliant his painting was. I was looking at some of his water lily paintings (he made over 250 of them) - and they took my breath away, the range of color and feeling. I love the more abstract ones.

Go look, if you haven't seen them in awhile.

art lesson - andy goldsworthy

Our parent art docent program is off to a good start this year. It's been so wonderful to see other mothers (and I'm hoping for some fathers, too) step out of comfort zones and do this in our school's classrooms.

Last Friday I did this Andy Goldsworthy lesson with my son's class (check out all of the Duniway website's great lessons). We had a really interesting discussion while going through our slideshow, particularly over the question of whether the art installations, or the photographs, were the art (fourth graders can be profound, man!). Then we split up, went outside, and the kids got to work.

I thought their creations were breath-taking. (See some of Andy Goldsworthy's beautiful art here)

***

yipes! The link to Duniway's art lessons no longer is active - they have revised their site. If you are interested in the lesson plan, email me and I'd be happy to email you a copy.

modern mona lisa

Here's a sampling of our school's 7th graders' first finished art projects of the year - making a Modern Mona Lisa. (One of the kids even drew her with braces. Isn't that so funny?)

Here's the link to the lesson, which I found on a West Virginia Art Education site, if you're interested. It was really well put together, and easy to teach. I always enjoy talking about facial proportion with kids - it's such an eye-opener to really figure out where things go on a face, you know?

some lovely art

The Yellow House, watercolor by Van Gogh


Starlit Night, Georgia O'Keefe


Lierre, Matisse


Van Gogh's drawings of hands

I'm in the process of working really, really hard to start a parent-led art program (on a bigger scale than just one classroom) at my kids' school after coming across this amazing school in Portland. If you have ever wished that your kids did more art in school or had more exposure - but didn't quite know how to get something going - this is a great, concrete model. (Or, even just great art ideas to do with your kids at home). And incidentally they are SO nice when you bombard them with questions...

teacher portraits, 2009

Masterpiece on top by Modigliani; masterpieces below by some of the kids in my son's second grade class. We just did portraits of his teacher, like we did last year, so now I need to make them into a book for her end of the year present. It's so neat to compare last year's drawings with this year's...

Art Mondays: Landscapes

I love art. My obsession began when I was a little girl - I grew up right outside of Washington, D.C. and my parents took us to the Smithsonian museums all the time, most often the National Gallery, consequently one of my most favorite places in the world. Once I threw up there (right by the rotunda). Another time a friend and I pretended we were sick and wheeled around in wheel chairs (I'm not sure why we did this). Another time our seventh grade went there and some kid stuck a Hari-Krishna sticker ("be happy!") right on a Botticelli. Two out of the four times I ever skipped school were to go there (I know, I am such a nerd - one of the other times was to watch the whole 8 hours of Anne of Green Gables & Anne of Avonlea with my friend Suzanne because I don't want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want you). I've taken/dragged all (3) of my significant boyfriends there, and continue to bring boyfriend-3-now-husband and our 3 kids to it as often as I get the chance (which is a lot less now that I live in California and my parents are in Florida for a three year stint, volunteering for our Church). All of this is to make the point that I love art and I really, really, really, really want my children to find the same kind of joy looking at it that I get. It doesn't take anything but your eyes and heart to be moved by a great painting - no fancy clothes or money (*except if you have to buy a ticket to get in to the museum. Another reason that I love the National Gallery - totally free).

I've mentioned before that I'm the art mom in my son's second grade class - my son's teacher is nice enough to let me come in once a week and we have an hour to talk about great artists and great art, and then do a project based on what we've learned (definitely one thing that I've found is that the talking part needs to be really short). The first part of the year (and last year) I was kind of disorganized, just doing this or that, but I've finally tried to get my act together and write up the lessons in little units (like, landscapes, portraits, etc). Here's the first lesson that's in this format - an introduction to landscapes. I'm trying to make it so that if you are interested in doing a similar kind of thing in your child's class you can (if you need a starting point) print this out and have everything you need information-wise to present a little lesson/activity. I need to make the point though that I'm not an "art education professional" - just a mother with a degree in art history, so take it for what it is and absolutely if you have suggestions - send them my way!

A lot of the art activity ideas I use come from MaryAnn F. Kohl's book Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters, a book I highly recommend if you are at all interested in getting your kids into art. Also great is Sandi Henry's Making Amazing Art! 40 Activities using the 7 Elements of Art Design. Really good resources. I often start with an art activity idea from one of these books and then supplement it with more art history - lots of pictures and hopefully a good story or two (the Smart about Art series is excellent). We have an art timeline on the classroom wall, where we post up small images of famous artists' paintings to try and give a little sense of where the art fits in.

Finally - to find some statistics on the impact of the arts in education, see www.americansforthearts.org.