Art-Tastic!!

Today was my day for hosting the co-op. My topic was art and my goal was to teach to kids to recognize different art forms and to be successful at creating art pieces appropriate for their age. I always find it difficult when I'm instructing because Mason and Mickey are always so excited to have their friends over that they find it difficult to settle down for me. Anyhow, I had to cut my discussion shorter than I would have liked but we still had fun. The kids were given three different faces on popsicle sticks; a happy face, a no emotion face, and an unhappy face. When I showed them a piece of art, they held up the face to show how they personally felt about a piece of art. Then they could explain their feelings. I was happy to see that they didn't worry about what others felt but instead maintained their own opinions.

We created a few different works of art. When they first arrived they did a piece with scribbles creating different shapes. In the shapes they had to fill in the space with different patterns. This got them thinking about different line types and different designs. I was really impressed with what the kids produced. Mason could have worked on this for an hour. He actually finished it when everyone left! I also paired them up and they drew each other. The point of this exercise was for the children to recognize details in what they are looking at. I also had them make a value line to learn how it feels to use the pencil to make different values. We did some painting and mixing of paints. We created all of the primary colours and the secondary colours. We also added white and black to our favourite colour to create a value chart.

All of these items were put together in a portfolio which I made up for each of the kids. I think it's always a good idea to keep a collection of work and progress.