Getting ready for our first YAM!

Happy Youth Art Month!

I am really excited for YAM this year. 

I've always wanted to participate in some capacity, but for some reason or another I never have. Perhaps this year its a combination of having the time and finally feeling like I know what I am doing in the classroom, for the most part. I might not have the most original lesson plans, but I can tell that my students are learning and they are producing great work. Even if we don't do a school wide initiative this year, I at least wanted to get that great work out there.

So, I've entered some student work into our state wide show. Each teacher is allowed five pieces. Its not a guarantee that all the pieces are selected though. In addition to the four pieces below, I am looking forward to helping with the show. I volunteered to hang up work on the Saturday before the opening. 

I hope that this is a step in the right direction for our little department. I have the equivalent of tenure on the first day of school next year and hope to make the most of it. If this show is a successful endeavor, then there will sure to be more in the future. 

 Art One, Grade 9. Collage.

 Art One, Grade 11. Scratchboard.

Art One, Grade 9. Pencil.

Art Two, Grade 11. Prismacolor pencil.

Please forgive the odd angles of these photos. I asked a Photography student to take them, as she has a much better camera than I. However, she didn't take them straight on. 

quick few things

here's the Visual Music display I put up last week. I was lucky to be able to display it outside the music room. just this afternoon, a teacher told me that she loves seeing the display on her way up to her classroom in the morning; that she feels happy and cheerful when she sees it.

third grade is still finishing up their "My Mona Lisa"s, and will hopefully be done tomorrow. I plan to take a break from our getting to know artists series and do some "old school" spring themed scratch art drawings. if they finish tomorrow, I will ask them to draw with crayon on a manila paper, heavy and dark, and not tell them why yet :)

second grade also learned about Leonardo da Vinci, but we focused on his sketchbooks of inventions and desire to draw everything he saw- how he observed and learned from his drawings. we learned how to draw a horse. then used markers, q-tips and water to create a sepia tone drawing.

we started this week a drawing of the old lady who swallowed a fly. the kids got a kick out of me reading the book! we will use a crayon and watercolor resist to complete these drawings and I will post some pictures too.

I am really looking forward to the middle school finishing up their current activities. 6th grade is working on emphasis and distortion self portraits. 7th grade has learned about pop art and roy litchentstein and making food designs using ben-day dots. 8th grade is finishing up drawings using a grid.

in honor of Youth Art Month, I had all my classes today write a quick response to "what does art mean to you?" hopefully I will have some good quotes for the blog... but also to make some posters to hang as advertisements for the upcoming, day yet to be determined, art show.