Art Educator
Saturday Art School
During my Spring 2017 semester at Penn State University, I developed an eight-week curriculum unit for a class of 27 preschool-aged students. The unit was titled Movements of Making, in which we discovered the ways in which art is also a movement experience. I set up provocations for this topic by doing yoga, explaining movement underwater, mixing colors, discussing clouds, and exploring music. The experience commenced with an exhibition of the students' work, that I had the opportunity to curate with some help of the student artists. Keep reading to learn more about my experience!
UNIT FLYER
I created a flyer to hand out to parents on the first day of class in order to give them an understanding of what their child would be working on for the next eight weeks.
LESSON 1: EXPLORING MOVEMENT
For the first class of Saturday Art School, students were introduced to the idea that movement can be used to make art. We kicked off the class with a game of freeze dance to discuss how our bodies are moving. We then discussed different action artists, such as Heather Hansen who makes spirographs, Tom Yendell who paints with his feet, and Brittni S. Winkler who creates large scale paintings with her body while doing yoga. To allow students the ability to use movement while taking part in art activities, the classroom was set up with different centers. These included: doing yoga poses with different yoga cards, drawing with feet, blowing colored bubbles onto paper, and manipulating sand. Each student had the opportunity to take part in each center and do their own form of "action art."
LESSON 2: MOVEMENT UNDER THE SEA
In this lesson, students used movement in nontraditional and traditional ways while revolving around the theme of “under the sea.” Students used the method of crayon and watercolor resist while also using the movement of their breath through straws to move around watercolor to create sea creatures and the ocean. They gained inspiration by watching scenes from "The Little Mermaid." Students also created sea creatures out of playdoh and found objects. They then brought these sea creatures to "the fish tank," which was a backdrop created to look as if students and their creatures were underwater. A video camera was set up to capture the movement of the students sea creatures. To finish class, a sandbox center and an ocean sensory bag on a light table were set up to further exploration.
LESSON 3: EXPLORING YOGA
In this lesson, students learned the fundamentals of different yoga poses to incorporate into art making. Students learned poses by thinking about different animals and how they look. They then created animal masks to wear while doing different yoga poses on a large mat, where they traced each others hands and feet. We again talked about Brittni S. Winkler and how she uses her full body and yoga to create large scale paintings. Centers were set up to further exploration, which included studying shadows of animals and drawing them.
LESSON 4: MIXING IT UP
In this lesson, students gained an understanding of basic color mixing with the help of the books “Monsters Love Colors” by Mike Austin and “The Great Blueness” by Arnold Lobel. Students first painted their hands with a primary color and found a fellow student with a different color to mix and create handprints on a white sheet. Students then made windmills with two primary colors and spun them in front of a fan, which resulted in a mixed secondary color. Students engaged in color mixing centers which also included movement by doing marble painting and using salad spinners. Colored transparencies were out on the light table to show color mixing and a science experiment was set up to show food coloring crawling into an empty jar and mixing colors.
LESSON 5: EXPLORING MUSIC
In this lesson, students learned how different songs can evoke different brush strokes and movement in painting, using Melissa McCracken as an example artist who paints what she hears. Students listened to songs and painted how the music sounds and makes them feel. Students then created and played their own instruments while learning the basis of photography, including ribbon wands, drums, and bead shakers.
In this lesson, students learned how different songs can evoke different brush strokes and movement in painting, using Melissa McCracken as an example artist who paints what she hears. Students listened to songs and painted how the music sounds and makes them feel. Students then created and played their own instruments while learning the basis of photography, including ribbon wands, drums, and bead shakers.
LESSON 6: WHERE WOULD YOU FLY?
In this lesson, students learned about a public artist named Kelsey Montague who creates interactive wings. We discussed where we would fly if able to travel anywhere in the world and the students created drawings of where they would go. We then created tape resist paintings which were then cut into feathers and compiled into interactive wings.
LESSON 7: EXPLORING CLOUDS
In this lesson, students explored clouds. They gain an understanding of the way clouds move by observing them outside with binoculors. Students discussed the different shapes they created and what they saw in the sky. They then went back inside to learn and create a basic form of mono printing, using the back of a metal tray, thinned paint, and their finger. They added cotton balls and mixed in white to create different shades of blue.
LESSON 8: CAPTURING MOVEMENT
In this lesson, students concluded the topic of movement by going back to topics discussed in prior lessons. Students first paint planters in order to hold their windmills in the gallery exhibition for the following week, as well as created name tags for their work. They then played/moved while engaging in different activities in order to capture each other's motion.
SATURDAY ART SCHOOL EXHIBITION IN ZOLLER GALLERY
After the eight weeks, the students work was displayed in the Zoller Gallery at Penn State University. It was showcased for a week and ended in a reception that all students, families, and friends could attend.
