Wabi Sabi, Happy accidents and Beautiful Oops!

One of the biggest challenges for an art teacher (besides getting the kids to pack up properly and get the work done in the time allocated!) is the balance between teaching kids 'how to draw', encouraging development and understanding of ways of looking and recording what they see in front of them or in their imaginations and and letting their own natural creativity and quirky, wild imaginative drawings survive the 'teaching process'.
Another challenge that I have found to be surprisingly common of late for all year levels is the "I can't draw syndrome". I say surprisingly because often the younger kids don't care a jot if they haven't got it exactly right and just enjoy the drawing for drawing sake telling wondrous stories as their page fills with all manner of images and inventive squiggles. But lately I have encountered more and more kids worried to take a little risk and make a mistake.
So over the last few weeks I have had a dual focus in my lessons. Firstly the arts elements of colour pattern and line but then also that of trying to encourage the kids to step out of their comfort zone and have a go, take a risk and make a mistake. Mistakes are important things that we all need to learn. I think that Einstein was quoted as saying after hundreds of so called failed trials of something or rather that he had not failed a hundred times but rather he had discovered a hundred ways that did not work...Perspective!
SO with this in mind I have been introducing the kids to some ideas around taking risks with their learning especially with art. Last year we spoke of Wabi Sabi - the perfection or beauty of things that are not quite perfect. The fact that often times the things that make something imperfect are the reason it is so unique and why we love it so much, think of your favourite battered old teddy bear or a baby's blankie. Or a home made cake, often they don't look perfect but they have more substance and flavour than the perfect store bought variety.
This year I have been showing the kids in years one to 4 this video clip bases on the book Beautiful Oops. Beautiful Oops focuses on the "happy Accident " approach to mistakes. Look at a mistake as an opportunity to make something beautiful, something different, or more interesting. This doesn't just happen it requires exercising your 'creative brain' or imagination.

Printing with Picasso

At the end of last term I introduced the kids to Picasso following a long weekend trip to Sydney to visit the NSW art gallery and the Picasso exhibition. (I was disappointed to find that while I was in Europe last year the Picasso Museum in Paris was closed for renovation- only to find that some of the collection had travelled to Australia while I was in France! So I just had to go and see it in Sydney.) I bought several books for kids while I was at the art gallery several of them focused on Picasso. They were fantastic picture books suitable for introducing this significant modern artist to the children from year one to seven.

For the older children I used a book called 'Just Behave Pablo Picasso'by Jonah Winter and another called Picasso and Minou. Both books introduce children to the life of Pablo Picasso and his personality in a readily accessible way in a fun enjoyable story picture book fashion.

With the children in rooms 19 and 20 (yr 4/5) I looked at some really simple line drawings of strange faces that Picasso had drawn. I used a book of step by step draw like Picasso for the kids to follow then they had a go at creating some of their own. From those we used the patterns and lines to create potato prints to decorate the surface of a piece of fabric.
 
The children in Rooms 2 and 3 (years 5-7) created collograph prints based on Picasso's cubist portraits these were then printed on paper and then fabric. These prints have been the basis of a textile project for these classes.

I made up sewing boxes for each group. Each box had a little pin cushion with a needle for each child each needle had to be returned at the end of each lesson before they could leave the studio - I don't think we lost a single needle!!  There were also sets of sewing cards that I had made up showing a variety of embroidery stitches. The children had time to practice and experiment with these stitches on scrap fabric before venturing on to the embellishment of their printed fabric. Most of the children had sewn before in previous years when they made their pencil cases. So apart from a bit of a refresher on knot tying and needle threading techniques the kids were off.
 
 I rarely thread needles for kids or tie knots rather I demonstrate each step by step and tend to show a couple of ways for the kids to choose from. Having said that I do make sure that I buy needles with eyes that are of sufficient dimensions to make threading possible at each year level while still ensuring that they will go through the fabric easily so the sewing process is not too tedious. You can see the kids have been working very well with this project, even though it takes time and patience to learn the skill and get used to the fiddly threads.

Here's a tip for any other art teachers out there. The kids had difficulty pinning their fabric onto the front of their bags in order to sew it on so I used a few dabs of craft glue (not too much as it makes it difficult to sew through.) to keep the pockets on the front of their bags so they could sew them on more easily.

Year 1s meet Monet.

 

As I mentioned in my first post,I recently travelled to Europe. While I was there I visited Monet's garden and bought this book called Katie Meets the Impressionists. 

I used the book to introduce the junior primary children to the impressionists, in particular Monet. We created fields of poppies inspired by Monet's work,

These art works were created over two sessions. Following the story in session one the kids created light and dark green using their fingers to mix cool blue and cool yellow with a mid green to make a selection of light and dark greens for their background.

At the beginning of the second session we learnt about the colour wheel and warm and cool colours using this video. (Be warned the music is a tad repetitive but the little kids seemed to like it!)

We created poppies by cutting or tearing warm red and orange paper, pressing them into our palms to create a 3D effect. We talked about how we could make some poppies look closer than others by making them bigger and putting them towards the bottom of the page.

Very pretty!