Art Docent Fun

I am involved in numerous projects and programs at Madison's school but by-far the most enjoyable is the art docent program. Click here to find out the complicated version for how the program works. But the simple explanation is that parents volunteer to be an art teacher for the classroom. We are given large copies of art prints and each month we teach about one of the prints and artists and then create an art lesson to go with it. The main hallways in the school are lined with the students' fabulous artwork. It is such a joy to walk down the halls and see what they have created.

It is a wonderful way to keep art alive in the schools and ensure that REAL art is being taught instead of fun little cut and paste craft projects (nothing wrong with those, I did plenty as a teacher, but that is NOT art!). And I get play teacher for an hour a month, which I LOVE! It makes me realize how very much I miss teaching a class and also how much I could not handle it right now, as planning one lesson a month is plenty!

This year I am teaching Madison's class and one of the kindergarten classes too. So I get to do 2 lessons a month. FUN FUN! For October we had the artist Paul Klee so we focused on abstract art. It was really amazing what the students see in the artwork. They are so much more observant than I am and can comment on all sorts of things in the art that I would never notice.

We did a fun lesson where we "took a line for a walk". Using one crayon on watercolor paper we drew a continuous line, talking about zig-zag, curvey, straight........ Once the line was drawn we used BLEEDING tissue paper and painted small sections of the paper with water, overlapped tissue paper on top and then painted more water on top of that. When the entire paper was covered with tissue paper we peeled off all the tissue to get a great mosaic effect.

I go in tomorrow to teach the first grade our November lesson. We will be focusing on fore-ground and background in a landscape drawing. Hoping it turns out well! I was mentioning to Madison that tomorrow would be my art lesson, which got her very excited. Nora got upset and said that she wanted to be a first grader so I would teach her art ('um what do we do on a daily basis at home?????). I am looking forward to many more years of teaching the girls' classes, though I am going to have to do more studying as we go up in grade levels.