Wood Art Ed

I'm working with my second grade students to create Post-Impressionist landscape masterpieces. One thing that I find helpful is starting by looking at some work by artists like Monet, then working through some Post Impressionists like van Gogh and finally I like to end with Matisse. As we compare and contrast, by the time we get to Matisse, kids are noticing how Post-Impressionists tend to have wilder color that is less realistic than the Impressionists. Once, kids make this discovery by themselves, I like to pose the question of why artists would choose to paint with such wild colors. The natural response from a number of kids tends to be something like "to be creative" or "to make it pretty."While these answers have some truth to them, I then like to expand on kids knowledge base. One of the things I think is under appreciated about Impressionism and Post-Impressionism is the role of technology in influencing their work. The camera came about in the mid to l...

This is one of the sample projects I show kids for Square 1 Art. I used Keith Haring as the inspiration to help emphasize that kids designs should be bright, bold, colorful and fun. Every year I do Square 1 Art with the kids. I didn't when I first started teaching. I hated the idea of making money off the kids art by basically taking their drawings and selling it to parents on all sorts of junk. I became convinced to try it after parents came to me saying they wanted me to do Square 1 Art because the products were so high quality. Parents in my community genuinely wanted to have the opportunity to buy phone cases, mugs and other items with their kids art on it. What put it over the top for me was that Square 1 give all the kids a free sheet of stickers with their art on it whether they buy anything or not. That was key for me as it shifted this from a project I do to make money for the school into a project I do so kids can have stickers and get other stuff if they want. The...