My background is in Art, Graphic Design specifically. I was on my way to a degree that would have me sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours a day when I got a job at a preschool, the first one since high school, and fell so much in love with what I was doing that I switched my major and my whole career trajectory.
That being said, I've had alot of art classes and use what I learned in them almost as much as what I've learned sitting in Early Childhood Education Classes.
One of my favorite art teachers of all time taught me two important things about art. One that to really be able to use a color you need to experience that color fully. She would always encourage us to eat colorfully. "you must taste the color before you can use it." I use this today to assure parents that really their little one is a budding Picasso, that is why he puts the markers in his mouth. This also makes sense when you think that we experience the world through our mouths first, before we start to incorporate other senses into our exploration of the world. Why would the exploration of color and drawing be any different?
The second most important thing she taught me was that when you draw using your whole body you come out with a very different result. We are taught most of our lives that drawing is an activity we do sitting down at a table. Along with that we are taught that smaller is better, art and drawing especially should be done on a 8x11 piece of paper max, and we are constantly entertained by media that is smaller than that. Now when any art history fanatic really thinks of this they have to disagree. Some of our most influential art pieces, around the world, are huge, almost larger than life. I'll let you fill in the specific examples here. So why do we teach that art is done when sitting down on a small piece of paper? This teacher gave us a paper that was as tall as we were and asked us to do a self portrait that covers the space. This lesson has stuck with me.
I love to do Gross Motor Art! For the layman Gross Motor refers to using the whole body, while Fine Motor refers to activities using the fingers and hands primarily. Art is many times placed in the Fine Motor development category. Now if you've ever met a toddler, having all creative expression be confined to Fine Motor activities seems laughably absurd. Yet all too often art is stuck on the table. I've worked hard to change this for the kids I work with.
One example was when we painted on a bulletin board. The center I was at had an amazing amount of cork boards everywhere and I was getting sick and tired of covering everyone up with paper and a border. I figured out that if I pushed a table up against the wall of one the kids could get up to it and paint on it. I started by putting up some cut out of clouds and covering the wall around the board with plastic. Then I game them blue paint and let them go at it.
It was a beautiful summer afternoon, and quite warm inside, so it made sense to have them in diapers as to not get paint all over their clothes. They had such a blast. I did have one that was just so happy to have paint that she ate it the whole time. The rest were so happy to be painting standing up!
By the end everything was blue! Even most of the kitchen we were painting in.
We all had a blast, the finished sky was great, it made it easy to put up artwork without having to put up a new background each time. That being said, I've had alot of art classes and use what I learned in them almost as much as what I've learned sitting in Early Childhood Education Classes.
One of my favorite art teachers of all time taught me two important things about art. One that to really be able to use a color you need to experience that color fully. She would always encourage us to eat colorfully. "you must taste the color before you can use it." I use this today to assure parents that really their little one is a budding Picasso, that is why he puts the markers in his mouth. This also makes sense when you think that we experience the world through our mouths first, before we start to incorporate other senses into our exploration of the world. Why would the exploration of color and drawing be any different?
The second most important thing she taught me was that when you draw using your whole body you come out with a very different result. We are taught most of our lives that drawing is an activity we do sitting down at a table. Along with that we are taught that smaller is better, art and drawing especially should be done on a 8x11 piece of paper max, and we are constantly entertained by media that is smaller than that. Now when any art history fanatic really thinks of this they have to disagree. Some of our most influential art pieces, around the world, are huge, almost larger than life. I'll let you fill in the specific examples here. So why do we teach that art is done when sitting down on a small piece of paper? This teacher gave us a paper that was as tall as we were and asked us to do a self portrait that covers the space. This lesson has stuck with me.
I love to do Gross Motor Art! For the layman Gross Motor refers to using the whole body, while Fine Motor refers to activities using the fingers and hands primarily. Art is many times placed in the Fine Motor development category. Now if you've ever met a toddler, having all creative expression be confined to Fine Motor activities seems laughably absurd. Yet all too often art is stuck on the table. I've worked hard to change this for the kids I work with.
One example was when we painted on a bulletin board. The center I was at had an amazing amount of cork boards everywhere and I was getting sick and tired of covering everyone up with paper and a border. I figured out that if I pushed a table up against the wall of one the kids could get up to it and paint on it. I started by putting up some cut out of clouds and covering the wall around the board with plastic. Then I game them blue paint and let them go at it.
I recently did another type of "wall" painting. We had a few kids talking about house improvements in the play house outside. I immediently went to "well lets paint the house". It being untreated wood, this is not the best idea. We talked about the fence next, and found that part of our fence is actually plastic and white, a perfect canvas. The next day we took them outside with paint brushes and big paint tubs.
Thanks for Reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment