Puzzle Time! (Jan 25)

As a group we have developed a tactic to tackling this puzzle challenge. Brenda has segregated pieces which seem like they belong together. This procedure has proved very useful to attempting to complete the puzzle. Actually Brenda is quite the leader when it comes to the puzzle portion. She has dedicated time to sorting and placing the puzzles before and after class time. Great job Brenda!

In the puzzle project I think I play the role that supports other group members. I don’t tend to disagree with peoples suggestions. I am more of the person who tries to do the section that is not being worked on or proves somewhat tedious. I guess I don’t mind helping out anyway I can. I make suggestions and help out Brenda on pieces that she has some difficulties with so I guess I don’t play a passive role when working in groups.

Lesson Plan :Drawing/Painting Assignment (Jan 22)

Project: Diptych
A diptych is usually a pair of images attached together. In this assignment, the student must create a pair of images using the drawing and painting medium using their favourite animal

First Panel:
Get a picture of a favourite animal and draw it with pencil and/or pencil crayons from observation. A picture of a real animal from a photo, book, magazine, or the internet.

Second Panel:
Paint the animal in watercolour doing whatever you like. You can paint the animal, running, asleep, playing with other animals, in the jungle, in outer space, etc…

Materials needed:
Two sheets of thicker paper or watercolour paper
Pencil
Pencil crayons
Watercolour
Brushes
Container for water (yogurt container)
Palette/ flat plastic top (for paint)

Justification:
-provides learning from observation and accuracy
-teaches the learner to work with different materials
-allows the learner to also work from the imagination and to draw from what they've seen and what they know
-provides the child with ownership for their work because of choice with favourite animal
-second portion provides the children to display understanding or interpretation for the animals new action/position

Brainstorm for Children’s Art Lesson Plan- Drawing and/or Painting (Jan 22)

Age group 8-10

Smith, N. R. (1983) Experience & Art: Teaching Children To Paint. New York, NY: Teachers College Press
This book brakes down teaching painting to children by “Learning the Elements” which is about how children learn patterns and design, “First Representations” which explains how children work with the paint material , and “Picturing Experience which gives some rationale to images children create. The author breaks down age groups to how they tend create images which is pretty helpful for lesson plan considerations to specific age groups.

Ages 5, 6, 7
Animals and Objects
Regress towards accuracy

Ages 7, 8, 9 Drawings
Regress towards accuracy
Metaphorical
Relationship with friends and others

Ages 10, 11, 12 Drawings
Relationship with environment
Symbolic meanings

Wilson, M & Wilson B (1982) Teaching Children to Draw: A guide for Teachers & Parents. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc.
This book explores how children perceive drawing and how they use drawing to learn about themselves and their environment. This authors also talks about the influence to pop culture and how children use these visual sources for inspiration and to develop drawings. This is helpful for parents to learn about their children’s artistic development and to find ways to get involved.

Influences on Art Making
Accomplished experience
Relationships developed
Television and film (pop culture) Annotated Bibliography

Goal: Find a lesson plan that can incorporate all these factors and elements

Hollistic Development - Discuss Questions 5 and 6 (Jan 20)

Discuss Questions 5 and 6
How will you create a holistic portrait of the learners in your classes? What will you need to know about them and how will you apply your knowledge?

As a teacher of art, why do you think the knowledge of holistic development is important in providing appropriate instructions for your students?

Creating art to meet the learners needs is very important. I think addressing the learners needs and interests and incorporating those attributes into their art would create an open experience and making something meaningful for the student. The question of how can I create a holistic portrait in my class is a very challenging question because students are individuals and have their own interests, strengths and weaknesses. I know generally teachers would most likely lean towards a self portrait project which may or may not get the student to include interests and other attributes of themselves.

Another challenge to this question is that different students excel in specific media. Some students are more comfortable at drawing and some tend to favour sculpture. To get all the students to make a self portrait of themselves to which ever medium they are comfortable with would be good except that helping individual students with their specific mediums may be time consuming.

I think an interesting twist to a holistic self portrait project for students would be to make a poster advertising themselves as a product for consumption like a toy or action figure. Students in this era are more knowledgeable with technology which will be good for the students. For the students who are not as knowledgeable with technology, they will be able to learn from peers and from playing with the photo editing programs and the cameras. The students can also list off their strengths so they can focus on the positives. As a teacher this provides me useful knowledge on the learner and provides a friendly way for the students to learn about each other.

As a teacher of art, knowledge about holistic development is important because you can teach the learners something that is applicable to their needs and something that is relevant to them. The learner is the audience that the teacher must cater to and not the other way around.

Puzzle Time! (Jan 20)

We’ve progressed quite a bit with the puzzle. This is pretty interesting because first I’m not bored of it and I also feel a small sense of accomplishment with finding the right pieces together. I think what makes this puzzle a lot more fun for me is that the picture reference is a lot clearer and since the puzzle is made with different mosaic pieces, it makes it easier to find the right pieces together.

How do Sylvia Kind’s ideas about children’s art relate to those you have held? How can they guide you as you approach practice? (Jan 18)

Chapter 2 of StArting With…Windows to a Child’s world: Perspectives on Children’s Art Making was very helpful with looking how children made art. Sylvia Kind, the author of the book, brought into perspective how children’s thought process proceed when they create art. I think that some of the things she talks about in this chapter are vital to understanding the children’s needs which gets overlooked. The part when she talks about how children start out drawing from what they know and regress to drawing what they see definitely resonated with me. It reminded me of my personal experience growing as a child.

While growing up, I definitely started out drawing what I know and drawing to what I see. Also Sylvia Kind mentions how children’s drawing “regress” to trying to draw with accuracy because they are trying to please their parents, teachers, or other forms of authority. I think that the form of regression in the drawings she talks about are the children’s confidence in their drawings and their use of space. I started out drawing on random sheets of paper I’d find and I remember them getting rejected by my parents for not looking “good” and I valued their opinions very much. Eventually my drawings went to a single image on a sheet with no background. The background for me wasn’t as important or as necessary as the main image. I guess in that sense my drawings regressed without me know it. Eventually as my confidence grew in drawing, I’ve developed to put in the background,.

I don’t necessarily think that it is entirely bad to take out the background. When working with grades 3 to grade 4, their needs is to do draw accurately and through observation. These skills are important to develop so a lesson plan around the this concept is not a bad idea. That is not to say that children should be completely left in their comfort zone. Children should be challenged appropriately in a way that the challenge allows them to grow and take something with them as opposed to leaving them in the dark with no direction.

Nature of Children and Preconceptions (Jan 18)

Children are curious. If I had to describe them with one word I would say they are curious because they are at an age of their life where they are trying to make sense of the world around them. They want to know how everything works. They want to be treated with the same respect and dignity as an adult. With that said, children copy people who they respect. Sometimes their curiosity get them into a lot of trouble because it leads things to getting broken, lost or coloured on. Children also do not have a developed sense of what is wrong or right in the norms of society. They learn these things from their parents, teachers, and other adults.

I think children’s curiosity and excitement can be misinterpreted for being obnoxious. Also sometimes children acting obnoxious is a way of them testing and learning modes of behaviour. Sometimes people don’t have the patience for the learning process of children so they just label children as a problem to be dealt with by someone else. Children’s curiosity makes them sometimes seem needy because they want to be included with adult activities. Sometimes children want to be independent and do things by themselves. Other times they are curious but at the same time afraid to make act because they’ve been taught that they are incapable and need help. Either way they are curious because they want to learn whether its from school, adult figure, sibling, or television.

The role of teachers is to understand their students and be able to teach the children in such a way that is more for the level of their students. This requires a lot of patience and understanding. As adults it’s easy to think that the students are of either lower or higher set of skills than expected. This is because students have individual needs that make them different from other students. The teacher has to understand they are a role model for their students and as a good role model, they need to treat all their students with the same amount of respect, but at the same time be able to accommodate for the students individual needs. Another challenge a teacher has to face is finding the even medium between the individual and the student as a whole.

After seeing James and the Giant Peach, I guess it was more of the discussion after we saw it that I learned a lot more from. First off, the movie is too black and white and the characters were too flat. The audience chosen for the film are targeted more for children. I remember seeing the movie when I was grade 3 and I still thought it was okay. What I didn’t take into consideration was how James had demonized his aunts. I guess with movies like this, you just take everything you’re given, but I never realized how children tend to demonize adults on the basis that they think that the particular adult is treating them unfairly. I guess parents give their children attention and when they have to share the attention with a bunch of kids, there will be times that the child would think the teacher is being unfair when they actually are being fair. Children’s understanding are accurate to an extent but they make sense of things in a different way than adults.

Puzzle Time! (Jan 18)

First off I would like to thank Brenda for buying our puzzle! It looks awesome and very intimidation..

I would also like to say that puzzles and I do not mix… While growing up I’ve never ever finished a jigsaw puzzle by myself or even with a group. I also have a tendency to lose pieces… This part of this course is definitely going to be a challenge for me. There is something about puzzles that just doesn’t appeal to me. I guess this is because I am not a very patient person, nor am I the type of person who can sit down and do something. That is strange coming from me because with tasks I can usually sit down to get the job done. I guess one thing that is pretty good about the puzzle portion of this class is that it’s only 10 minutes. I guess another thing too is that I’ve never worked on a puzzle with a group. This might be interesting because I’m not too sure how I function in a group setting with puzzles.

I would like to say that I generally am able to work in a group. It is not my preference because you have to compromise ideas and its not that I’m not able to do that, but the part where everyone has a different direction and trying to find a compromise is usually difficult. Also it depends on the group of people I’m working with too which makes the project interesting. So I guess we’ll see how this goes.