For the past 3 weeks I have been teaching third graders in an after school art program. We have talked about everything from Picasso and Cubism to symmetry and pattern. This week was all about Michelangelo. Being very hesitant over this artist due to the fact that pretty much all his images of people are in the nude, I wasn’t sure how kids would respond. So I did my best and made sure pictures were slightly blurry and taken from far away...far away. The last thing I need is foe kids to go home to their parents scarred with the image of Adam totally exposed. Yikes. I think my blurry and distant pictures did the job just fine. Anyways...part of the project was to create a story as a class. We pieced this story together with students wanting to include fire breathing dragons, elephants stealing peanuts, and princesses falling in love. It was quite a story. After the story was together I had the kids draw the story as if they were drawing it on the ceiling aka under tables. For the first few minutes I got a lot of “this hurts my neck,” or “this is so hard!” Then after a couple of minutes of finding their groove I think they started to really enjoy it! By the end one girl shouted, “I can’t believe Michelangelo did his on a huge ceiling!” They totally got the idea. Accomplished. I wanted them to try something new and to be challenged. To care less about the end product and more about the process of learning. Always an important discipline to practice and encourage.
At the end of class as we went through a quick review of what we learned. I found out that Michelangelo could also be called pistachio and he painted in the Sixteen Chapel instead the Sistine Chapel.
I give it to them. They’re adorable.
.JPG)
No comments:
Post a Comment