6th Grade Art at the Williams School

An embroidered pillow.

A woven scarf.

A woven eye glass case.

Many of my students have fallen under the spell of hand sewing and weaving. There is something about the rhythm and the satisfaction of making it yourself that will never go away.

Renewed interest in an old craft-Ojo dos Dios, or Gods Eyes!

A woven pouch

Many students have taken to weaving. This is a small bag woven on a cardboard loom. We have also been weaving on straws and making our own hackey sacks by weaving in the round on a plate.!

Many people, my students included think that artists are born with some special power to create and think of unique ideas. This of course is not true and so lately I have been spending quite a bit of time thinking of ways to help my students learn to cultivate ideas.

If you think about any art you may have enjoyed it was often a piece that reminded you of something or some feeling. The art had to do with everyday life. Teaching my students that their own lives can be the source for inspiration is one of my goals. You don’t have to make a picture with particularly exciting subject matter in order for it to be effective. I remember a simple painting of laundry drying on a clothsline that spoke to me in such a way that it brought back a flood of memories, the color in the sky, the way the laundry blew about in the breeze.

Right now in our room we have some long pieces of paper put up-one asks WHERE DID YOU GET YOUR GREAT IDEA? The other asks WHAT IS YOUR GREAT IDEA? Just by adding to this  list and reading it out periodically the hope is that my students will see that ideas come from all sorts of places,  and that some are grand and some are simple. I love reading it myself. We also talked about famous creative people and how some of their ideas came to them in weird places like while they were driving or in the shower.

Where  and when do you get your best  ideas?  I encourage you to share them with your children.

Thank you so much for visiting. This is the first installment of what I hope to be many. This  blog is in place so you can see what fantastic things are going on in our 6th grade art room.

As you may know my art room is set up so that students can work like the artists that they are. Each day we draw a bit from real life, mostly still life objects in order to hone our visual skills and learn about how practice will inprove the outcomes. Many students don’t think that they can draw while at the same time they consider drawing to be the measure of a true artist. What a delima! I am out to show them that they all can draw, they just need to learn how to see. I also want them to believe that despite current drawing abilities they are ALL artists.

What is an artist? I will quote a fellow teacher, Pauline Joseph in stating that an artist is some one who uses art materials to express an idea. Artists can have ideas and then choose the best material or they can get ideas from the materials that they are using. In any case students love to come into the art studio and see where their ideas take them. I hope you enjoy this journey with us!

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