Community -Based Learning

Learning in a community-based setting is extremely beneficial to children for many reasons. One reason is that it allows the children to get out of the academic environment and explore their surroundings outside of the school. This allows them to have hands-on experiences outside the classroom such as observing art in a museum, or taking in different cultural aspects of their community that might otherwise be overlooked. This type of learning is beneficial for the teacher as well, as it not only lets the teacher provide a different means for teaching, but it allows him/her to have their own experiences teaching and learning what works best for the children outside the classroom. Community-based learning allows for the teacher and children to explore different settings, different mediums that might not be available at a school and enables the classroom to meet new people and explore different works of art that can only be found within the community and not in the school.

Museum Art Program: Ages 8-10

1. Dream State (First Impressions and Descriptions)
- Aesthetic Dev elopement: Journal entries describing initial reactions of works of art, emotions provoked, memories remembered, thoughts and descriptions.
- Foundational Activity: Use journal entries to create poem based on initial reactions, emotions, thoughts, etc.

2. Play State (Analysis)
- Aesthetic Development: Pick a theme ie. Family and use the theme to have the child find a work of art that coincides with that theme.
- Foundational Activity: Find within the group a person with the same or similar theme. Describe why the different paintings coincide with that theme. Make a list of different characteristics.

3. Research
- Aesthetic Development: Have the class arrange for a guided tour of the museum with a member of the museum staff.
- Foundational Activity: Split the class into groups. Each group receives five descriptions (made up previously by the teacher) and are required to match the descriptions with the paintings.

4. Metaphor (Interpretation)
- Aesthetic Development: Select one painting or one characteristic of a painting and have the children describe how they interpret the painting.
- Foundational Activity: Change a specific object within the work of art and get the children to describe how the meaning of the art has changed with the different object. ie Switch a cigarette to a pen within a painting, how does the meaning of the painting change?

5. Concept (Judgment)
- Aesthetic Development: Keeping with the theme, have the children choose a work of art they did like and one they did not hand explain why for both.
- Foundational Activity: Within small groups, share with each other reasons why they liked or disliked the works of art they chose.

Museum Experiences

The most meaningful experience of a museum that I have experienced was my visit to the War Museum in Hull, Quebec. This visit was so meaningful to me because it successfully depicted aspects of WWI and WWII that I have already been previously interested in. The characteristics about the museum that are most memorable to me were the tomb of the unknown soldier that was placed in a solitary room with a skylight and when 11:11 am comes, the skylight is positioned just so the light hits the tomb in a beam of sunlight. I did not get to see this phenomena, but the knowledge that that happens gave me comfort and happiness that unknowns soldiers who were killed are still be recognized and appreciated to this day. The second aspect of the museum that hit me hard was the exhibit of war propaganda. There were hundreds of different posters that encouraged people to fight for their country. This exhibit is also a good example of how art can be used to provoke, encourage and sway individuals. The War Museum was so enlightening for me because it incorporate a subject I was already interested in and made it into a visual display that I was able to take a lot from.

Preparing Unit Plans

The main issue that arose while preparing my lesson plan was my lack of knowledge of my child as an individual. I have yet to meet her, and only know the characteristics of her personality and learning abilities that I have been told. This lack of knowledge, on my part, has made it difficult to know if my unit plan will be successful.

Furthermore, I do not think it is possible to anticipate every detail of the situation I will be working in. This cannot happen because there is always the possibility of spontaneous learning, which is highly possible with my plan of taking my child to an art exhibit. The reaction of my child to the art that is shown to her may completely change the process of the project I have so far planned for her. I realize that I need to be prepared for many different circumstances that may arise during my unit plan.

The only measure of safety I feel that accurately needs to be addressed is how the child feels about traveling outside her home with a stranger. Of course, her mother will be present, but I want her to feel comfortable enough to leave her home with me and experience an art exhibit. I do not know if the child has had similar experiences before, and there is the possibility she will shy away from this suggestion. For the rest of the project, I feel the child will be safe considering I am only working with one child, therefore my focus will not be distracted, as well as, her mother will be there supervising as well. As for materials, I now have the knowledge of hazardous materials as providing in Nadine Kalin's chapter, "Don't Run With the Scissors".

Studio Projects

The studio projects that were done this semester were very useful not only for putting out helpful ideas of art projects to do with children, but for discovering what worked and what did not when it came to creating the projects themselves. The painting and drawing project presented to our group was interesting because we were able to create a picture of an animal by looking at a picture, thus given the opportunity to practice drawing in realism, but the project also allowed the flow of creativity in the second part of the project. The painting portion enabled us to create our animal in a different position and/or setting and therefore gave us the chance to create a painting from the imagination. The sculpting project was also beneficial. Our group was required to place our hands in a mystery box, feel a certain texture and then recreate that texture while sculpting a monster. Not only did this project allow for full creativity in creating a creature of any kind, the incorporation of a texture made us think objectively about how to recreate that texture in a creative way. This exercise also made us think about different kinds of textures that could be made from different kinds of materials encouraging us to explore different materials that might have not been experienced otherwise.

These studio projects allowed me to learn about the different ways of creating art and that there is no standard procedure to follow. Art can be defined in a plethora of ways which makes it so useful and fun, especially for children. Art projects is an excellent way of promoting a child's imagination, as well as being a successful way of teaching a variety of subjects and/or concepts.

Breaking the Grip: Drawing Beyond Anxiety and Visual Realism

I have little drawing history. As Kalin describes in her article, however, my tendencies towards drawing have not been as positive as other art students' may have been. I have had these negative feelings towards drawing because I have never been very good at creating a realistic picture through drawing which is often how good drawing is viewed. Growing up, I was never taught how to properly draw or been inspired to draw. I only had art classes up until grade six and after that I never had the confidence to try my hand at drawing. Kalin's chapter reassured me that drawing does not have to meet up with conventional expectations of realism, but can be experimented with. With this experience of drawing and with the information gained from Kalin's chapter, I feel I will be able to help a child with drawing anxiety by accepting the child's individual creativity. I can introduce the child to different forms of drawing and reassure them that realism is not the only form of drawing and their individual style will be embraced instead of judged.

Questions I will ask my child's parent about her learning characteristics:
What are your daughters initial reactions to drawing?
Is she willing to attempt drawing and experiment with this kind of art form?
Is she aware that there are other ways of drawing besides using a pen or pencil?
Does she feel like her drawings may be judged or that she is not drawing "properly"?
Would she feel more comfortable drawing in a collaborative project or engaging in individual projects?

Dcumentation and Peer Teaching Projects

Documentation is an important factor in teaching and a child's learning. As a teacher, documentation can be challenging because you are only one person trying to document an array of other people. It is useful to have parent volunteers or teachers aids, then, to help with the documentation process so no important aspect of a child's learning is missed or overlooked. Documentation can also be challenging for a teacher because your main focus is to teach the children and enable them to learn from their art experiences. Documentation can easily become a distraction for the teacher and is one more thing that a teacher must plan and prepare for along with the learning activity itself. Volunteers, again, come in handy when larger projects that require documentation are being done.

The peer teaching projects that we did in class were beneficial because it enables us to take on the roles of the teacher and the student. As a student, we were able to see what worked for us and what did not, as well as, what could be improved in our peer teacher's lesson plan. As a teacher, it was a good experience to create a project and have the experience to teach it to peer students. By teaching, I was able to see how the project was understood by my peer students and their reactions to the project which I can use to improve or change my project. I would incorporate peer teaching in an elementary classroom as a way of integrating the arts into core subjects. Students could gather themselves into small groups, similar to what we did in class, and teach each other different, simple projects of art relating to other subjects. i think this will give the students the opportunity to test their confidence and their creativity by teaching, and I think the students will have fun with it because it is a different kind of assignment and because it uses artistic concepts, the students will mostly likely have fun with it.