At the beginning of the summer I took a part time position with a favorite organization, and have been teaching arts/crafts classes with Day Camp and VBS. It has been fun, crazy, hilarious, and pretty cool, sometimes all within the same class session!
Some of the fun comes from a naive fearlessness, a little bit of personal crazy, combined with a willingness to clean up after it all. The artwork pictured here is not my own, it was completed by students in my class. The first two pieces of art were an effort to combine sports and art. The facility provided a number of old sports equipment, basketball, softball, wiffle ball, football, soccer, golf, pingpong, and a few other types of balls (and yes the 5th graders used that word a lot that day??). We combined the normal panting supplies, just no brushes. We each used a shallow cardboard box (thank you my Martin's friend), and dipped a ball or two into the paint and rolled it around in the box on our canvas. I am happy to report that none of the balls hit the wall, although we did add some colorful designs to the existing paint splatters on the floor, mostly by accident.
The other artistic adventure I was very unsure about, was bubble painting. Seriously, just a jug of Walmart bubbles, food coloring, straws and cups, and permission to blow bubbles until they overflowed the cup... and oh my goodness, what a mess! But it was fun! REAL fun! I want to do it again!
For this activity, after blowing the bubbles, we touched a piece of white cardstock to the bubbles and they left beautiful bubblemarks when done. Now this was not just my favorite because paint bubbles are easier to clean up than tempera or acrylic paint. It was just cool, with cool results! The colors were a little pastel, compared to other painting activities, but cool none the less.
This other project from today was splatter painting! And yes, now you know the true extent of my bravery! With our paints a little watered down, we splattered a variety of colors onto black paper that the kids had cut into the shapes of music notes and guitars. This was also fun as the kids adjusted the technique them selves, to splatter on the shape and that background; to splatter over a shape to reveal a voided version of the shape surrounded by splatter. They added more variations, splattering on multiple colors, splattering on other shapes, on my nose, and a few of us admired the splatter marks that even accumulated on our hands. Our hands not only completed artwork, they became the art!
Its hard to tell what the best part of all of this is? Maybe it is when I see the kids surprise themselves with what they are able to create? There are always a couple who struggle, but maybe it is coolest when you give those kids just enough help and they are able to create something to be proud of? Maybe it is the anticipation of a fun project that gives me the ever so valuable few minutes of their attention for a quick lesson? Maybe it is the pure enjoyment of it all? Or maybe the idea of the lesson, the art, and the kids altogether, glorifying God? Yep, I think that is it.
And if you watch, one of my follow up blog posts will soon be about the funny things they've said...