I had two amazing helpers, Ms. Ashley and Ms. Majestic. These two young women were in constant motion as we set up, cleaned, up, set up, cleaned, up, filled cups, dispensed paint, set up, cleaned up, washed brushes, wiped tables, on and on and on. Children at art camp complete three to five projects per day, which take a lot of prep work. Ms. Ashley and Ms. Majestic seldom needed to be told to do anything- they were eager to help and often took the initiative to do what needed to be done without any direction. Thumbs up! (Thank you, ladies!)
The week covered a variety of fun themes, as all of our camps do. Every week of camp will be totally different and feature fresh projects for everyone to enjoy. This week we enjoyed The Sky's the Limit, Aloha Art, The Noisy Paint Box, A Day in Central Park, and Flying Down to Rio. See below for copies of the newsletters that we sent home with each child for each day. I like to create newsletters for my classes so that parents can understand the intent behind our projects and see how one thing relates to another. Sorry for the typos; I'm usually doing these at about 7:00am the morning of class with my eyes barely open. I'm a wonderful planner, but I'm equally good at procrastinating. One way or another, everything always gets done!
There were so many projects this week, it's hard to pick the one I liked best and thought was the most successful. I'm leaning toward the abstract painting on canvas, inspired by our Kandinsky lesson. The children really enjoyed the freedom the activity provided and spent time thinking about their use of color and composition. I love the way their paintings came out. They were all very proud of their work.
A very teachable moment revealed itself during the lesson. As I was describing the process of abstract painting (well, one process anyway- there are many!) a child said "you can just do whatever you want, with your eyes closed!" On the contrary, I explained. Although I'm sure that blind art exists and can be considered a sort of art-making process, most abstract pieces have a lot of thought behind them. There is a sort of process and craft in where, how, what, and why elements are used in particular ways. Happenstance painting does happen, but that doesn't mean there isn't any thought behind it.
The second and third runners up would be the wooden carnaval masks, painted in watercolor and adorned with feathers and jewels, and our Central Park cityscapes, drawn in oil pastel and painted with chalk pastels. Those came out really neat. Of course, I was too busy to take pictures of the works in progress or the finished products. Oh well!
The most challenging project for the children was the frisbee painting. I thought it would be fun for the kids to create different things they might play with in the park for our Central Park day. Painting plastic can be a challenge, even with paint that is supposed to work on plastic. Too much water, too much smearing, can make the paint bead up and have a faint look. To remedy the problem, I instructed the kids to "dip and dab," using little dabs of paint on the frisbees so the paint was thicker and brighter. A happy coincidence was that we were also discussing Georges Seurat's work that day, which offers wonderful examples of pointillism. Our frisbee painting (near) fiasco actually turned out to be a great way for the kids to experience painting with "points."
We have so many more wonderful things to look forward to this summer- I can't wait to share them with you and your kids! I hope you will join us for one (or more!) of our camp weeks at The Big Red Barn. Thanks for your support!
