Art stuff.

The school I work at is bilingual. That means that they have double the classes than at any "normal" school. For example, from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. they have normal Spanish classes (grammar, history, social studies, math, science). Then from 11:30 a.m. they have English classes (grammar, spelling, reading, science, written and oral expression). They also have music, phys. ed., and social work. That's a lot of stuff going on. So there is really little time for Art.

A few weeks ago I decided to make a project with them in which they analyzed a famous art piece. Then the would connect written expression (a biography of the artist), sequence (a time line with world events of year in which artist made his piece), and grammar (using adjectives for describing the piece). Lastly. but not least, they would bring material to make their own interpretation of the piece.

They got really excited about this. The girls' piece was "Les bétes de la mer" (The Beasts of the Sea) by Henri Matisse, and the boys' was "Electrical Prisms" by Sonia Dalaunay.
Some children (6th grade) showed great interest in making their own creation, but sadly, many made exact copies. Some were just gazing into space and could not come up with any original idea for the project.
I feel kids of this generation are being deprived of their imagination. Too much T.V., X Box, Wii, etc. is doing all the thinking for them, thus the lack of imagination. Some had great ideas, but after a few minutes, lost their patience, and ended up doing a generic version. Same thing happened with the mosaics they made last week (will show in a later post). They want everything instanly, with no waiting, no fuss.

I am planning on continuing with these types of projects for the next few months to see how they react.
Hope this helps them get interested in using their imagination and creating .

Here are some photos. A bit of everything. Some originals, some copies. At leat they did something with their hands, which I think is a great thing. One step at a time.

Original.

They were asked to use the same technique (collage),
and keep the sea theme. These are not bad. Some were exactly the same.

Some of the girls' work.

Original.

Some of the boys' works.

This one was more or less the same.

But this one I liked.

My son did me the favor of changing the header of my blog. I wanted a photo of my own, so we looked for the instructions, and for a first time we think it came out pretty good (the best is that it was free). Another way of creating. Hope you like it.