….and I’m still standing

I started writing this yesterday and I finished the whole piece when I pushed the save button for the last time. I had just added my tags and when I went to preview the post I discovered that an hours worth of work wasn’t there. Oddly enough the tags were there but all the photos and links had disappeared. I tried every thing to find the missing work but to no avail. I have no idea what I did but I was too tired to rewrite the piece so I went to bed hoping the the work would show up the next day. Unfortunately it didn’t so here I am rewriting the post again.

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School started on Tuesday and four classrooms in our school had been converted into temporary kindergarten classes. A flood earlier in the summer delayed the construction on our new kindergarten addition. The workers were pulled from our job site to repair the damage that occurred in other schools. Needless to say, opening day was far from a normal day.

As I suspected the library was one of the classes affected. Two of the four kindergarten classes have since been able to move into their new spaces but the class in the library wasn’t one of them. In fact it will probably be another six days before the other two classes can move into their new homes.

So it’s art on a cart, which I’m used to anyway but now I also have to do library in a box as I travel from room to room. The staff is anxious to start using the library but I’m not able to unpack my books or rearrange the furniture for at least anther week. It’s a maze of boxes and book stands.

The kids have been great. They look forward to art classes and every class has greeted me with cheers and hugs. I started each class reading the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds.

This is a wonderful book about making your mark in life. Vashti, the main character in the book insists that she can’t draw and her teacher encourages her to put a mark on her blank paper and see where it takes her.

From here I introduced Wassily Kandinsky’s Study of Concentric Circles. Kandinsky never intended to sell his study of circles. He merely wanted to experiment with colour theory and see how colours looked when they were painted side by side. Little did he know that this would become an important piece of work in the art world.

I’ve used this lesson with every class so far. This was one of my very first art lessons when I first started teaching my own art over 14 years ago. This time around I added a new twist to the assignment with the older students. I will share the results with you later next week when they finish the project.

Yesterday I was asked to give an art lesson to the JK/SK class. I came across a wonderful blog, Prek+K Sharing, that focuses on lessons for very young children and lo and behold I found an art lesson using Kandinsky’s Concentric Circles. I decided to use crayons with the junior students and let the seniors use the watercolours. I’m glad I did. The difference in abilities between the 3/4 year olds and the 5 year olds was quite amazing. All in all I was very pleased with the outcome.