Are there S'mores at Art Camp? · Craftwhack

January 25, 2022 Post a Comment

My kid is incomparably non a squad sports kinda girl, only she does have a ton of 9 year old energy, then I wanted to find a specialty day military camp that she would savour for a few weeks this summer. Hello, Fine art Camp.

Fen partook in a week of art camp and I was so impressed with the level of projects the kids got to piece of work on, not to mention the architectural walking tour of Chicago they took, that I hounded the camp director, Jacqui Neidhardt, to allow me interview her. (Actually she was quite gracious when I asked her. Plus she fifty-fifty sent me photos to utilise in my mail!)

Maybe you lot could tell me a piddling about how and why you lot got interested in pedagogy art to kids.

My involvement in teaching fine art started at a very young historic period. My aspiration of becoming an art teacher began when I was in second course, the usual age children begin to ponder what they would like to exist when they abound up. But, unlike my friends, who hoped to be firefighters or astronauts, my dream task was an art teacher. I think my unique interest stemmed from my love of drawing and painting as well as my admiration for my elementary schoolhouse art teacher. We but had art once a week, and information technology was "Fine art on the Cart", but it was my favorite part of school. It challenged me to recall outside of the box and use my imagination. So, from so on, I worked toward my goal of becoming an art educator, and I recently graduated from Elmhurst Higher with a BA in Fine art Education, and so I experience that I accomplished my goal (at least the outset major hurdle).
Prior to entering higher, I was in search of a summer task that I would savour and involved working with children. I fortunately found the EPD and EAM's Summer Arts Camp, and started equally a counselor. I had such a wonderful experience creating and teaching art lessons to children, that my years at camp merely reaffirmed my dearest of education art. It is now my fifth year at Summer Arts Camp and I my second twelvemonth as Director. I honestly expect forrard to my summers because of how much I enjoy working camp and seeing all the young artists blossom throughout the duration of camp.

Practice you have a favorite project when yous piece of work with kids, or i that tends to surprise you the well-nigh with their results?

As for a favorite project, I am having difficulty choosing just one lesson. Every summer we attempt to create an entirely new gear up of lessons because of the inevitable echo camper. So I've probably taught or aided students in over 150 lessons thus far. But, from my recent experiences this summertime, I can option out two that were really successful. The first is the Outrageous Dada Collage project in which students are challenged to invent outrageous graphic symbol "combines" past combining magazine images together. Nosotros use Dada collages by Hannah Hoch and Raoul Hausmann equally inspiration. I've taught this a few times, and every time the children come up with such imaginative, humorous characters. I've washed this same collage claiming with older students (high schoolhouse/college historic period) and I find that, in general, they aren't as successful considering they lack the uninhibited creativity of a child.

The 2d project that was very successful this summer was a printmaking project in which students fabricated their own Adinkra textile. The original concept of this lesson was one that was introduced in my collegiate elementary art methods classes, but I took the idea and altered it to something that I thought would produce even amend results. In this lesson, nosotros talked to students nearly the Akan people of Ghana and their famous Adinkra fabric. Students looked at examples which lead to a brief discussion almost the importance of symbols in Akan art. Students and then created their own cloth by completing the post-obit steps:

i) Students chose a 12″x18″ slice of colored construction paper on which they created decorative borders, using markers, and mapped out 4 bare boxes in which to print, 2) Students created 1-2 symbols which they then carved into 2″x3″ E-Z Cut Printing Blocks, three) Students printed their symbols in the bare boxes using washable, colored printing ink. Overall, the results were awesome!

What are the well-nigh important benefits of kids learning art?

There are so many important benefits of children learning art, but to ensure I don't go off on a tangent, I will stick to my two favorite. Showtime of all, our ability to use critical thinking, make decisions and judgments, and produce creative ideas define united states as human being beings. All of these qualities are embraced by the learning and exercise of art. Without art experiences, children would be defective evolution in these very of import human functions. Secondly, fine art encourages individuality likewise as collaboration. In art class, children learn to be more than accepting of different ideas or cultural differences and as well use fine art to find commonalities among their peers. An art-centered temper offers itself to an open customs that allows each student to express themselves in a way they feel best represents their ideas or emotions. Equally a student, I always felt near comfortable in my art classes for this very reason.