The Art of Childhood

Back at the beginning of the school year, a flyer came home with parents asking for anybody and everybody to volunteer to teach an art lesson to the class once a month. 

As I was dropping Devin off at school the next day I stopped and chatted with his teacher about the art lessons — what a great idea it is to have art offered to the kids, especially at such a young age, how important it is for their developing minds to be creative, etcetera and so forth. 

His teacher approached me a few weeks later and told me, in a  bit of a panic, that no one had volunteered. She went on to say that if there are no volunteers there would be no art lessons for the kids. And, since I was the only parent who had expressed any interest in it, would I please, please volunteer to teach art. 

Well, yes, of course! Children going without art in their lives breaks my heart. 

I am not one for getting up and speaking in public, even in front of kids, but I remember my mom coming to volunteer in my classes while I was in elementary school. I remember that it meant a lot to me. And, I had volunteered in Aria's kindergarten class too, helping kids learn how to read and count. I certainly want to carry on that tradition with Devin. 




It's been a few months now, and I have started to get to know the kids by their first names as well as their personalities. 


I love how eager they are to learn, how imaginative and creative they are, and I love that art makes them happy.  There are about 22 kids in the class, and no project comes out alike, they are all so different and beautiful in their own way. 

What I love most is the fact that at this young point in their lives they are not afraid that their painting or drawing is not good enough or that the person across the table did a better job. They're not afraid to color outside the lines, literally. They think outside the box. Some of the stuff these kids have come up with just blows my mind. Each one interprets the lesson differently and it is so cool to watch it flow out on to the paper. 

They just do their thing without the fear of judgement or ridicule. What they are creating is bringing them joy, and that is it. Isn't that how we should all be? 

I hope I've influenced that a little bit. I've made it a point to tell them that there is no wrong way to do art. 

I love walking around the room while they are working, seeing all their creations and how excited they are to show me what they've made. I don't know who gets more out of it — me or the kids!

In past classes we have talked about using shapes to draw every day objects (heads are circles, desks are rectangles, etc.) primary colors and to mix them to make secondary colors, and contrast and they way two colors that seem like opposites can look good together.

So today we made collages out of construction paper. Each kid got a blank piece of paper and several different colors of construction paper and then were told to cut out shapes and patterns and experiment with overlapping the colors and shapes to make a collage.