One of the most common struggles we all seem to have in teaching art, is making time for art. Join Deanna and Julie and they discuss HOW to make time for both Art Appreciation AND Art Creation for both your children and yourself.
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This is the last episode in season 1. We really hoped this podcast has helped you enjoy teaching art more. We’ll be back in April with Season 2. To be sure to you’re notified when we have new episodes:
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Episode #21 Highlights
When making time for art we have to discuss making time for both ourselves, as parents, and for our children. We also want to balance finding time for art appreciation and art creation.
Believe in Art
The first principle is that we must believe in the value of art, before we’ll prioritize it enough to make time for it. We’ll have an episode next season about all the benefits of art, but for now, we want to remember that:
- Art is important for a full life and a full education
- Time wasters don’t rejuvenate like creative endeavors
- The purpose of education is to prepare us for a life that includes work- not to turn us into workers
Art Appreciation
Here are some tips for making time for Art Appreciation:
- Use the Ridge Light Ranch Amazing Artist lesson plans
- Keep children’s art books in your home library. Our favorites are:
- Can You Find It… series from the Metropolitian Museum of Art
- Getting to Know the World’s Great Artists series of over 40 books by Mike Venezia
- World of Art’s Come Look With Me series published by Charlesbridge
- Choose a great work of art and springboard from there: check out a book from the library, Google it, color or trace a line drawing of it.
- Looking for a specific line drawing? Check our available line drawings of famous works of art. Want a line drawing we don’t have yet? Put in your request: julie@ridgelightranch.com
- Visit Museums- local or while traveling
- Look around in your everyday environment and in nature for beauty and inspiration
Art Creation
Here are some tips for making time for Art Creation. (Certain tips will appeal to certain personalities more):
- Choose a media that’s easier to clean up (colored pencils, instead of paint or pastels)
- Choose one media and work with it for a while to get familiar with it
- Keep art supplies easily accessible (when age appropriate) (See podcast episodes 5 and 6 for tips on organizing art supplies.)
- Be generous with art supplies (Deanna and Julie are going to really work on this one!)
- Get kids enthused with
- quick wins
- drills to improve skills (like Tracing)
- accessible art (like cartoons or whatever is your students’ favorite)
- Take a sketch book with you wherever you go- great for kids and adults both
- Take advantage of sick days and rainy/snow days to create art
