Art a la Carte

A number of years ago, I think around the time Anthony was in first or second grade, they did away with art class at our nearby elementary school--budget cuts. Some time since then, the PTA bought a program called "Art a la Carte" and relied on parent volunteers to "teach" art in school. I helped in one of these classes a few years ago for Natalie's class. The other mom was the one who figured out the lesson and I helped her set up and teach the class. It wasn't any real instruction besides showing them how to put together an art project.

This year, the PTA was able to pay for a part-time art teacher. Each class has art once a month, usually on a Wednesday. The art teacher said she sometimes comes in on Friday also to mount some of the artwork. Parents hang the artwork in the hallways. It looks very cool to see all the different art projects from each class as you walk in the school hallways.

I missed Eric's first Art a la Carte class this year. By the time I found out the schedule, I couldn't switch my days off. I was able to get yesterday off, so I volunteered for the art class. This time was so different from the first time. The art teacher had a really great way of explaining to the first graders how to draw pumpkins. She had them draw circles around their spread-out hands. For the taller, skinnier pumpkin, she had them close their hand and draw around that. Some of it seemed a little beyond what some of the kids seemed to be able to understand, but some kids were definitely able to understand and follow along. For example, she was using oil pastels and she showed how you could start with a lighter color then when you layer a darker color on top of the lighter one, you could blend the darker color and make it lighter. Some kids really got that and drew the lighter color first then the darker color. Honestly, I was a little surprised that even some of the boys followed along. Eric just colored all over, using what colors he liked, not really trying to layer any colors or anything. The art teacher even taught them a little about Art History and how Cezanne drew still life using apples.

When it came time to color in the "sky" or "ground", or even the pumpkins, Eric showed that he didn't care about coloring in the lines or trying to cover up the background paper with color. It was a little hard for someone like me who likes to stay in the lines, but I let him have fun with it. She was trying to get the kids to put down a pretty solid block of color from the oil pastel crayons. Eric wasn't interested. Some of the moms tried to color in some of the backgrounds. I let go and let him color the way he wanted to color. He really enjoyed the art lesson, and he seemed to really enjoy that I was there. In the end, his picture turned out better than I originally thought it would. The pumpkins sort of looked like pumpkins, even. Great job, Eric!