The fine arts are so important in school! (For a link to the research about the importance of fine arts in education, click here.)
I feel fortunate to teach in a province that values the fine arts. This year, my students will have one weekly 50-minute music class with a specialist. They will also have one weekly 50-minute dance and drama class, also with another teacher. I will teach my own weekly 50-minute visual arts class, as well as integrating music, drama and visual arts into other subjects on a regular basis. So that means that my students will have 150 minutes every week dedicated specifically to fine arts, in addition to any integrated art activities during social studies, literacy or math time!
My art instruction has been somewhat hit and miss in the past. This year, I'd like to be more intentional. I'm thinking about including three different types of art instruction throughout the year, so that children are exposed to a variety of media, approaches and styles. I'm considering including:
- weekly: art workshop, where we explore various supplies (pencils, crayons, paints, clay, etc), principles of design (lines, texture, emotions, etc) or media (ie. drawing, collage, sculpture, etc)
- monthly: "artist of the month", where we learn about an artist's style and try to copy it
- intermittently (or integrated into other subject areas): cut and paste directed activities, where students cut their own shapes and assemble them to create a picture
As in all curricular areas, my art instruction will be guided by the Ontario art curriculum. The curriculum document is newly revised and has a ton of great ideas and information. Specific expectations for grade one begin on page 67.
Cut and Paste art:
Our art curriculum is focused mainly on creating and critiquing art. We are discouraged from using "cookie cutter" crafts. That said, I think that there is a place for some directed cut and paste crafts in an art program, so long as they do not form the basis of the entire program. Cut and paste art is fantastic for following directions, developing independence and practicing shapes, directional words, fine motor skills and spatial relationships. While all children might be doing the same project, the finished products will be as individual as the children! Children feel a great sense of pride when they complete one of these projects. Once children have learned some of the basic cuts (how to cut a circle, oval, triangle, etc) and experimented with different ways to assemble them, then they could design and create their own, which would allow for more creativity.
DLTK paper crafts has dozens and dozens of cut and paste activities. While almost all of these projects come with a template, I have my children cut their own shapes rather than copy the template. I've done a few of these crafts in the past, and they turned out to be so cute and unique! Here are a few of the shape art projects available at DLTK:
bear * beaver * sailboat * car * chick * frog * lion * fish * penguin
TLC sells books with a variety of directed cut and paste art lessons. These lessons are much more elaborate and the finished products are more realistic than the DLTK projects.
They have 3 full sample lessons available as PDFs on the website. One is a semi truck, one is a fly, and one is Barack Obama. How's that for a variety of topics? Check out the sample lessons here.
Here are a few examples of completed TLC projects from the website:
turtle * duck * barn * groundhog * mailman * vulture * bear * cargo ship * sunflower * tree frog * giraffe
