Tonight's picture was taken in April of 2004. For Mattie's birthday that year, we put up paper, puzzles, and all sorts of activities on the wall for him and his cousins to do! Mattie just loved the whole notion of coloring on the wall! So much so that I left the papers up for days so he could continue the fun. As you can see in this photo, Peter got home from work and Mattie immediately engage him at the door with a marker and wanted him to start drawing on the wall!
Quote of the day: The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. ~ Pablo Picasso
I had my first kindergarten class art session today at Mattie's school. It started at 8:30am. Not my hour, especially since I was up yet again working late. I have been teaching this three part art series for five years now. It is hard to believe, because it seems like just yesterday I was struggling to develop the curriculum. My experience teaching has always been with adult learners. So the notion of teaching 5 and 6 year olds was rather daunting! Yet having raised a child, helped tremendously because I knew how to gauge the attention span and understood what appealed to their curiosity.
After Mattie died, Donna (another kindergarten teacher at Mattie's school) asked me to tea in her classroom. Mind you I really did not know Donna. I only knew her through my friend Junko, since Junko's son completed kindergarten in Donna's classroom. Over tea Donna mentioned that she wanted to find opportunities for me to come into her classroom. She had heard that I came into Mattie's kindergarten classroom when he was a student, and that Mattie's teacher appreciated all my efforts. Which was lovely to hear. But again, as I reminded Donna, my teaching experience was not with little ones. As Donna continued to talk she asked me my interests and I must have mentioned I loved art. One thing lead to another and she told me about the children's book by Nina Laden that she reads to her class entitled, When Pigasso met Mootisse. Clearly the book is about Picasso and Matisse and it touches upon these wonderful artists but in a farm animal sort of way. Donna had always wanted to take the next step and build upon the concepts in this book but just never had the time. That is where I came in..... five years ago to be exact.
I spent months researching Picasso and Matisse. I got to know about them separately as artists as well as their competitive relationship with one another. In many ways they were jealous of each other and yet at the same time intrigued by the other. They studied one another's art very closely and in a way mimicked the other at times, as they painted similar content and scenes. Though they had drastically different styles.
My goal is to make these artists come alive for the children and I find the way to do this, is to insert real life details about the artists' lives into my talk. Details that a child would find interesting and memorable. Such as..... Picasso loved to keep a messy studio. In fact, his studio was lined with garbage, dust, and even had mice in it. He preferred painting at night and in complete silence! Picasso began painting as a child and I show the children art work he painted when he was only 14. By the end of today, the children learned that Picasso was born in Spain, that he was the Father of Cubism (which wasn't well received at the time ---- painting subject matter by using shapes), painted from his imagination, and was very influenced by his emotions (as he had blue and rose periods of painting as a result of sadness from the death of a friend and happiness over falling in love).
I know the children also love stories! They are used to hearing stories from books and books tell stories through words. Today, I explained to them that paintings also can tell stories! However, the stories aren't conveyed in words. Instead they are conveyed in colors, shapes, and patterns. These colors can make us feel a certain way and yet we do not always react the same way to a color. For example, I may feel one way about red and you may feel a different way about it! To illustrate my point, I took a sheet of colored paper and taped it to the back of Donna. Only the students could see the color on the paper. Donna had NO IDEA what color was taped to her back. I then asked the students to describe how the color made them FEEL! Based on their descriptions Donna then had to guess what color she was wearing. She was wearing the color red! Interestingly enough two distinct feelings were expressed by the class.... angry/mad and happy!
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