Hope you all have had a fabulous week so far, the weekend is almost here again! YAY! (I'm pretty sure I can make it one more day.... focus Annie...)
Last week I was honored to be asked to participate in a Family Reading Night at a local Elementary School here in town. Although the main focus was obviously about reading and they had a big book fair, I was also set up in a class room to talk about illustration and host a drawing session! It was so much fun and I'm really glad I agreed to do it.
I did 3 sessions of 25 minutes to both older elementary ages and their parents/teachers. (In all honesty... the kids did better than the majority of the adults lol). The kids were excited to be there and it made me happy to see them proudly showing their parents their drawings afterwards. I gave them the option of picking the subject to draw soooo what we ended up with was...
Session 1: the penguin on my avatar. (Some of the girls saw it and wanted to try)
Session 2: the character Bullseye from Toy Story BUT he had to have Mater (Cars) teeth.
Session 3: a howling wolf and a rabbit. (the rabbit was hiding, I have a no blood rule lol)
It was a really great night and it made the kids happy and also excited for the art curriculum coming up in a couple weeks. I didn't take pictures of the kids, I wanted to but then I was afraid of putting them up on the internet with out their parents knowing and it made me feel like ehhhhh maybe I shouldn't. And they were ushered fairly quickly to the next thing (and cupcakes!) so I didn't get to relish their drawings. Next year maybe!
Next up, I wanted to tell you about something that happened today that made ME so happy :)
In my classes I have a system where the kids work towards a reward at the end of each trimester. I have a giant candy jar on poster board and they earn "gumballs" (those furry pom pom things) with good behavior, participation, and a chance to earn bonus gumballs. IF they fill up the jar by the end, then they earn a fun day with a small snack and something other than the curriculum. Last trimester I brought in Fantasia 2000 and had cookies. This time the kids decided they wanted to have a "Doodle Party"!
Try to twist my arm on that one! haha
Today I brought in some small pieces of sour candy for them (100+ kids!) and then I started them off on something fairly simple they could follow with. We ended up only being able to one drawing but we embellished a ton and filled up the entire page with drawing! That's hard for a beginner to do; I still struggle with filling the space.
This is from the first 4th grade class I did, they just have a regular overhead instead of a projector to draw from so I went with the white board/expo medium.
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| I was demonstrating different textures, this puppy cant make up his mind on fur haha |
Oh man, my heart was gushing with all the cute little puppies popping up all over the classrooms! Their little toes! ooo! waggy tails! ahhh! and then some added in little drool drips! awww! I was so proud of them and best of all.... the TEACHERS were gushing over all the drawings! One of them wanted the kids to keep their papers safe so they could color them in later and then hang it up on the wall!
We had spiked collars, puppy hoodies, jewels dog tags, mohawks, surfing puppies, puppies breaching security fences... the possibilities were endless for this mutt!
I hope to have a lot more posts about stuff like this. Their art curriculum starts the week after next and it might be changing up from the norm because of some other projects I've been doing at other schools. We'll see I guess :)
Nothing is better than seeing a kid, child, young adult etc be proud of a drawing they did especially when they didn't think they could do it.
Til next time, I leave you with images of happy kids and chunky puppies!
