Final Blog Post

Hey all! This will be my final blog post. Throughout this art course, I have learned to be more open, creative, and risky. I have discovered that it's not the art skill that matters when teaching in the arts but the enthusiasm, management, resources, and encouragement! I am also able to feel more free and enjoy the arts more as a result of this art discovery adventure.
I thank everyone for their heart-felt comments and for allowing me to read their blogs! I have enjoyed reading about and discovering more about you guys and the arts these past 10 weeks!
PS - Speaking about risky, I have decided to join the Church Christmas Choir! I KNOW!!! ME!!! See what I mean?! (I am also blogging this to fulfill the music requirement that we were supposed to blog about.)
Take care everyone and have a Merry Christmas!!

More art projects...

Here is another one of my art projects: cross - stitching! I made this baby bib for a co-worker of mine. It took me a long time to complete but I was totally satisfied with the end result! This is also another art project that requires math skills - counting squares, estimating thread length, etc.

Some art projects....

This is an 'Around the World' Quilt I made! It incorporates numbers and math and thus, really appealed to me (since I am into math and science!). Just another way that we can incorporate math into our art projects (or vice versa)! It was a lot of fun and I am super proud that I could make a quilt all on my own! See, I'm getting more artistic!

Sing Along!

I think that the sing along went fantastic!!!! The audience seemed to really enjoy it and I KNOW that we enjoyed doing it ... come on admit it!!! Ha ha ha ha! I especially loved getting to wear the sombrero and those santa hats!! Too funny! The sing-a-long went great, especially considering we only had the one class to put it all together ... I would definitely love to put one of these on with a class in the future! I think Christine said it best - it was really good to keep it simple!
Even though I cannot sing that well, I still really enjoyed it. I think that this says a lot for the students that may be in my class. Even though they may not be able to sing perfectly, they will still enjoy being able to put on a performance and sing their hearts out! Therefore, we need to be giving our students the opportunity to sing their hearts out! We cannot and should not leave music out just because we cannot sing or play an instrument! Fake it 'till you make it and ENJOY it!

Music

So, as I sit here I am pouting .... I was so excited about tomorrow and being able to play the shakers (?) that I was dancing around the house, singing, and shaking! I guess I was doing it a little bit too much because Brad very forcibly asked me to finally stop! ohhhh..... hee hee! I think that tomorrow is going to be a great performance! How often do we get the chance to be goofs and sing Christmas carols with choreography (thanks Kristen)? ... feliz navidad ... oh wait a minute, back to what I was saying! Anyhow, I, for one, am really excited about tomorrow and the chance to have a good ol' sing-a-long! Arriba!!

Performing Arts

Hey y'all! Thanks for all of the great comments! This will be a post in place of one of the requirements on the rubric. I wanted to discuss the dramas that I have been attending. The first one I saw was called "The Slipknot"... it was really incredible and funny and I recommend it to everyone if you have the opportunity to see it! It is a one man play - that's right, I said ONE MAN and he tells three different stories at the same time. All he did was he set up three different coloured lights and moved into each light when he was talking about that story line! It was amazing! At first when I heard it was a one man play, I was like "huh? How is that going to work?" But using the lights and his amazing talent to switch characters so quickly and recall his lines exactly was fantastic to watch! I thought to myself, "what an amazing talent that we should try to encourage and grow in our elementary students!" Imagine the possibilities this man would have had (and maybe did), if he was allowed to give a drama performance in place of a written assignment! Imagine the fun the class would have had being involved and watching this! I'm sure this actor had many opportunities to work on his talent slowly developing it into the performance it is today.
It reminded me of when I was in Drama 12 and one of our assignments was to perform a monologue in front of the class. The monologues lasted about 15 minutes and I thought that was hard! This man was in a monologue for 2 hours and using three different story lines at the same time! INCREDIBLE! And he kept our attention the entire time! It was also extra funny for us because he had a story line involving Vancouver and Brad and I moved to Prince George from there a year and a half ago, so the memories are still fresh! Very funny and definitely well worth the time and effort to invest drama in our students!!!

Art Show

Hahahaha, sorry guys ... I did not know how to flip this picture around so that it stands upright ... oh well, I wanted to have the picture on my blog (sorry if you get neck crinks!).
So I am a little bit late commenting on the art show and my contribution but here goes:
I thought that the Art Show was a great success! There was a large turnout and the students seemed to be really excited about having their artwork on display! I was tremendously disappointed that I did not have any of my students show up (which I knew that that would happen since they could not come all the way in from McBride for one evening). However, I did try to make up for it whenever I saw someone viewing my students' artwork! I would run over to them and launch into an explanation about how the technique was called Pointillism and what the criteria was for the pictures (so that everyone could see the amount of work, thought, and skill that went into them)! I would then answer any questions they may have had! I also got to live vicariously through my classmates as they entertained their students and their students' families!
My contributions to the art show included: helping set up artwork and chairs; welcoming parents and students and handing out pamphlets; serving cake and water; and finally, returning chairs up to the classroom and the white boards to the student centre after it was all said and done!
Yay for the Art Show! What a valuable experience for us as we venture into the "real classrooms" next year!

Pointillism Picture as Promised!

The criteria for the picture was: it must show depth, shading, elements of McBride, warm and cool colours, and Pointillism technique! I was thrilled and excited about how the picture turned out! Doing this art project was a real eye-opener for me. I have always been someone who is constantly saying "I'm not very good at art." "I could never do art to save my life!" But I was totally impressed with how well this picture turned out (many hours later - it's about 15'' by 12''). What opened my eyes was when I would show my semi-completed picture to the students to help show them the technique and they would exclaim "how come grown ups can do it better than us kids?". I would then get the comments like "I'm not very good at art" or "I can't do this very well." - the EXACT same comments that I was using for myself. And now, I was having to try to increase their confidence by giving them specific feedback like, "Sure you can! Look at how you created depth with your river - that's exactly what you need to do!"
Even though my self perception was that I am terrible at art, I now know that taking the time to learn and use the skills and techniques will enable anyone to create work that may impress a few others (including myself!)!

Pointillism!

I am teaching Pointillism in practicum right now. It is a very fun, neat, and challenging technique! I am finding that I am able to create a picture that does not require me to be an expert artist!! I find that when I draw I get too hung up on details and then am too frustrated because I cannot produce what I would like to. In Pointillism, you are supposed to not have detail but instead, create lines, depth, differences, shades, and lighting, using only colors and dots. At first, when I thought about doing this project, I was fearful and insecure about having to do my own drawing as an example for the students. As I started dotting the paper, the more dots I made, the more I wanted to do!! I became excited about it and was curious about what I could all do with just dots and colors! Even me, a non-expert when it comes to art, could create and achieve depth, shading, and unity, using only colors and dots!! It is a very encouraging and art-confidence building project!! I will post a picture as soon as I get my Pointillism drawing finished! It is a great technique!

Art History

I really enjoyed the art history lesson that Virginia gave to our class. It brought back a few reminders of the Art History course I took in university. I attended a Liberal Arts university (majoring in Chemistry) for one year and thus, was required to fulfill one art credit per year. Since art is very daunting for me, Art History seemed like the safest course for me to take. Little did I know, it would be one of the most demanding courses I ever took at university. We ventured through pre-historic time periods, the gothic time period, and onwards.
When I was 14, my family took a trip across Canada .... when we got to Quebec, my mom dragged us into every old church known to the Quebeckers. I can remember thinking "When you've seen one old church, you've seen them all!" The summer after taking the Art course, I went to England to visit family. And boy, had my thoughts of what an old church looked like drastically changed. I walked through many an old church noticing intricate details and ornate features different in each of them. I even had the chance to walk through some of the very churches that I had studied. The churches had come alive to me now as I walked about noticing things I would have otherwise taken for granted. Art History can be a very powerful tool used to create interest in and awe and respect for the architecture, the details , and the differences in style and expression.

Hey all! I alluded to my fetish about sunsets in Alyson's blog site. Here is an example of a picture I took while in Mexico. The silhouetted profile is of Brad, my husband. I love taking silhouette shots and this was such a great shot with the waves crashing in on the beach!! I think I took about 50 photos of the sunsets while we were there!!! Breathtaking!! I had to delete some of them because the memory card was filling up fast :D!!!

Christening the New Blog!

Well, well, well, if it isn't my first blog! Oooohhhh, I like the purple color! I feel like I should be writing some huge profound message that should imply something to the extent of .... "Here! Look at me! Look at my blog! I'm worth reading about!!" However, since I am probably now the bazillionth person to have a blog, I doubt I will get little more than the attention from my cohort ..... sigh!
Today I filled in the Creative Spirit Profile exercise ... no surprises there! Two sets of circles were filled in completely (I think I am overly empathetic) and more than one set were not filled in at all (after working at Children's Hospital I am very much time bound!!). I thought that I had scored a little higher on the cognitive characteristics section but after a quick rough count, it appears as if the number is similar to the personality characteristics section.
A goal I will set for myself after looking at this exercise is to try to loosen up when it comes to being creative (I have to allow the creative juices to flow). I do not always have to work within the box ... it's okay for me to color outside of the lines, to be spontaneous and impulsive, and to not be so concerned with time and deadlines. I think that if I can work on these things I will be able to develop my creative spirit a little better and a little easier.
Let's hope this posts!