Messy, Engaging and Exciting: It's Time for Art!!!
My students need art supplies like watercolors to learn about color and painting and model magic and pipe cleaners to create sculptures! Sharpies are a versatile favorite!
My school is a large urban school in a big city. It has a diverse population of African Americans, Hispanics, and white with a 60 percent Chinese immigrant population. It qualifies as high poverty. We have several classrooms serving children with severe physical handicaps like cerebral palsy.
Children at my school struggle with learning English and social and economic issues as they experience the pressures of preparing for high stakes testing.
Luckily they have the opportunity of having access to the arts.
My Project
I teach over 800 students. If my project gets funded it is only one dollar a student for arts materials! I struggle every year to fund the materials for my art classroom. I use as much recycled and found material as possible.
My approach to teaching visual arts is to create a materials rich, process oriented classroom that encourages personal expression.
Kids get to make many choices as they learn how to use real art materials and do what artists do; Envision and create art! An example would be a printmaking project where children printed with
found objects to create a picture of a garden. Emphasis was on of size and variety and shape. Colored chalk was then added for detail and variety of color. Funding my arts materials will give kids access to even more materials and a richer arts experience.
Children's artwork is authentic and expressive! They genuinely appreciate having visual arts and need a break from the testing stress they experience. In my classroom we learn about the elements of design, art history and often integrate literacy and art and science and art. Art is open ended. It teaches children to look more closely at life, stretch and explore and experiment!
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. Wattles and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
