Creative Docent Mom

This year I volunteered to be an Art Docent for my twin 5th grade girls' class. School budgets are not what they used to be. When the money is short, the (considered) non-essentials get the boot. Art is apparently one of the non-essentials. However someone at the school considered it essential enough to start a volunteer Art Docent program. The goal of an Art Docent is to teach students a bit about art, the masters, the styles, and so on, and to also give the students hands-on experience creating different genres of art. I volunteer once a month for about an hour. We have learned about Matisse, Renior, Picasso, Seurat, O'Keefe, Monet and more, but mostly we have created. We started off with Modern Art which is very unintimidating. We dove into our feelings about Thanksgiving and tried to create a picture that represented them. We had a lot of fun with Pointellism. They were all amazed that they could create a stunning large image with hundreds of little dots. We did some great collage work with bright vivid colors. We drew apples and oranges, which helped us practice our shading. And this last time we drew flowers, in celebration of Spring and Mother's day. I love how surprised they are at what they can create with just a little instruction. I am also enjoying the fact that because I have to prepare a lesson, I am forced to create something myself. Creativity tends to get the back burner with all the other important things to do in life, just like the Art program was put on the back burner when the budget got tight. I'm glad I get the opportunity to put creativity back in front.