Art & Language Arts Online

Since I am starting with the School OCR unit, I am going to use works of art that show children in school, such as some of the works we saw during the week long workshop during our grade level time. I saw wonderful black and white photographs, so I’ll be going into the Getty very soon to make “copies” for use in my classroom. We can also look at the painting entitled “John, Fourteenth Lord Willoughby de Broke and his Family” to draw connections beween the children we see in the painting and children in our classroom. It is not the best piece of work I’d like to use for the beginning, nor for the unit, but it is a start. Any suggestions?

Hi Theresa,
I was very excited to hear Ashas Baba’s story of over, under, though, and below. I will use his story to connect Art with Language when I teach prepositional phrases using the same art structure. You can really get a good understanding because you can see through it and imagine you are on a jungle gym. I will take the kids outside to climb over, under, through, inside ect.. to tap into the kinesthetic learner as well 🙂
Thanks for everything…I have truly learned so much and enjoyed it as well!!!
I hope to make learning as fun and memorable for my students as you have for us! Theresa…do you know where I can get more stories to adapt to 4th grade and art?
Thanks,
Susan Mendez
Baldy View Elem.
Upland, Ca.

As I thought more about getting started, I think I will begin outside my “School” unit; I want to begin in just the first few days with a fun project that will help my new kindergarten studetns feel relaxed and excited. I thought we could begin by looking at some works of art that explore flowers. As in the week long seminar, we’ll discuss thought provoking questions, look some color copies or transparencies (I’ll be going tinto the ERC this week) and doing a fun paper-tear work of art: I want soemthing that the students enjoy and feel sucessful at; As opposed to “John, Fourteenth Lord Willoughby de Broke and his Family”, children can relate to flowers, and we still have some summer left, so I thought it’d fit in nicely. I just want to get into the conversation of fine art without any intimidation or lack of connection: in the seminar we had discussed concerns about our multicultural studetn population possibly having trouble relating to some of the European iamges in the paintings. I think Van Gogh’s Irises or Sunflowers will help get our feet wet before we move onto paintings that I try to tie into the School OCR Unit, images that although they may very new to what most studetns have seen, will begin to make sense as we explore the many works of Getty Fine Arts. I’d love any suggestions for Kindergarten, the beginning of the school year, and the OCR unit School. Thanks Everyone! Sylvia Garcia, Bassett Elem.

P.S. I’ll also go to the Library to get some books this coming week about Van Gogh, (I’ve seen some wonderful ones at Barnes and Noble, in addition to the Getty gift shop) and I have three books so far so I’ll use as resources: I bought Baby Einstien’s Windows to Color long ago for my daughter, great for thinking about color found in everyday images and in great works of art; The Museum ABC book by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Beautiful illustrations, four for every letter of the alphabet) and finally, Stat Exploring Masterpieces, by Mary Martin and stories by Steven Zorn…there is a brief story and template to help me with sunflowers by V.V. Gogh. 🙂 Sylvia Garcia