by Lise Richards
If you think that art class offers little to you and your children - think again. Arts instruction, though given a low priority in many schools in Johnston county, is a critical element that helps many children do better in their core math, language arts and science classes. Art instruction provides creative mental challenges for kids. It opens new doors, and offers a different perspective on their everyday ways of thinking and expression.
Ok, but enough talk about all the wonders of art class - let me give you an example using an ordinary, gray lump of clay.
One day your daughter arrives in art class and before her sits a lump of cold, hard, gray modeling clay. As she picks up a chunk of the clay and begins to mold it in her hands, a long string - similar to thick, oddly shaped spaghetti - begins to take shape. She stops to think about what she can do with the clay. Maybe she's struck by the limitless opportunities or maybe she decides immediately to build something she sees every day ~ her school building. And so she sets out to accomplish this formidable task. After studying the school building through the classroom window, she begins to mold, pick, pull and chop the clay until she has formed a rather tall skyscraper clay replica of her school. Proudly she sits back and watches as the uppermost piece of the building slowly begins to tip over. It continues to droop backwards until her skyscraper classroom now resembles a bridge spanning the Mississippi River. She thinks that maybe she could stop with the bridge, or she can use a wooden stick inside the clay to support it, restoring her bridge to the school building she was intent upon building in the first place.
While this is an imaginary and very brief example, you can see how this type of scenario can take place in many classrooms. We've seen that sometimes the clay doesn't cooperate right away with the artist's first ideas. It may take a few more manipulations ~ or a stronger piece of wood to support the structure, but whether the child succeeds or fails they have learned skills during this process that carry forth to other areas of life. In fact, this project may have taught her many things that we don't realize at first glance.
She:
- Enhances her natural physical hand strength while working with the clay.
- Finds a different way of looking at something she sees many times each week; in this case her school building.
- Is inspired to be creative and adaptive to the changing circumstances.
- Learns to think independently.
- Learns about the forces of gravity on a flexible material like clay ~ a link to science.
- Learns basic engineering lessons.
- Learns that clay sticks to walls, hands and floors, and how to be responsible for cleaning it up.
- Learns that if she changes her mind, and then her behavior, she gets a different result.
- Is encouraged to build other things in clay, or to learn about people who have.
- May even move from building with clay to building with steel, bricks and wood.
With a strong foundation and a good support system, people can learn many things we might never have thought possible during art class. When art is combined with other classroom subjects, the opportunities are endless! And just think ~ all this new information from a lump of cold, gray, clay.
Lise Richards is the Director of the Creativity Center, Inc. To see what new things you can discover, sign up for an art class and explore your possibilities. Visit the center online at www.centerofcreativity.com, or call us at 919-553-8451.
This article courtesy of http://www.centerofcreativity.com. You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice and the author name and URL remain intact.
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