toseealambatschool:

The incorporation of art education into the classroom has numerous benefits.  Through art, students are able to personally express themselves and have a creative outlet for their thoughts and emotions.  Art education has also been shown to increase academic performance, including test scores and literacy abilities.  In addition, art allows children to explore new things and provides an opportunity for students to be exposed to culture and diversity.  The Incredible @rt Department is a great website that includes hundreds of art lesson plans for all grade levels, tips on how to integrate art into content area lessons, and many fun art games and activities.

mcfcbooks:

Can you draw each of these things in only 5 seconds?

I put this challenge to the students who attended my Art Club at our very first meeting. I did not actually care if they could do it in 5 seconds (it is pretty damn hard) but that very short time forced them to do some things most people have trouble doing when drawing, simplifying and loosening up. These are huge problems for me so I came up with this exercise last year to challenge myself and I realized it was perfect for Chinese students.

Most of my students have only ever drawn in school for a grade and they were graded on how “perfect” the final drawing was, not on how much they embraced the process. I want the Art club to be about the process of creating and not so much about judging the final piece (these students are constantly judged and judging each other, so I want to put that aside). 

No one could do it in the amount of time that equaled 5 seconds each for 40 drawings. It is really hard, I myself only got 29 of 40 done in that time when I tried it the first time. One girl was really close though and I knew she had complete confidence in her hand just watching her. Her drawings very minimal and “messy”, but they all conveyed the thing and some in very clever ways. Like me, most students fussed too much over details which held them up. Here are some of mine from last semester when I first tried this. 

If you want to try this exercise you can download full sized templates from my flickr page. You of course only really need a list of words to do this though. Or even just an item sitting in front of you. Here is a clear glass teapot that I tried to capture as quickly as possible, and got it in about 10 seconds. Honestly I could have spent all day drawing that teapot and it wouldn’t have captured the idea of it any better than this. Artists who can always work like this amaze me. They have energy that i can only hope to capture someday.

(Source: 1000fuses)