Balance and the Base

Hello, my long lost blog!
I've been attending a professional development group for art teachers called ArtXchange at the Brooklyn Museum this year. My colleagues and I share information and ideas about our calling. It has been wonderful to spend Thursday evenings in the museum, sketching and brainstorming. Thank you to museum educator, Alexa Fairchild, for organizing this wonderful program. Following is what I recently wrote to this small group of educators.

"My kindergarten students created wood sculptures inspired by our activity during our last meeting. I had two talking points. One was the idea of balance...if the wood could balance without the glue, then their sculptures would be strong when the glue dried. I positioned various wood pieces in different ways and asked the children "Do you think that this will balance?" I also talked about the idea of using a base in sculpture so that students would build on their cardboard bases. This helped in that we need to be able to lift the sculptures to a spot for drying before my next class came in." 

In this project, the materials teach the lesson. I only need to say a little and then I can step aside so that the students can have their experience. There was such an air of concentration and focus during this morning's painting session.