Portraits of Me

I believe art instruction is really important in education. Unfortunately the powers-that-be do not agree with me. (I only I ruled the world :). We have an art teacher that the kids are supposed to see once per week-however that is not a constant. Whenever one of our ancillary teachers is absent or something is going on like Winter Program practice-their schedules get disrupted. My kiddos have not officially been to Art Class since Halloween!

So I have to make up for that in my classroom. We ask our kids to be creative in endeavors like writing-but we never teach them what that means. What better way to foster creativity than with art projects! We do portraits periodically throughout the year-painting them, coloring them, making them out of snack foods. We are supposed to introduce the concept of photoessays according to our curriculum (I know!). One way I do that is to take pictures of them making all different kinds of faces and then ask them to write about themselves. We did just that the last week of school. Here are some examples:

My favorite one! "I am so glorious"---yes, she is! :)

I know no sentences (it was the last week of school, they were checking out a little bit work-wise) but I still like the way she put her project together!

I make funny faces.

I'm not sure what the first one says but I am happy and I am serious I think are the last two.