Summer Challenge

Connecting with kids in the summer...a great thought but tricky in our rural area.

But if I do say so myself, I was struck with a GENIUS idea. I think...

This summer, I started an Art Challenge on my school's awesome Facebook page.

Each week, an artist focus will capture attention with an exciting art challenge for them to do if they wish to earn a BIG PRIZE.

On Wednesdays, I post a new art challenge. Student artists will have until the next Wednesday to post or have parents post photos of their work in the comments section of the challenge.  Each week they post a photo, I enter their name into a drawing for a set of gel pens.

I can just see myself now at the Fall Open House with a large audience of people waiting, waiting, waiting to hear the two names I draw for the BIG PRIZE.



Social Anxiety

  The starter challenge I will post today speaks to the fairy garden in all of my students. In the 80's, while visiting the Chicago Art Institute, I fell in love with Charles Simond's Little World in the cafe of the institute. His work became the impetus for the first ever PC Summer Art Challenge. Create a little world! 

Below: The challenge I posted

"Artist Charles Simonds created Little Worlds. You can see one of those Little Worlds at the Chicago Art Institute in a brick wall in the cafe. The Des Moines Art Center also has a Charles Simonds little world in their collection made of sand, brick, and sticks. Little worlds are places Charles Simonds has seen or imagined. He then took his ideas and  made them into tiny 3-D worlds. Think of his little worlds like a fairy garden, or a copy of a place you have been, but made really tiny. You can see how tiny the worlds he created are when you look at the pictures and especially the one with his hand in it. Your first challenge is to be like Charles Simonds and.....Make a tiny place of your own! You could create a little world in your sandbox using little people, twigs, leaves, or cars. Other ideas are to create the little world in your house, pool, backyard, the park- anywhere! Use natural or man- made materials( or both together). Anything goes, the only requirement of the challenge is to create a tiny place of your own. Pictures of your work should be posted in the comments below by next Wednesday when I'll have a new challenge for you."

A few pictures of what kids sent in!

Tent and campfire-Sixth Grade Student

 



The Eiffel Tower-First Grade Student

Ball Field- Third Grade Student

#socialmediaisgoodforsomethingeducationalandandartistic

Happy Summer!