Youth Art Month Recap

 Here is a quick recap of what we did for Youth Art Month.

First, I did not attend the NAEA convention in NYC, but a photo of the artwork above was there to represent one of my students in the Kansas booth!

The next 2 photos were my selections for the Kansas YAM exhibit on March 31st.

  

This was created by one of my 4th grade students and she received an Honorable Mention in the Sargent Art contest. (Project here)

 

This was created by a 2nd grade student. (Project here.)

 Last year I tried a YAM contest with my intermediate kids. This year, I was inspired by all the 30 day challenges I see popping up online and designed a YAM Drawing Challenge. I decided on 3-4 tasks for 4 weeks instead of making something every day. I had probably 100 students take home paper but only about 15 turned them in, and of the 15, maybe 8 actually completed every task AND put their name on their paper. I always think I'm being clear but after students are confused I can sort of understand what they were thinking. Several thought they were just supposed to draw one thing each week when I really just meant to work on one at a time, not the whole month at once! Anyway, it was awesome to look through the drawings that came back. I let them decide how to organize the challenge as long as they were all on the same pice of (12x18 inch) paper. I feel like I learned a lot about the students who took this on.

 I wanted to give out a few prizes, not to bribe the students to take on the challenge, but to add to the celebration. Since the idea was to celebrate kids making Art, not just the kids who are "good" at drawing, I didn't pick winners based on the product. I narrowed it down to students who completed the whole challenge, then sorted by grade. I randomly drew one student per grade (4th-6th) out of the stack and let them choose their prize first. I had purchased a few art supply prizes- a small set of color sticks, a watercolor set, and a small set of oil pastels, which I figured would go first.

 I filled in the prize choices with some posters I made (see below) and a bunch of my photographs so that every student who completed the challenge would have something fun.

If you've been here for a while, you know I love my bulletin boards. You can see my YAM bulletin boards here and here.

Did you plan anything to celebrate Youth Art Month? If you teach in Kansas, please tell us by filling out a YAM Documentation Report Form for the KAEA YAM Scrapbook!