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If you think that art class offers little to you and
your children - think again. Arts instruction, though
given a low priority in many schools in this country,
is a critical element that helps many children do better
in their core math, language arts and science classes.
Art instruction provides creative mental challenges for
kids. It opens new doors, and offers a different
perspective on their everyday ways of thinking and
expression.
Ok, but enough talk about all the wonders of art class -
let me give you an example using an ordinary, gray lump of
clay.
One day your daughter arrives in art class and before her
sits a lump of cold, hard, gray modeling clay. As she picks
up a chunk of the clay and begins to mold it in her hands,
a long string - similar to thick, oddly shaped spaghetti -
begins to take shape. She stops to think about what she
can do with the clay. Maybe she's struck by the limitless
opportunities or maybe she decides immediately to build
something she sees every day ~ her school building. And so
she sets out to accomplish this formidable task. After
studying the school building through the classroom window,
she begins to mold, pick, pull and chop the clay until she
has formed a rather tall skyscraper clay replica of her
school. Proudly she sits back and watches as the uppermost
piece of the building slowly begins to tip over. It
continues to droop backwards until her skyscraper classroom
now resembles a bridge spanning the Mississippi River. She
thinks that maybe she could stop with the bridge, or she
can use a wooden stick inside the clay to support it,
restoring her bridge to the school building she was intent
upon building in the first place.
While this is an imaginary and very brief example, you can
see how this type of scenario can take place in many
classrooms. We've seen that sometimes the clay doesn't
cooperate right away with the artist's first ideas. It may
take a few more manipulations ~ or a stronger piece of wood
to support the structure, but whether the child succeeds or
fails they have learned skills during this process that
carry forth to other areas of life. In fact, this project
may have taught her many things that we don't realize at
first glance.
She:
- Enhances her natural physical hand strength while working
with the clay.
- Finds a different way of looking at something she sees
many times each week; in this case her school building.
- Is inspired to be creative and adaptive to the changing
circumstances.
- Learns to think independently.
- Learns about the forces of gravity on a flexible material
like clay ~ a link to science.
- Learns basic engineering lessons.
- Learns that clay sticks to walls, hands and floors, and
how to be responsible for cleaning it up.
- Learns that if she changes her mind, and then her
behavior, she gets a different result.
- Is encouraged to build other things in clay, or to learn
about people who have.
- May even move from building with clay to building with
steel, bricks and wood.
With a strong foundation and a good support system, people
can learn many things we might never have thought possible
during art class. When art is combined with other classroom
subjects, the opportunities are endless! And just think ~
all this new information from a lump of cold, gray, clay.
Lise Richards is the Executive Director of the Creativity Center,
Inc. To see what new things you can discover, sign up for
an art class and explore your possibilities. Visit the
center online at www.centerofcreativity.com, or call us at
919-553-8451.
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Comments
Alex | Nov 5th, 2003
I think that art is a very good way of showing how creative a person can be. A lump of gray, cold clay can be turned into anything. That girl had decided to make her school out of the clay, but the clay didn
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