Hello

My kids are having a playdate and I find myself somewhat available to sit down and start this blog that will be a log of my art teaching lessons and a way of connecting with the blogosphere again after a slow waning of my last blog after the birth of my youngest monkey.

I teach art at a privately run art centre for children and this autumn marks my first full year as a member of the faculty there.  I teach art exploration lessons to toddlers and their parents and to preschool aged children as well as painting and drawing to school aged kids. Starting this fall I am also teaching a photography course to older children at the centre too. I also get to do the odd day camp and birthday party as well which adds to the fun. To find out more about me; things like I don't drink coffee past 10 am you can read more at the about me page just click the link here.

While the rest of North America has headed back to school we've been on strike since the end of June.  Thankfully we have a tentative deal in place and the school year will be starting again soon but that means I get an extra month to go back in and rework my lesson plans for a newly shortened term.

I'll be posting my demo pieces for my lessons here as well as some thoughts on how the lessons went, what I'd do differently, what I did do differently from my initial plan (it happens especially with little ones who lose interest in certain parts of a project, decide they don't like the feel f materials or are just plane tired.) and whether I'd redo the project again.

Sometimes I find a DIY art material to use in a lesson. I'll share what that is here too with links to my sources and I'll let you know if I think the DIY is worth the bother. Sometimes's it's just simpler to buy the product. Sometimes the home made version is so cool you'll be creating lessons to make use of it.

When I teach a class I almost always include a book or a story as inspiration. I think you can never promote literacy enough in children plus some of the artists who illustrate children's books are jaw dropping amazing.

What I won't be sharing here are my student's works. I'll link to the posts made by my employer if there any shared images from my lessons to share but I wish to honour the privacy of my students and their families as much as I can. Any art lesson practices I do with my own girls are fair game for me and I'll post their masterpieces alongside my own because I like the idea of sharing what my demos look like beside a bonafide natural artist's

This is rather wordy and possible hard to read but I'll post it anyway and go back in to edit another time.