Grouped desks
Set Up for Painting and Drawing in the classroom by Raquel Redmond
Room Set Up
This blog entry provides ideas on how to make art teaching in the classroom possible without much fuss or mess. Art teaching can be made easier if students collaborate with teachers setting up for an art lesson and packing up after the lesson. Students enjoy being part of the process and love setting up a still life composition for example.
If you are teaching within a normal classroom and don’t have big tables to accommodate groups of students like in an art room and need to create working space, simply group the individual desks into 5 or 6 desks together.
Cover the desks with newspaper and place the art materials on the center of the group to facilitate sharing.
Sharing art materials
If painting or drawing from a Still Life composition or from nature, set up a still life composition or place foliage, seed pods, twigs bark and paint/ink/water colours on the center of the table for students to observe, to share materials and to avoid spillage of paint or inks.
Dispensing Paint
Two ideal ways to dispense paint:
Use ice cube trays and plastic wrap to keep paint fresh after the lesson. Place paddle pop sticks in the different colour wells for students to pick up different colours to mix on their mixing paper. Provide each student with 2 or more magazine pages for mixing colours.
Still Life Composition
Place the arrangement on the center of the table and make sure that the composition offers an interesting view all around. If you have a Painting Center in your TAB classroom, place the Still Life composition on a corner, like the featured picture.
Notes:
- No need to wash paint containers after each class, the paint will keep fresh for few weeks in storage when wrapped with plastic wrap.
- Dispose the newspaper, the magazine mixing paper and the paddle pop sticks at the end of the class to facilitate cleaning.
- Place paint brushes in a bucket with warm soapy water and let them soak for 20 mins, the paint will “drop”to the bottom of the bucket.
For more information on PDF Lesson Plans, Video Art Lessons, Art Materials, and many other ideas on painting and drawing in the classroom, visit www.bravaartpress.com
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