Art Smart Club

Learning Objectives

The Art Smart Club introduces art as discipline with specific elements, principles, and rules.

The Art Smart Club familiarizes students with art vocabulary. Sections specifically focus on art principles and elements and introduce students to the tools, terms, and techniques of stained glass production. After watching and discussion these sections, try some of the following:

Take a nature walk and point out elements and principles you find outdoors.
Make up hand motions for each element or principle and review daily as a class.
Assign an element or principle to each student or group of students and have them illustrate it on an 8 x 10 piece of paper. Post the pictures on a bulletin board or photocopy the pictures and make a bound book for each student.
Look for principles and elements in famous pieces of art. Have students choose an element or principle and design a composition focusing on that specific idea.
Choose just one element and experiment with technique. Mix paint (color), use different brush types (line), experiment with clay (form), make string paintings (shape), do crayon rubbings (texture), work with shadow (value), and use paper cut-outs (space).
Choose just one principle and experiment with subject matter. Try parade pictures (rhythm), geometric patterns (balance), underwater scenes (contrast), animal pictures (movement), still lives (emphasis), and ethnic designs (repetition).

The Art Smart Club introduces art as a component of history and culture.

The Art Smart Club is designed to help students realize the universal aspect of art. The program teaches that art is all around us and that everyone can use it expressively. Sections emphasize the importance of art in everyday life and give practical suggestions as to how students can use art daily. After watching and discussion these sections, try some of the following:

Ask a parent or another adult who works in the arts to visit the classroom. Someone like an architect, designer, or musician would be a wonderful example of arts connecting between disciplines.
Team up with the school's music or drama program to work on a project together that encompasses several disciplines of art.
Find current artists whose work embodies their own personal culture. Discuss, and have the students use art to express their own personal lives.
Encourage students to see everyday objects as art. Discuss design and manufacturing elements that go into making objects both functional and beautiful. Have the students design their own products.

The Art Smart Club introduces art as a group of learned techniques.

The Art Smart Club introduces students many different art forms. Drawing, stained glass, painting, architecture, and design are just the start. The program even links to the Art Smart Challenge contest, in which children's drawings may be turned into real stained glass windows! After watching and discussion these sections, try some of the following:

Have students research a favorite artist, and then work in that artist's primary medium, or have students replicate a famous piece of work in a medium different than the original.
Encourage students to think outside of the box and come up with an unconventional medium for a new project. Try pudding painting, colored glue drawings, fabric collages, or carving with Styrofoam.
Go on field trips in which artists show how they use some of the less common art forms: stained glass, metal welding and sculpture, fiber art, glass blowing. Let students participate, if possible.
Enter the Art Smart Challenge contest as a class. Each student has a chance to have his or her work replicated in stained glass! See www.artsmartchallenge.com for details.

The Art Smart Club introduces art as a means of expression.

With the Art Smart Club program, students learn to doodle their feelings and to strive to understand others who do the same. The core elements of the Art Smart Club program encourage students to look inside themselves and then use art to express their emotions. After study and discussion these elements, try some of the following:

Encourage students to keep personal sketchbooks/journals for doodling, poetry, quick sketches, and journaling. Combining their feelings with their observations will allow them to link emotion to art.
Teach about color in terms of symbolism, but also encourage students to define colors their own way. For example, red doesn't have to be an angry color-it may remind one student of his favorite shoes, or another of a peaceful cardinal.
Visit a visual art exhibition in a museum or art gallery. Have students complete writing exercises about what message they think their favorite artist was trying to convey in a certain piece.
Arrange group in-class critiques and encourage students to discuss the emotional, expressive aspects of each other's pieces.