I struggled to figure out what to do with these kids.
I tried a lot of different things and then in the end,
I just decided to DO ART with them. It seems to be working...
Week 4; CA plays with shaving cream & food coloring on hands and feet for a solid hour!!!
Week 4; AS makes playdo with gluten-free clay and adds food coloring, then spends a solid hour making tiny relief sculptures with hand-painted markings and faces of monarch butterfly and caterpillar, all the while explaining to me how they live, are born, and transform... when I want him to learn something new I just start doing it on my own relief drawing I am doing right along with him. He does not copy me, but he uses the techniques I am using.
Week 4; MH and I look at a Powerpoint I made about Chagall, as she is interested in Surrealism and then we do a drawing based on "I am the Village" by Marc Chagall. I do one and she does one, and she copies my bold strokes with craypas - we worked for more than an hour!
Week 5; CA and I made a snake out of modeling clay. For an hour, I rolled out tiny strips of clay and he meticulously put them on the snake, while we listened to Mozart. The bizarre thing was his reaction to Mozart. He wanted to go turn up the volume and turn it down and kept saying “loud and quiet” over and over, but the music was a good solidifying influence on all the children.
Week 5; I showed MH a Powerpoint of Kandinsky, Calder & Miro and we went through each painting pointing out everything we saw in it – which I have never done, surely and never would have thought to have done. After that, we listened to Mozart and she did a painting that became a pipe-cleaner and clay and paper sculpture based on the music and based on the influence of seeing the Masters work. We worked intently for over an hour.
CA uses watercolor but he is more interested in playing with the paint itself than putting it on paper - he only works for half an hour.
Here's the picture, up close - but he loves blue & green. He continually repeats something from Sesame Street, "The Spanish word of the week is "Agua".
AS has no desire to do art. He tells me has lost interest in it. I ask him eventually to settle down and do a little and he returns to colored clay and drawing, as he did with the butterfly, which is his masterpiece. This time he makes an Martian Ship on Mars. I encourage him to fill in the white by asking him if the "air" is white. He makes the "air" supporting the ship, Green. He begins to make the "other air" purple. I search for a black marker. When I find one, he covers the purple with black, which is a good sign, as he never used to mix colors, but he is impatient today, and says he will finish this picture next week.
Here's the picture, up close -
MH made this last week while I was away. She searched through her book of Haiku's that she writes and picked one and made this wonderful piece: It says The dragon blows wind / The dragon wind is powerful / The soft wind is warm. It's a pretty amazing piece. I encourage her to do a series of them and we find a place on the wall where a series could go.
Today I showed MH a Powerpoint on Cubism, starting with Cezanne as the influence, touching "Facet Cubism", "Analytic Cubism", and "Synthetic Cubism" and with a sample of "Orphic Cubism". She was interested, having mentioned it to me before, but when it came to doing her artwork, she did this rendition of a dream. She calls it "Beep Beep": about her dream in which the roads defy gravity and the cars are going way fast. The buildings are colored and the parking lots are on the top floors and the holes are the elevator shaft except in the arched buildings in which the parking lots are inside the holes. Some of the cars are on the road, while others are flying to the parking lots through the air. (you can't see them). She, too, is finishing her piece next week.