Art Activity

           Art is one of my favorite subjects when I was a kid. I loved playing with oil pastels and watercolors back then. Even now, art still plays a role in my life as I still paint and draw when I have the time. One of my dreams is to illustrate for a children's book in the near future.

           For our art activity, we had the liberty to choose just about any book that we pleased. That being said, we focused more on the art activity aspect of the presentation. We didn’t want to go for the same old paper-pencil-crayon activities that kids always had so we tried to think of something different.

           We came up with the idea that we could make paper bag puppets of animal characters. We used the book "I Want My Hat Back" by Jon Klassen as a springboard story for the activity since all the characters were animals and they looked simple enough to make puppets of. To be honest, I suggested using this book because it is one of my favorites since it is very funny. But I don’t think I could use it that much with kids so using it with our classmates who could get the humor better without having to worry about the book's moral implications is a better choice. (I tried reading this book to three kids as of writing, they still believe that the bear didn't eat the rabbit and just sat on it instead.)

           I already used the paper bag puppet activity in another class, one semester ago, but we had better materials since the class size was four: colored paper bags instead of brown ones, felt fabric instead of colored board paper. As I shopped for our materials, I found out that the brown paper bags weren't as cheap as I thought they would be, they only come in bundles of fifty so I had to buy a whole pack when all we needed was about twelve. I still keep the left over paper bags up to now. It looks like I will use this activity again in the future or I could use them to regulate my breathing when I hyperventilate.

           One thing I realized in this activity is that materials do matter. Even if the brown bags were a bit expensive. They were still relatively cheaper than the colored ones I used before. But since they were cheap and dull, the puppets didn’t look as good as I wished they would. Felt fabric is expensive and hard to glue so we went for construction paper. Sadly, the construction paper wasn’t colorful enough to even out the dullness of the brown paper bag. When I looked at my sample puppet, I was disappointed as it looked terrible to me. I liked color very much and it doesn’t have so much color in it. The fuzzy wire was the only thing that keeps the puppet from looking like sad little monsters. It was good that I really liked the book or else I would have been depressed about the dull puppets.

           Another thing is SCISSORS. We brought so many scissors and I was still a bit uncomfortable with letting kids work with scissors. I am still not sure about it. I know that they should practice using it so that  they would develop fine motor skills but I still deem it dangerous for kids to play with scissors. Why? I know through personal experience that kids are not all that careful with scissors no matter how much precaution you give them. When I was a kid, I not-so-accidentally cut a classmate's hand with scissors. I forgot how it happened. But I think he was holding the paper that I'm cutting and we were being playful little kids. Long story short, I cut the skin between his thumb and forefingers and as a teacher that is something I am terrified of seeing in my class. Not because I'm afraid of blood. But because I wouldn’t know how to explain to the parents why his son is bleeding.

           Aside from my issue with scissors and other sharp objects, art is a very nice play activity. I am actually planning to teach my younger sister and cousin how to watercolor properly over the summer. Maybe I could learn a few techniques on teaching art to kids. It's very convenient to have a mini laboratory test subjects.