Thinking about using insects in a class art situation?
Here are some more reasons, as far as I am concerned, to do so!
- Using insects in an art class is easy.
- It is cheap! Live bugs are everywhere. And for convenience, cup full of Japanese beetles costs me nothing, saves my garden, and stores forever in the freezer.
- It aids children in accepting their "space ship earth" companions with a more realistic and positive perspective.
- Kids love it! They like being cool and being scientific about it. They like being grossed out or shocked. They like challenging their initial feelings of aversion in the safe classroom situations. They like caring for live insects.
- It helps knit their learning experiences in a school together. The arts, as an alternative strategy for communicating information and feelings, can often be used effectively and fluently by kids who struggle and are awkward with other strategies, like writing or speaking.
(Do a search on "multiple intelligences" .)
Hmmm... insects have six legs....
One of the first things kids seem to figure out in an art class is that they can try to defend anything by pulling out the old "I wanted it that way ....it is important to me that it look like that" defense. Depending on the problem set by the initial assignment, that may or may not fly.
When doing insect cartooning or projects like these leaf rubbings with added detail , I tell the kids what is non-negotiable. (Like they MUST have 6 legs.) If it is really a better design with only four legs, then you can acknowledge that and suggest another drawing should be done that fulfills the set problem's acceptable solutions!
It is a cool way to explore what makes a better design, and it helps kids see that answers are controlled by questions. Some people have a hard time understanding that a really great answer to a question not asked, will often not get you anywhere (especially in regular school situations)!
I do stress that creative folks benefit from remembering and saving all ideas that pop out for use later when they turn out to be just the puzzle piece you need.
Kids get the impression from traditional fact centered testing that a wrong answer is garbage and embarrassing....while in art class there are many correct solutions and wrong answers may be totally cool and useful stuff.
It is a pity that there is so little hands -on science in schools as this same positive mind set about unexpected information is nurtured there.
Emma Craib, elementary school art teacher in Manchester, CT USA.
Visit our elementary school art web site! Here is one of my schools.
Write to [email protected] with questions or comments.
Want to fold an origami swan?
Have a pre-school kid and want some good sites to visit with them?
Check out the pre-school section of my elementary school art site for the Town of Manchester, CT.
