Arts Express and conifer painting

This week I had a great opportunity to attend an art conference put on for elementary educators all over the state called Arts Express.   It is a conference that they put on every year with great keynote speakers and workshops all focused on using all of the arts (visual, drama, dance, music) to teach children more effectively.  This year, we had a great representation from Edgemont Elementary including 14 people! Myself, next year's art specialist 3 parents, our principle, and 8 other grade level teachers.  I think it was a really good way to get everyone connected and excited about using the arts more.

Oh, yeah, side note-- did I mention before that they were able to hire someone for next year?  I know that I posted before about how the district had decided to no longer support the grant position in the school, but they changed their mind!

Anyway, I wanted to share a little project that I completed yesterday in a wonderful workshop.  This is a little accordion-style book designed to fit into the 4th grade core of teaching about local habitats in Utah, one of which is forests. 

This is the closed book.  The woman who taught the workshop had put the books together for us ahead of time so that we would have time to paint the pages.  She used this crazy "eyelash" ribbon to tie them closed.  Not quite sure how I feel about it...

This is how the book opens "accordion" style.  there are paintings on each of the pages.  This type of book is great to make for kids because it is easy to put together and you can add info one one side of the pages like I did here, but then put more information on the other side.  If I were to teach this to students in an elementary class, we would use the other side to display our writing about our pictures.        This style of books is also really easy to display because it can stand up!

Believe it or not, 4th graders can totally do this type of paintings.  Our teacher taught us some great skills, like how to paint: realistic looking conifer trees, mountains, a sky with clouds, trees in the distance, trees with snow on them and other things.

This is definitely a lesson that I would love to teach to my students at home as well!