Deer Run Students Get Unique Art Lessons
All of the subjects students learn in school are important to their development, from mathematics and spelling to art and music. For the 1st- and 2nd-grade students at Deer Run School, a recent school project has enabled them to connect their artwork to what they learn in the regular classroom.
Catherine McGarry, an art teacher at Deer Run, said she and Principal William Grimm were talking about children's being able to verbalize what they see and how they can relate what they're learning in art back to the classroom.
McGarry was able to help the students make that connection by teaching them how to sketch using geometrical forms, such as cones, cubes, and spheres. She showed the students paintings created by local artists and the students had to make a connection between a shape and what they saw in a particular painting. For instance, they could see a sphere in a painting of a whale.
"They tried to capture what the artist did," said McGarry, who said the students grasped the concepts she was trying to teach rather quickly. "When I showed them the shape, they made the connection," she said.
"It's been more successful than I thought it would be," she noted.
The students' artwork will be on display with the 16 to 18 pieces of art from those area artists. The exhibit, which will be in place through Friday, April 15, is featured in the walkway of Deer Run that connects the learning center to the 1st- and 2nd-grade classrooms. The students will meet the artists of those paintings on April 15 as well.
McGarry also teaches art at Tuttle School. And last Friday, she invited 5th-grade students from the school to visit the art exhibit. They participated in a visual art lesson that included a "sequential roundtable." They recorded observational facts as they viewed each piece of art on display.
The students had alphabet charts containing each letter of the alphabet. McGarry explained that the students had to find an object in the paintings that represented each letter, such as "S" for still life or for sphere or "W" for warm colors.
"They have enough skills to make connections through vocabulary words," said McGarry.
McGarry said she would like to build on the original idea and perhaps host a parents' art show in the future.
"The childrens' success is a motivating factor. It makes them feel good and they get immediate gratification," she said.
The artwork will get more viewing when the Deer Run exhibit ends: McGarry plans to bring the paintings of the artists and the students to The Village at Mariner's Point in East Haven for another exhibit.