At YCIS Qingdao, during my first year, I had the opportunity to teach Primary art. Primary classes were much larger than my Secondary classes and I only saw students 1 or 2 times a week – however, we were able to explore so many wonderful new ideas. The creativity and energy of my students inspired and uplifted me.
Some examples of our more successful projects are:
Paul Klee Inspired Studies and Portraits: We explored how Paul Klee used lines, shapes and colours to create magical places and imaginative portraits. And then using collage, we created our own.
Barnaby Bear – Collaborative Art Project: Year 1 and 2 studied Barnaby Bear in their English class – and so in Art class, we explored the idea of traveling teddy bears – first by designing our own print compositions, created at least 10 different prints with stencil and paint, then created our own miniature clay teddy bears. Taking inspiration from the Teddy Bear Picnic in Music class, we then used our best print to create a large collaborative work.
Shadow Puppets: Learning about the traditional act of shadow puppets, we decided to try and make our own with black paper and puffy paint – coinciding with their Science unit of ‘Light and Dark’
Egyptian Style: Using the Egyptian hieroglyphic language, we drew our names in a cartouche (for protection). Then we chose our favourite Egyptian god or goddess that we thought related best to ourselves, and created them using only colours that ancient Egyptian artists would use. Finally we created a background of gold and made it look old by ripping the edges and using wet tea bags.
Amy Atkinson 