With Art programs on the hit list for public and private schools, you might wonder why you should include art in your child’s distance learning program.
Art can be more than just beautiful. It can also be educational.
Repetition has been used as a learning tool for many years, often with only temporary benefits; however, art can be incorporated into spaced repetition, a method of reviewing material at systematic intervals. Spaced repetition focuses on long-term retention of new information.
What if instead of writing prime numbers, multiplication tables, or new math/scientific formulas in a notebook, your child prints them onto a canvas or poster that hangs in their bedroom? They can use bright colors and include shapes or doodles – anything that will make the project enjoyable and make them want to look at their creation often. Use poster board, construction paper, ready-made canvases, or help your child stretch canvas drop cloths over simple frames they’ve made. Hang their creations with removable hanging strips.
The life cycle of a flower or vegetable can become art. Even art can become art – If you want to teach your child about a particular artist, have them recreate a masterpiece by that artist or better yet imagine and create a painting to go with a series, such as Van Gogh’s series, Flowering Orchards or Picasso’s Blue Period.
Let kids learn about the solar system by drawing each planet and its orbit around the sun.
Kids can have fun learning new vocabulary words by making up a story that includes each word and making a book with illustrations. They can be bound with yarn or string, laminated, stapled, or bound with colorful tape, duct tape, or even masking tape. Treat them like treasures, make a special place for these books, and read them with your children often.
Challenge your kids to recreate a scene from one of the books they are reading – What might Mars, Hogwarts, Charlotte and Wilbur, or Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy look like in your child’s imagination?
If you start running out of space, you can scan their projects into a special file and move their creative process on-line. Let them create presentations about what they have learned in their studies.
These are challenging times for school districts, teachers, students, and parents. Whatever you can do to make learning fun for your child may help them put this time into perspective and keep moving forward.