Saturday Art is a six-week course where college students studying art education teach local elementary school students on Saturdays. The class takes place in studio spaces in UC's College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, giving the young students an opportunity to study art in an experimental setting. The college student effectively takes on the role of teacher by completely designing the lesson plans, presentations, and final exhibition.

LESSON PLAN: 

This Saturday Art class was designed to teach 4th and 5th grade students how to paint. The students explored color mixing and paint application techniques whilst being taught the relatively recent history of painting. The course covered significant painting movements of the 19th and 20th century, including Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. Each unit included the painting movements’ visual characteristics, cultural and technological influences, and significant artists. Giving students this historical context allowed them to understand how painting styles have transformed over time and enabled students to use this knowledge while creating their own artwork.

IMPLEMENTATION:

The timeline below was used at the beginning of each class, in order to give students a visual and tangible sense of history. After introducing the art movement for that class, students painted subject matter of their choice using significant characteristic of that style. This allowed students to learn valuable information about art history while remaining the true author of their work.

ADDITIONAL LEARNING:

On the last day of class, students were challenged to create their own art movement. They were encouraged to use their imagination and personal interests to determine what sort of impact they would like to leave on the art world. They named their movement, listed defining characteristics, and created drawings of what their unique style would look like.

CHARACTERISM: Includes characters from games, movies, books, etc. morphing together

FRUITISM: Includes fruit where it is unexpected; makes the viewer hungry

ENGINEERISM: Includes inventions that look 3D; the artist uses their imagination to recreate something

DOGISM: Includes multiple dogs that are all different colors and textures; the dogs act like humans