Turtle with a punch!

Most art teachers have precious little time for their own artistic work, despite the fact that we know how important it is to feed our own creativity so we continue to bring new energy to our teaching. Whenever I feel like I am not really an artist because I have so little proof, however, I have to remind myself that my teaching is my canvas.

Everything I do with my students--the lessons I create, the lessons I borrow, the way I present the lessons, the way I interact with the students, the way I organize the room, the atmosphere I establish--is part of that container I provide to allow my students the freedom to find their own creative spark. No, it is not a canvas I can pick up and take to an art gallery, but I hope we as art teachers will remember that this kind of artwork, in the end, may be of much greater value.

Having reminded myself of this creative container, I must also admit that around May of each year ! feel more like a factory worker or a marathon runner than a creative genius. It seems I have run out of ideas, run out of

patience, and I only want to be left alone to plant my garden. At this time of year I tend to borrow lessons that are pretty interesting to the kids, but a little easier on me. With the little kids, I might do something kind of crafty that would make me cringe any other time of year for its lack of "artistic content." As for coming up with new lesson ideas, well, that would feel like climbing Mt. Everest!

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Which is why it cache as such a surprise when this kindergarten lesson seemed to develop itself last May. It all started with a visit with my grandson who was almost 5 years old and, of course, the most amazing kid in the world. I took my usual goody bag of art stuff and, for some reason, threw in some hole-punchers at the last minute. Had I thought about it, I would have guessed that his hands would not be strong enough. Well, I was wrong, and he had a grand time punching away with the plain old hole-puncher, as well as the couple of fancy ones I brought.

It occurred to me that my kindergarten students might have the same fascination for punching holes, but it seemed I really would have to do more than just hand them paper and a puncher and let them go at it. Then I remembered that I had not yet given my assessment on patterns and, while we had been talking about patterns all year, we had not done anything lately. And so, the wheels began to turn.

This lesson started with my asking the students if they could think of any animals that have patterns on their skin, fur or scales. The list was long and covered most of the animals in the pictures I had gathered. We looked through these pictures as I commented about the fact that the patterns use line, shape and color.

I told them we were going to be drawing turtles for our patterns. I mentioned that there are two basic kinds of turtles and wondered if they knew what kinds I was talking about. Eventually someone came up with the idea of turtles that only swim and turtles that stand on the ground. I demonstrated drawing a sea turtle's flippers and how they are different from the webbed feet of land turtles. We used a thick black permanent marker to discourage little details and to give a really bold outline.

By the end of the kindergarten year almost all of my students are pretty good at drawing ovals, and I encouraged them to fill the 9" x 12" paper. I showed them how a turtle's head is a little more pointy than a circle and a little narrower at the neck. I added the fins (or legs) and the tail. Next I divided my turtle shell into sections, making some of my lines a little curvy for variation.

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We used fluorescent oil pastels for our patterns. Over the years I have tried many different crayons for resist and have found these to be the most successful, especially for very young students who have trouble pushing down hard. I told them they could make a different pattern within each section or use the sections as the divisions for the repeating pattern. I reminded them to make the eyes big and showed them how using two colors would make them stand out.

Next I loaded my brush up with watercolor and let the magic happen. This has to be one of an art teacher's best showstoppers. No matter how many times students have seen this resist thing in action, it never fails to produce "ooohs" and "aaahs." I remind them that dark colors work better and they must have a lot of water and paint for it to work. There also is no pressure to paint inside the lines since we will be cutting the turtles out next week.

The next week, the punching begins. They each get a piece of 9" x 12" colored paper and are instructed to punch a fancy punch in each corner (since I only had four fancy punchers) and punch around the edge with the regular hole puncher. They had a grand time punching away, and I was surprised at how well they shared.

The next step is to cut out the turtles and glue them on the paper. I give students strips of paper to glue on the back so the punched-out shapes are a different color. I suppose it would be much easier to give them one sheet of paper to glue on the back, but I am always looking for ways to use those strips of scrap paper.