Last Saturday July 18th, 2009 I participated in the Mill to Moon Festival up in Slater, SC.  This was a community festival celebrating the history and people of Slater, SC and their efforts towards our trip to the Moon in 1969.  I set up as a crafter and spent a wonderful Saturday afternoon selling my pottery, talking to the locals, and listening to Blue Grass.  What a great way to spend my afternoon and talk about my art!

I have taught swim lessons before, I use to be a dance teacher, and now I have officially taught as an art teacher!  When paint is involved, it is definitely a different way of teaching!  I taught 2 classes of 5 and 6 year olds at Explore the Art Camp held at the Fine Arts Center.  It was a wonderful experience for me because I was teaching along side a staff that taught me art when I was younger.  I feel like I have come full circle and I know that I have made a good decision about going to grad school for education.  

I did a painting project with the kids and every day we painted on the canvas to build up layers and have a rich colorful painting at the end of the week to take home to mom.  The first day the kids painted a tint of a primary color for the background.  The second day I taught some printmaking techniques and we did stenciling with monotypes (painting on a piece of foil and then transferring on the canvas, and making ghost prints on a separate sheet of paper!) The third day I set up a still life of flowers for them to draw and paint (this was a bit of a stretch for this age but some actually painted the flowers!) And the fourth day was the last day of wet paint and we used black or white to outline shapes to finish off the painting.  

The last day we did a self portrait project that all the kids enjoyed.  Before we started drawing we made a color swatch with their own eye color, hair color, skin color, etc.  That made it easy when they started drawing and the pictures all came out with some likeness to them!  

My mom was joking with me that I finally I had a real class with real kids because when I was younger I always played pretend school.  Even though I'm not certified to teach yet, I'm on the way and I can't wait!