Students in grades K-4 will be bringing home art work this week. Some third and fourth graders have done small weaving projects. The fifth graders finished small polymer clay pots and items to bring home.

Other grades have done 2-dimensional work specifically to bring home to share with you. It shows what was important at that moment. Sometimes the picture in a child's work is hidden in the lines and colors on the paper and my look like scribbles. The thoughts or emotions are intermingled with the color, movement or energy of the work.

If I am unable to see a specific image, I ask " What were you thinking about when you did this? or "what do you see now ?" Sometimes a child's work doesn't look like anything recognizable to adults; a child may be creating an abstraction of sheer joy of using the media, or are self-editing because he/she has sensed that the art work they sometimes do isn't quite how they want it to look. It's not perfect, so not attempted.  But that does not imply that it is not an important work for that moment. That' s one of the things I like about teaching art, a creative expression is not what is represented by the artist but what it makes the viewer thinks about or question, and everyone's creative expression is different. My job as art teacher allows me to support the efforts, and direct work as appropriate for  each child.