TEACHING ARTIST SESSION CATEGORIES
If your classroom scientists need a new way to approach a project or review content, consider adding the magic of music and movement. Scientific investigations take on new form in this imaginative and interactive session. Storytelling, rhythm games, and dance meet the scientific method in an experience that makes the lesson stick. Available in English & Spanish.
You LOVE to eat them, and now you will love to DRAW them! In this session, students will learn how to draw a crawfish step by step. But this will not just be any crawfish…students will be exposed to Acadiana artist Hannah Gumbo’s drawing style and discover how she takes a drawing and transforms it into lots of different things! So that crawfish is more than just good eating!
The stars are your guides…not just in astrology, but in this session that introduces students to artistic tools and concepts. Students will be asked “As you’re standing in a forest and looking up, what do you see?” Students will then utilize a collection of brushes and tools in order to paint and draw their visualization. They will learn shapes, perspective, depth, and position when viewed from a particular point of view as they paint a nighttime scene of stars, a moon, sky and tree tops.
No one saw a flower the way artist Georgia O’Keeffe did. She looked closely, depicted flowers on a large scale, and over the course of seven decades, this modernist painter changed the art world. In this session, students will draw their own flowers, large and up-close. This project enables us to see all parts of the flower and emphasizes warm and cool colors.
The Louisiana coastline is fragile and ever-changing – in this session, students will cement its status in art. Students will explore the coastline of Louisiana, and discover the animals of this habitat through creating their own landscape. It’s art, wildlife, and a chance to be aware of our regional geography all in one!
Something as beautiful and as fragile as a butterfly needs to be captured in art! Participants will learn how the monarch butterfly migrates to Mexico each fall, returning to Canada in the spring, and sometimes passing through Louisiana. They will create a butterfly using several art techniques, discuss art and science concepts that include animal life cycles, migration, and symmetry.
Under the sea! This session is an artistic adventure on the ocean floor. Students will learn how to paint an eight legged octopus from a reference image, how to use contrast in their art for layering, and how to incorporate shapes and texture. This class includes a science component: there will be time to discuss some of the unique characteristics of this beloved sea creature.
Maybe we can’t see them from our own backyards, but we can create them! In this lesson, students will create their own renditions of the northern lights (firework-like auroras caused by charged particles colliding in the Earth’s upper atmosphere). They will be guided through painting a complementary landscape scene to accompany their vibrant light displays, and this piece of science and nature will feel a bit closer to home.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a….PLATE? Whooping Cranes are incredible Louisiana birds that need to be protected! Students will learn about these amazing endangered birds, and make their own whooping cranes from paper plates. Let’s make conservation fun and creative!
And the trees were WHAT? Yes, they were TALKING! Trees communicate their needs and send reinforcements to loved ones through a special web of communication. Students explore and learn more about the “mycelium network” and the relationships trees have. After learning, classes will use a story and movement to explore their ideas. Finally, students will express their findings through teamwork and performance.