MAZ teaches art?

When Max chose art as his elective this year, I thought it would be easy! Jeff is an artist!!

I soon realized that I would be the art teacher, not Jeff.....his work takes him away from home...

sigh...another challenge. I am not an artist, never studied art, and only visit museums because of Jeff.
I approach everything from academics.

My plan was to have one project a month that would highlight one artist and then the student could identify which art elements were "highlighted" by that artist and project.

I quickly found that most art lessons were "crafty" and hardly any of them taught history or taught about an artist.

I spent some time and wrote my own lesson plans.

I finally found a couple of wonderful websites for resources!

Max just finished his first project. I thought he did a pretty good job.

We took our first lesson from Deep Space Sparkle.
After Max researched Pablo Picasso, he wrote a paragraph that answered my requirements about this artist.
Then, he did the lesson in the above link creating his own "Dora Maar" painting.

Now for grading....I remember walking around the art area at Memphis State with Jeff and thinking...

"what is this crap?"

"how could a teacher grade this?"

Well, now I am on the other end because my baby painted this! It is a masterpiece OF COURSE!!

Last night, Jeff and I were in Target...we rounded the corner and there was a dad pushing a baby in the cart. 

Jeff and I both drew in a breath....waited til the dad and baby were a couple of aisles away and then I said "ewwww" and Jeff said " yeah!" and I said "that baby was ugly!"

You know those parents think that baby is cute! There was nothing wrong with the baby. It was just plain ugly!

So, I have to grade Max's perfect artwork purely on:

 if he followed directions, technique, and turning it in on time....

and if he bugged me or not....right?