Summer Art Camp!

Marble runs are the bomb!

Campers work hard to express personal ideas at the cardboard construction center.

Clark and I just finished up Blocks Paper Scissors Summer Art Camp and now I am gearing up for our June 26th opening of Indy Art Lab at Haughville Park. Looking forward to an art education blast!

Marble Run Action

Another morning with 6th Graders and their building materials.....

Blocks Paper Scissors Summer Camp 2012

Mr. Fralick and Mr. Gaw's summer art camp is back at Post Road Community Park for this Summer!
More info and registration HERE.

Learning should be a fascinating adventure!!

A view of the main exhibition hall at the Hancock County Art Exhibit.

New Palestine Elementary exhibition panels with child directed paintings, drawings and collage.

Inquisitive explorers discover marbles and blocks.

More intrepid explorers and investigators.

Future builders and engineers begin their quest to construct viable marble run structures....

....more builders and engineers join in....

....Mr. T-Rex was our mascot at the marble run-block building center.

Raffle taking place while marble run builders go to town.

More builders!

Cool structures including a marble run catch zone.

I brought a box of custom wooden blocks to the 27th Annual 2012 Hancock County Art Exhibit and a major marble run event took place! My sincerest thanks to the Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation and all the Hancock County art teachers for facilitating this excellent event.

"Learning should be a fascinating adventure!"  Tom Horn, 2012

STE(A)M: "Full Power Gravity!!"

Pictures depicting student construction work with cardboard and paper delta gliders and marble runs of various designs. One group of students could be heard before the release of a marble race," Full power gravity!!"

Wooden Marble Run

 

Sometimes children become emotionally charged during their creative experience and use idiosyncratic language when discussing their work.

Physics, Engineering and Structural Design

Kinetic art is fascinating! Engaging minds and hearts with simple materials like wooden blocks, cardboard and marbles has become a four dimensional staple of our art program since we obtained our first set of wooden blocks from Mr. Fralick. We have expanded our block building work to include ephemeral expansive marble run pieces. Many of our children look forward to creating simple machines and experimenting with gravity, friction and simple structural elements like columns, beams, plates and arches with cardboard and wooden block marble runs. There is just something so cool about working with Newtonian mechanics in the art room. E=mv^2.

New Marble Run Construction Forms

Blocks Paper Scissors Blog Site....

Check out this link for camp updates: www.blockspaperscissorscamp.blogspot.com .

Summer Art Camp Preview

Clark Fralick is the AEAI 2004 Indiana Art Educator of the Year and Clyde Gaw is the AEAI 2005 Indiana Elementary Art Teacher of the Year.

In 2003 Clark and I did a summer art camp at New Palestine Elementary. As I recall, that camp was a pure blast. We took over the music room and the art room with over 60 kids. Lots of creative activity and lots of fun! 

In 2009 I did a solo camp at Indianapolis Public Schools. You can read about it here:

I can guarantee this upcoming camp will include drawing, painting, collage, cardboard construction, sculpture, paper mache, puppetry, jewelry, weaving, textiles and lots of outdoor art activities, weather permitting.

Clark and I, have presented at national and state forums on child centered art education practices and belong to an international group of art teachers who advocate for child centered art education learning experience. Teaching for Artistic Behavior (TAB) has been around since 2001.

2011 Summer Art Camp

More choice based art at the Hancock County Art Show!

The marble runs were a big hit at the County Art Show. Mrs. Hall, the art teacher at Greenfield Central Junior High School, the host of the show, told me her 7th and 8th graders wanted to make marble runs too!

I think the marble runs have provided one of the most satisfying building/construction experiences to our students ever.

Working with gravity, slope and basic attachment techniques has never been more gratifying.

Hancock County Art Show

A patron of the Hancock County student art show, checks out some of the child centered art on display from New Palestine Elementary on the left side of this photo.

NPE Fine Arts Festival Pics

My sincerest thanks to my principal Mr. Kern, my colleague Mrs. Roudebush and our wonderful Fine Arts Festival Volunteers, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. True, Mrs. Mattingly, Mrs. Hockett and Mrs. Martin for helping me to set up this huge show! I estimate there were about six hundred works of art in this exhibit and I could not have done it without these folk's help! My sincerest thanks to all who helped me with set up and take down.

Blocks-Paper-Scissors!

Clark and I will have a great camp at Indy Park's Post Road Park Community Center. My sincerest thanks to Post Road Park Manager Linda Fink for hooking us up!

We hope to have 40-50 attendees pr. week. Our activities will include, but are not limited to: drawing, painting, collage, cardboard construction, block building, puppetry, textiles, jewelry making crafts and photography.

Clark and I have approximately 50 years experience between the two of us working with elementary aged kids. We are hoping to fill the camp with at least 40 participants for each week. Any parents who are interested in providing their kids with a dynamic art education experience, should consider this camp for their children.

Check out this blog for more info on what we have been up to since 2004. Enjoy!

For questions related to the camp, or if you would like to reserve a spot on our participants list, you can send me an email here: campak14@yahoo.com

Art or Engineering?

When do the boundaries between art, sculpture and engineering blur? It happens all the time in choice based art programs. When children engage in interdisciplinary learning activities, there is nothing contrived about their motivation to do so.

There are about two dozen marble runs stored away in the art room...we are bursting at the seams...trying to store all the sculpture and art, getting it ready for our upcoming April 18th Art Show. Can't wait to post pics from that event!
More later....cg

Southern Hancock School Funding Referendum

Greetings to all of the readers here at "Transition to Choice Based Art Education."
This year, the children at New Palestine Elementary are thriving once again in our choice based art program.

Today, I spoke with about twenty or so parents about their children's art education experiences during our annual teacher/parent conference day. One of the fascinating parts of our discussions was the observation that the children are very much engaged in similar kinds of art making experiences at home as they are in the NPE art room.

Some of the children are so engaged in self directed art making at home, that it has become startling.

One mother told me how her son has appropriated her hot glue gun and has manufactured numerous cardboard model airplanes and other vehicles that are strung out all over his bedroom. "I have to sneak the old sculptures out when he is not looking because they are all over the place! Thanks a lot Mr. Gaw!" she told me with a smile.

"Houston, We Have A Problem"

Sadly, I am not happy to report, our school district like many school districts across the country is suffering from a shortage of operating funds.

Realistically, I have to believe, this development has put the viability of future choice based art education program experiences for the children of New Palestine Elementary in jeopardy.

Fortunately the administration of Southern Hancock Schools and a significant number of community members in New Palestine are working to pass a referendum in order to strengthen our schools and to keep important educational programs like elementary art and music in the curricula.

If you live in our district and would like to learn more about what you can do to support the Southern Hancock Schools pass the education funding referendum, check out this link: Vote Yes!

More on Fantasy Violence in Children's Art

Excerpts from "The Secret Art of Boys."

Under the guidance of educators who are interested in facilitating personalized pathways to creative experience, children and in particular boys, will thrive in learning environments where ideas related to super heroes, monsters, villains, military action, and other aspects of their make believe worlds can be expressed. Just as fantasy violence can be a part of children’s play i.e. cops and robbers, super heroes or war play (Brown, Gurian, Kindlon & Thompson 00, Jones 2002, children will express fantasy violence in the art they create (Duncum 05, Rubin 05, Lowenfeld 57).

Many educators, who might consider such content inappropriate for school and resort to censorship, miss out on opportunities to integrate and synthesize essential learning into children’s desire to express make believe violence in their fantasy art. Art teachers sensitive to child centered learning may view children’s decisions to express fantasy violence as a means to facilitate profound educational and creative growth experiences.

Concerns that art expressing fantasy violence will lead to real violence are unfounded. When rare events of lethal violence are fully examined, the motivations for committing such heinous acts are clearly related to revenge motives and victim mentalities. A common thread in these acts is the transmission of actual threats in spoken or written forms. Other red flags to consider in the context of an individual’s normal behavior might include changes in their appearance and changes in friends, frequent use of inappropriate language, changes in personal habits or humanitarian or religious values and episodes where individuals are quick to anger, cry or reveal other unstable emotions (Hollowell ‘05).

Fantasy violence and play violence is what it is: fantasy and play. Play is a natural form of learning and one of the ways children learn best. Play is fundamental to intellectual development. Just like real artists it is not uncommon for children to play with ideas, materials and techniques in choice based art programs. The concern that real violence can be triggered in children who engage in artistic activity related to their fantasy play, contradicts what we know about creativity.

The creative process strengthens children’s self confidence as new concepts, objects, ideas, and performance skills are born from individual or collaborative efforts. Conceiving and solving artistic problems in a state of creative flow has the affect of releasing tensions, anxiety and ameliorating violent or aggressive dispositions (Lowenfeld ‘57, Rubin ’05, Csikzentmilhaly ‘99, May ‘75).


Brown, S. (2009) Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul. New York, Penguin.

Csikszentmihayli, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery. New York, Harper Collins Publishers, Inc.

Lowenfeld, V. (1957). Creative and mental growth (3rd ed.). New York, Mcmillan.

Hollowell, Perry "ACTIVE SHOOTER PREVENTION MATRIX". Law & Order. FindArticles.com. 04 Aug, 2010. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7649/is_200806/ai_n32285293/

May, R. (1994), The Courage to Create. New York, Norton Publishers.

Rubin, J.A. (2005). Child Art Therapy. Hoboken, New Jersey, John Wiley and Sons, Publishers.

Warrior Art