128/180 #theARTSmatter_1

So this happened last week.
A budget was proposed.
I grew up on PBS.
I learned English watching Sesame Street and The Electric Company.
I am a patron of the arts.

So this week's entries will focus on the arts.
It's that important.

I went to The Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time while traveling to NYC to visit my sister Lisa, who was living in Manhattan at the time. It was the first time I had traveled alone to the city. Many discoveries were made during that trip, but the two everlasting ones have been the love of the theater and the love of art.

When I got back from that trip over 20 years ago. I took the excitement and passion from the Big Apple, and brought it right back into my classroom. Fast forward... Last week I was able to share some of my love with art and expression with my students. We went to the Getty Center for inspiration.

For young children, art history may not be the way to go, but I still love sharing stories of the lives of our very interesting artists, past and present. We started with Van Gogh because his painting Irises is highlighted at the Getty.  Today we looked closely at one of his self portraits again. This time, we focused on the background.

Such an interesting character. Kids love stories. Vincent had many.

Creating our backgrounds.

For sanity, and organizational purposes, I limited the color selection to 6.
The students created their own colors from those 6 without any direction from me.
Discoveries...

The call to details... Step 1 completed for today.
Tomorrow... foreground.