Feelings are often difficult to deal with, and communicating them is even harder.
While researching short videos on emotional intelligence to share with my 2nd Graders during our Expressionist unity I found this brief PBS Parents video.
The video explores a journaling/sketchbook technique to develop and foster social and emotional intelligence with your children, students, and self.
Arts.mic or Mic.com just published an interesting article on art’s effect on the human brain. Some of the highlights of the article were that “experiencing art decreases stress levels” and that “the brain is hardwired to process art.” The article also noted that the biggest benefits come from actually producing art.
“Along with the perks of enjoying and experiencing art, there are real-world benefits to making the art with your own two hands. According to a 2014 study, producing visual art improved psychological resilience and increased brain activity for the participants by the end of the experiment.
The study had two groups of recent retirees. One group was given lessons by an art educator and the participants actively created pieces of visual art that displayed their own personal form of artistic expression. The other group was treated more like a discussion class, where they talked about and interpreted selected paintings and sculptures. Both groups had their brains scanned before and after the period of courses.
The brain scans of the two groups before the classes (T0) and after 10 weeks (T1).Source: Anne Bolwerk/PLOSOne
Of the two groups, the one that produced art reaped the neural benefit of increased connectivity in the brain’s default mode network over the ten weeks of art class. This area deals with cognitive process like introspection, self-monitoring and memory.
As Hyperallergic points out, the researchers speculate that the first group got the gains because of the combination of motor and cognitive processing. They state in the study, “The visual art production intervention involved the development of personal expression and attentional focus on self-related experience during art creation.” Utilizing motor skills and thinking about art together becomes more beneficial instead of doing either separately. “
Click the link below for the full article:
http://mic.com/articles/106504/science-shows-that-art-is-having-fantastic-effects-on-our-brains-and-bodies
Thought provoking article on the Chinese elementary school model, where every teacher is a specialist.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nancy-pine/specialist-teachers-best>b_1669799.html
If you’re interested in photography here are some great tips and tricks that can turn a basic cell phone camera into so much more.
http://www.lipstiq.com/others/7-photography-tricks-you-didnt-know-your-smartphone-can-do/
“As part of a promotion for the Sydney International Food Festival, the advertising agency WHYBIN\TBWA designed 18 national flags using foods each country is commonly associated with and that would also match the colors of the flag.”
–http://www.thisismarvelous.com
Wouldn’t showing these be great way to help make connections between Art and Social Studies?
Can you guess which countries these flags belong to?
Click the link below to see them all!
For the past 35 years, Southern Coastal Maine art educators have been participating in a showcase of student work each year at the Barn Gallery in Ogunquit, ME. The following gallery is a quick taste of some of the amazing work in this year’s 2012-2013 show.
Students in the Studio Explorations class at MassArt‘s Creative Vacation program worked in small groups to create these installations inspired by the work of Andy Goldsworthy in Boston’s Fens.
Students spent several classes creating figure studies of other students playing Twister. They then incorporated one of their figures into their psychedelic artwork based on the work of Peter Max. To get into the “groove” we listened to music by: The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, The Doors, and Jefferson Airplane.
