Art classes and Easter events at Ballygarrett Art Studio, Gorey

Up and coming art classes at the studio near Gorey.

Children's art classes, Gorey

The after school art program in Gorey Educate Together National School drew to a close this week with a small exhibition of the children art. I was really please with how they went and especially with that age group junior and senior infants (ages five - six years). Along with teaching the children art I got to know them a little bit and watch the younger ones emerging creativity several of the senior infants already full own their creativity which is great to see. Typically I was too busy on the last day to take any photo's. But it was commented on that it was great to see all the work up on the walls and displayed for everyone to see. It was also nice to give parents feedback.

I've started to get phone calls and emails about art classes at the studio again. So I've decided that due to demand I will run classes in the studio again.
STARTING NEXT WEEK
Children’s weekly Art Classes
Wednesday 3.30 – 4.30pm
@ Ballygarrett Art Studio.
START: Wednesday 13 April running for 6 weeks.

Growing skills and building on ability in each class. 

Classes are €12 per child per class, €60 for a block of six classes paid up front. The classes will run through the Easter holidays.

EASTER ART & CRAFT Exploration sessions @ Ballygarrett Art Studio also more information on Classes & 1:1.

Art projects and Creativity in Context with Children

2010
January – March: After School Art Program for Junior and Senior Infants, Gorey Educate Together National School (GETNS)
February: The magic of Felt, exploring thread as part of the National Curriculum. Demonstration and workshops on making hand rolled felt with Sixth Class GETNS
2009
August: Murrintown Community Summer Camp: arts and craft activity with children aged 5 – 12. Six sessions designed to open up ideas and creativity towards expanding skills and communications. A broad variety of materials were used; clay, paper, paint, glue, crayons, pastels, cloth and fiber, buttons. Techniques included design, collage, group work, team work, individual, colour, reuse and second life for rubbish, make and wear.
July: Gorey Family Fun Day ; devised, project managed and participated in community arts element of the fun day in Gorey with Wexford County Council. A variety of arts experiences were offered; make and do; paper airplanes, felt making and traditional crafts; ‘That’s rubbish! but is it art?’, community circus. Read more.
Make and Do: wrote and illustrated website content for Mykidstime.ie, downloadable easy to follow make and do activity including instructions and illustrative graphics, ages 2 - 12.
Spring - Summer Programme Ballygarrett Art Studios. Weekly Children’s art classes; The art of construction with recycled materials, Choco-Tastic! Edible art and construction. The stay and create philosophy and why parents drove 20 miles plus for an art class.
2008
September - October: ‘Poet-tree’, School arts project, GETNS. Designed and created a tree in the new school library as a place to hang English projects and art work. Worked with 1st – 6th class, teachers and parents. The project work included concept, construction of tree, guided visualisation, decorating the tree in layers with images the pupils created about their ideas of what the tree could be for them, plus using a list of words that came from the visualisation. The words together, imagine and friendship were translated into different languages representing different cultures in the school. Using different typefaces and fabric textures the words were cut out and incorporated into the design of the tree.
April: ‘FISH’ School arts project based on using recycled aluminum cans and foil, Ballygarrett National School, County Wexford. Working with 180 pupils and staff to create fish made from recycled materials. The fish are hung from catgut suspended in air to form a shoal and a fish ball. They are free to move and also generate sound.
April: Being me. 'No table day', Senior and Junior Infants group GETNS. Workshop about being unique, being different being the same and being in a group, with art materials and movement.
March - February: School Community Multi-disciplined arts project, Gorey Educate Together National School (GETNS), County Wexford, street theatre entry for Gorey St. Patrick’s Day parade. Developed concept, co-ordinated and organised pupils, teachers, musician, parents and guardians for the overall wining entry of the parade. Theme ‘Grainne Mhaol’, incorporated music and art workshops for the development and production of street theatre, included musical instruments made from recycled materials.
Spring - Summer Programme Ballygarrett Art Studios. Introduction art materials. Basic techniques for making and creative construction with art and recycled materials, Weekly Children’s art classes in Clonevin School House, Ballygarrett.
2007
Autumn - Winter programme. Introduction to art materials and perspective, Weekly Children’s art classes. Ballygarrett art studios, Gorey, Co. Wexford.
October: ‘Planting a rainbow’ Gorey Educate Together National School. School project planting spring bulbs in the shape and colours of a rainbow. Project taught children how to plant bulbs, practical use of Maths, colours in the spectrum, basic horticulture, value of teamwork, provided a sense of inclusion and developed civic awareness.
March - February: Gorey Educate Together National School (GETNS), Wexford. St. Patrick’s Day parade entry, School Community project, first prize in group section.

2006 May: GETNS, Senior Class (Ages 8 - 12). Team and communication workshop based on creating group clay model, where verbal and written communications were not used.
2005 - 1997: Creative Visualisation, Art and Creative play, Communication and team building, Community Children and Adult workshops. Various locations in Dublin.
2000 July: Whitechurch Summer Camp, (Ages 14 – 17). Community Art Workshop with challenging teenagers. Dublin.

Challenges when teaching children

I've started teaching 'art' to Junior and Senior Infants (ages 4-6) as part of an after school program in a local National School. It’s nice to be working weekly with a group of children again.
They are such bright things; some bizarrely awkward and self conscious other zooming-ly confident in their abilities and unshakeable beliefs about the world. The range of abilities in this age group is quiet mixed both in terms of social ability and fine motor skills. For some this is their first after school activity. Their behaviour is mixed with timidness, smiles, tiredness, hunger, hyper activity, super smarts, chatty, informative, authorities sharing. Some can draw actual objects quiet well and others are at scribbling with some shapes. It is their unassuming awareness that I love. It is to get to know each of these children through art and teaching them to value their own work I enjoy. I am privileged to be entrusted by the school and parents to work with them. I have two groups one on Wednesday and one on Thursday. However it is a challenging age group to teach.

Initially working with any group it is important to establish ground rules. I hate the need for rules but having tried in the past to work with children and not having ground rules established it was… disastrous! So I started the first session with chairs in a circle. I asked all the children what the rules should be “no hitting, biting or punching” said the boys “no scribbling” said one girl. There are issue with the first statement. The language used around children is important. In an art class where I am trying to teach them the idea of ‘do’ negative language has no place. Reframing rules in a positive expression is critical to empowering the group of children to behave. If you say to a child “no…” they don’t hear the no they hear the action bit “hitting, bitting…”. I find it helpful to focus on the behaviour I want to encourage “respect each other” not 'don't do...'
The second issue around no scribbling was to establish that although we were still in the school we were n't in class. We were in afterschool art therefore it was good to scribble. During the first session we ended up with a scribble station a little bit away from where the main activity of the class was being done.

At the end of the first session most of the children had visited that area and had a good old scribble. One parent told me it was the scribble her son showed as his best work! He also informed his Mum he had to 'practice his scribble for next week'.
Out rules now look something like this

• have fun
• just one voice
• treat each other with respect
• listen when teacher is talking
• show respect for the room and the art materials
• scribbling is good

We decided at the end of session one that when the group came in to session two the following week they could get some crayons and paper and scribble imediately. This worked really well as it got them straight into an activity and grounded some of the energetic boys.

Type - 3D

I've rediscovered my love of typography again, the shapes of letters and words. The curve of an a, the crossing of a t. This has happened for three reasons.

Reason 1. I've been teaching and getting the children at Ballygarrett art studio kids class on a Tuesday to work on a four week type project. It's a project I have done before and kids of all ages love it.

I kicked of the project by asking the kids to have a look at magazines, the newspaper, books and look for their name or their initials. This bring their awareness to printed type. With older children I sometimes get them to go through magazines and make a montage with the text. Then I showed techniques for creating hand drawn typefaces. The kids also drew and coloured in their name in different sizes and styles. Following on from that they drew their first initial large and we cut it out twice.
This Tuesday was spent constructing these two 2D initials into a 3D initial to act as a piece of sculpture in the kids bedrooms. They work really well as stand alone items but they can also be hung from the door or the ceiling. I particularly like them on shelves. These 3D shapes will be decorated in next weeks class. Really looking forward to seeing what these kids do with these shapes.
This project can be done with recycled materials, tape and glue are needed also.

Reason 2. A recent commission for painting room names in a healing centre. It was a lovely job to get. Raphael was painted in red with copper on the elaborate 'R'. The small 'R' was matt varnished to stand out from other letter which were gloss varnished. Painted on to wooden four panel doors.

Reason 3. Designing a type based logo for a new company,

...and I have discovered fontspace.com! Gone for ever are the days of the letraset book. I wonder does anyone have a copy lying around?

Tuesday Afternoon Class for Kids

3.30 - 4.30pm at Ballygarrett Art Studio

And will continue to run up untill the end of the school term.

Children's drop in Art Class start again today

Families and children are welcome to join the drop in Childrens Art classes run weekly at Ballygarrett Art Studio, Gorey, County Wexford.

Tuesday: 3.30pm - 4.30pm
Wednesday: 3.30pm - 4.30pm

2+ welcome with parental supervision.

Families are traveling to Ballygarrett Art Studio to take part in fun creative activities. As a parent I understand the pace of a school pick up and a drive to an activity so parents are welcome to stay with their children, enjoy a cup of tea and have some chill time. A small box of toys is offered for the smaller siblings to play with.

Stay and create rates are offered along with a drop and go rate.

Adult creative classes are also offerend contact me for more information, Ballygarrettartstudio@gmail.com.

Thrifty art supplies

You don’t have to spend a lot of money on art supplies to enjoy art!

If your kids like to cut and paste get them to make collages with a glue stick and a pile of magazines. Reuse old postcards, magazines, newspapers (great for cutting out words for kids that can’t write yet). Second hand shops are great for old magazines at affordable prices. The doctor’s surgery, dentist and local hairdressers are all good sources for these magazines when they are finished with their stock. Try to get a mixture of topics and avoid real trashy celebrity magazines.

A list of potentially useful items:

• Newspaper
• Postcards
• Magazines, flyers, newspaper supplements – for colourful images and coloured paper for collages.
• Cardboard from cereal boxes makes great card for art projects
• Buttons. When recycling clothes cut off the buttons and keep them in a jar they make interesting additions to pictures- Lids. Twist top cartons lids like the ones used for litres of milk or juice cartons. Even the two litre milk cartons can be used. Jar lids can also be used.
• Tissue paper. From new shoes boxes or wrapping. This can be used to paint on, layering over images and for making flowers.
• Cotton wool
• Twine or an assortment of wool and threads
• Feathers
• Straws
• Ice cream sticks
• Easter egg wrappers – great opportunity to collect different coloured foil.
• Brown or white paper bags
• Egg cartons
• Toilet roll inserts

Commercial craft bits & bobs that kids like. Keep an eye out in your local stationary shop, local supermarket or book shop for when they discount craft items and keep a small stock. Or you can go to one of the on line craft suppliers and stock up.

• felt pompoms,
• googly eyes,
• pipe cleaners
• Glitter, glitter glue, glitter gel, sequins, sequin mesh - all colours
• Stickers for younger kids, it can be old out of date supermarket promotion stickers, hold onto them. The kids can always colour over the original content.

Keep all the craft materials in a box including scissors, glue and tape.

Teach the kids to clean up as part of the activity that way you don't get left with all the clean up.

Kids Weekly Art classes

3.30 - 4.30pm: Tuesday and Wednesday at Ballygarrett Art Studio
The childrens pay as you go drop in Art classes at the studio on a Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon are going really well. Families of 2 or 3 kids are showing up. I know the stay and play price is great value. I have families coming from Camolin, Ferns and Blackwater. The cup of tea for Mums is a plus to.

The plan is to grow the numbers and then move to the Old School House across the road.

I'm always facinated at how children love to make things. Along with doing the typical painting, drawing and colouring I really like to show kids how to construct things. We've done construction with no glue only using string, cardboard and straws. Amazing creations were made including bats, fish and robots. Some of the younger kids learnt to tie their first knot.
This week we trialed the diamond pop up card activity the kids really enjoyed it. The details of how to make the pop up card will go out in the next www.Mykidstime.ie Newsletter you need to subscribe to the site to get the free newsletter.

Lots of fun and exciting things planned for the next three weeks see Ballygarrett Art Studio's Spring Programme.