I worked at the Greenacres Arts Center from June 2021 to June 2022. This is an incredibly unique place. Greenacres offers free field trips to students across the greater Cincinnati area in arts, environment and agriculture education. Educators focus on offering experiences that can’t be had in the classroom (or anywhere else, really!). In my time, the Arts Center primarily hosted students from kindergarten through second grade, with some intermittent fourth through eighth grade programs. I designed and taught a variety of experience-based lessons with many wonderful co-educators.
Taught to kindergarteners.
This was a collaborative program with the agriculture team, so students spent half of the activity time creating watercolor paintings inspired by the sights on the farm, and spent the other half exploring other senses related to the plants and animals on site.
Taught to kindergarteners.
We used snowy paintings at the Arts Center to talk about light and color, and how the weather changes in the winter. We created snowy drawings inspired by the paintings and our favorite activities, using oil pastels in black books.
Taught to first grade students.
In this lesson, we led the students on an exploration of the house and gardens that make up the arts center. Students created oil pastel drawings inspired by the artwork and the landscapes visible at the Arts Center, and search for clues about the place’s history in the gardens. Students also got to see how the special organ and piano work together!
Taught to fifth graders.
Students explored how we can express ourselves through music and through art. We looked at different styles of portraits within the Arts Center, then created self-portraits that captured out self-expression, using their choice of sharpies, watercolor crayons, and chalk pastels.
Students also listened to a 77-year-old recording of Mrs. Louise Dieterle Nippert singing opera - her preferred way of expressing herself - as well as other musical pieces and created creation drawings before composing their own melodies to express themselves.
Taught to 4th and 6th graders.
For this lesson, we created the first stage of a stained glass artwork, called the “cartoon”. We began by collecting patterns from around the Arts Center (looking at architecture and interior design), then worked them into large “stained glass” drawings inspired by the real stained glass pieces within the house. We then turned these into large watercolor-oil-pastel-resist paintings that students were able to take home at the end of the day!