My new job & Frida Kahlo and Self Portraits in Early Childhood Education

Have I mentioned here that I am making my first foray into teaching college this semester?

Talk about excitement and trepidation!

I will be doing my very best at teaching both Introduction to Child Psychology to a varying group of students and majors, and teaching Creative Activities for Children to future Early Childhood Education Majors. I am also continuing to teach the kindergarten & first grade after school art class at our local art museum and adding a preschool class to that roster as well, and will continue to help with their toddler program development.

Phew! I guess I finally have an answer to that age old question "So, what do you do?"

As I've been planning away at these endeavors, guess what resource has helped me again and again?

My own blog! So I guess all these hours wasted blogging were not wasted after all! I guess I'll keep using it as not only a resource for others, but handy little bookmark for myself.


So, plans being made for today: Talking about Self Portraits with the Early Childhood majors.

Most children will create hundreds of self portrait and family portrait drawings on their own with no provocation from the adults around them. Understanding this tendancy is helpful. Simplified, children are constantly trying to get to know and express themselves better, and use this as one way of doing so.

My goal for this class is not only to introduce to future teachers ideas for the development of creative thinking and creative lesson planning, but also to give them a basic introduction to the arts and well known artists as well. I will encourage them to explore creative thinking in many ways, and to experiment with art media on their own.

As an ice breaker and first item for their own class portfolios, we will explore the idea of expressing ourselves through simple self portraits. I will encourage them to dump notions of "drawing well" and use a simple stick figure if they so desire. The point is to loosen up our creative thinking and feel comfortable sitting down at a table and doodling with our crayons, as we will do over and over and over again in our work with young children.

(If my predictions are correct, I assume it will also be a great opportunity to immediately dispel the habit of saying things like "I can't draw" in front of children! Children are not judging our artisitic skill and we shouldn't provide them impetus to begin doing so. It does't take long for that statement to catch on.)

I plan on introducing the activity by sharing the work of Frida Kahlo and her unique style of self portraits. She often paints herself surrounded by objects of meaning in her life. What can my students show me about themselves in a simple drawing?

During my research, I came across these youtube clips (sorry to my dial up friends!) which morph the self portraits of artists into an interesting clip with music. I think my students might find these interesting, though I will be using good old fashioned books in the classroom.

Frida Kahlo:



And I'll probably give a little shout out to Vincent Van Gogh as well.



Have a great day and wish me luck as the semester officially begins on Monday!