Oksan Winter Camp- Pop Art & Scratch Art

4th Grade:

I was asked to do a friend's school camp, and since it provided a little bit of extra cash and I would have been sitting at my desk at my school most likely doing nothing, I decided to do it...

I'm glad I did because this school is RICH! Unlike my school, the funding for camp had not been cut, but instead they had a huge budget. I was told that I could get whatever I wanted in terms of supplies. Because of my art background, I got to teach art as well. Other subjects offered in English were math, science, music and P.E. 

So...there were 4 classes of about 18 kids who would go to each subject each day. Quite the camp experience... I would say that these kids should consider themselves lucky! 

First day I taught the kids about Andy Warhol and the Pop Art Movement. I used the same lesson that I had just used with the 5th grade camp at my school. I knew that it took some time, so I rushed through a lot of the information so the kids would have time to work on their art. 

The next day I taught the kids about patters. We went over the vocabulary: stripes, polka dots, checks, plaid, floral, paisley, zig zags, and animal print. Here in Korea, my co-teacher told me that they don't really have distinct names for a lot of the patterns so I knew all of these words would be new to the kids.

After doing a worksheet in their custom made printed out workbook, I introduced scratch art to them. Now, I would have thought that they had done this before, but from their looks of amazement...this was not the case.  I had them section off 8 different spaces that they were to then make the patterns in section. 

This activity worked like a dream! I was bored out of my mind. I talked for the first 10-15 minutes and then let them work. They worked so hard, and basically silently. It is hard to explain how insanely great this worked. I would stand up ever few minutes to walk around and make sure everyone was on task and doing okay, and they were always doing great, no questions, and just scratching away! Dare I say I checked my facebook during class as a result of this great participation? 

Towards the end of class, most of the students weren't quite finished and I would tell them that they needed to start cleaning up, and no one would move. They wanted to finish so bad. They even used their 10 minute break in between classes to work on it. Sue, who was in charge of the camp walked in at one point and started laughing because she caught me say, "Ok, guys you HAVE to go. You HAVE to put your sketchbooks away and go to the next class!" ahah! I think that means you found a good lesson!

I definitely will remember the excitement that the scratch art brought. It wasn't too expensive when you think about it. Each students paper cost about 500 Won, which is about 50 cents. For regular school, when you have 150 students in each grade this could be a problem, but for camps that have a limited about of students, I think it is a great activity!

SUCCESS!