The Heart Needs ART!

I just got home from a wonderful conference at Plymouth State University on Integrating the Arts. So awesome! I met a ton of great educators. You'll be hearing more about my findings from the conference soon since I'm taking a related course for Grad credit. Now I need to come up with a project that integrates the arts with other subjects in the curriculum...now, if you're like me, I can't teach a lesson without tripping over a dozen standards! So hopefully this integrated arts project will be fun to create!

One thing we did to wrap up the conference was that we each created a "quilt square" from a variety of media that represented something we learned at the conference. Here's mine:

It's a positive/negative space Notan that is meant to show how the arts are related and connected to one another (theater, visual arts, music & dance) and the top triangle represents one of my loves: New Hampshire! It's supposed to depict the mountains of NH--hey, I only had about 15 minutes or so! Maybe I could go as far as to say the top triangle represents the NH Common Core Standards!?! See how the Common Core standards are connected to the Arts? Man, I'm good!

But really, this image is based on something one presenter said: "New Hampshire has a long-standing tradition of a love for the arts!" And another presenter said "The Heart Needs ART!"

I'm happy to be a part such a great profession!

FYI: the quilt squares made by the conference-goers were complied into a larger paper quilt that was displayed at the performing arts center at PSU. What a great idea, huh? Having everyone create a bit of art to get them thinking about what they learned during the day. It was great to see how different all of the squares were.

So make your heart happy--and do some ART!

The 2014 AIC Reflection Quilt