MANSFIELD - This year's "Saturday Morning Art Class" at Mansfield University for local children ages 5 to 13 wrapped up Saturday with the focus on art from around the world.
According to organizer Tasha Johnson, a senior art education major from Nashville, Tenn., she and art education majors Katelynn Warner, a senior from Sayre, and Emily Shea, a junior from Mifflinburg with a dual major of art education and graphic design, conducted three 30-minute workshops with all classes from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. in Allen Hall.
This year about 13 students in the 4 and 5-year-old group, 15 in the 6 and 7-year-old group, and 20 in the 8 to 12 year-old group signed up for the classes, which are part of the university's requirement for students enrolled in the elementary curriculum, Johnson said.
"We go through teaching different mediums, paint, clay, collage and incorporate artists like traditional, contemporary, local and for this last big one each teacher is picking a country and we will decorate the room, be in costume (and) teach about the country as well as its art," Johnson said.
The university students will dress in the style of each country they are representing, Johnson said, who will be dressed in Brazilian costume for her workshops.
Shea will be teaching about art from France and will be dressed appropriately for that nation, Johnson said.
The 40 to 50 students are separated into three groups according to their age group.
Because there are so few students in the art education curriculum, Johnson said, students in general education classes also taught the students to fill in the void. Some, for example, taught lessons in the style of Jackson Pollock Mondrian, she added.
Students came from all over the local area, including Mansfield, Wellsboro and Blossburg, she added.
Among them was Johnson's 5-year-old daughter, Lynnzi Hann,.
Projects the students learned in the classes included making rain sticks by putting rice inside hollow cardboard rolls, "3-D bugs" made and used to paint by dipping the bug's feet in paint and walking them across the paper and self-esteem crowns to help students recognize the positive aspects of themselves, Johnson said.
Other projects included movement display watercolor and silhouettes depicting favorite dances, mosaic tiles in plaster mold displays in which students learned to problem solve and how smaller parts create a whole by creating animals using one color in a variety of shades and tints of that color and yarn paintings of jellyfish to show them how to create variations of lines from zig-zags to straight and wavy.
Multicolored lizards also were made using magic mold - cross between clay, Play-doh and foam - to press into paper within the lines with feathers and beads added.
