Magazine features art and stories from Bentonville students, teacher
Posted on Monday, March 12, 2007
BENTONVILLE - Seth Parker's family recently bought several copies of the magazine School Art, which is for art teachers.
The family wasn't about to take up art but all his relatives wanted to see the secondgrader's own artwork appear in the magazine. Parker drew a dragon for teacher Sara Kirker's class when he was in kindergarten. His dragon was one of the pictures chosen to appear with her article about Chinese dragons. Kirker teaches at Bentonville' Apple Glen Elementary School.
"It's really cool seeing it in a magazine because I never thought it would get this far because I'm not really into doing art," Parker said.
Incidentally, the piece is also on display at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock.
Kirker has submitted several articles to the magazine and four have now been published in various issues. Each article accompanies some of her students' artwork and the January issue features some of the artwork on the cover. Each article is about how she used fun projects to teach a specific art lesson.
"It's so another art teacher can pick up the lesson and teach it," Kirker said.
The first article," Gone with the Wind Socks"shows how she made four giant windsocks for her classroom that demonstrate the four elements of design: shape, lines, color and texture, Kirker said.
The second article is called "Magical Chinese Dragons"and it is the one that features how to write dragon in Chinese and to incorporate lessons about the Chinese New Year into kindergarten art.
The third article is named "Lines, Lines and More Lines"and it features art from second-grader Averee Rose Cassick.
"I shared it with my family and they're excited," she said.
The article details the various ways to teach the different kinds of lines to younger students.
The most recent article is about subway art and Keith Haring, who is a famous subway artist. The student art that is featured is from several years ago and is student versions of what subway art could look like.
Kirker has 28 years of teaching experience in the Bentonville schools.
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