Art Enrichment Activity

Each time we start an Art Enrichment activity, it is easy to portray images from the artist's collection and to find websites about them from the Internet on our interactive white board. With this image of sunflowers by Van Gogh spread across the Smart Board from corner to corner, I was able to capture the attention of my first graders. Before painting with acrylic paints, we started by counting how many flowers we could find noticing that some were partly hidden. I invited students to come up and circle the center of each flower with the Smart Board pen. Then, we replicated the same step on white poster board with our pencils. Each step of the way, we noticed little details about his painting. We examined the paint strokes and decided that Van Gogh must have put a lot of paint on his brush to give it so much texture. So we changed our Smart Board pen to show a wider line and painted petals around our circles on the Smart Board. Each technology step on the Smart Board, helped us create our own creations on paper with paint. Slowly, our creations turned into beautiful master pieces that were inspired by Van Gogh and a dash of technology. Ooh La La!

Just Use It! :)

I know that using all of this new technology can be hard at times, especially when it looks like it will just be more that you have to do. My suggestion is to simply use it as much as possible throughout the day as a hightech whiteboard. Open up the notebook software and anything you would have written on the board simply put it on the Smart Board. The first step to great Smart Board use is to simply become comfortable and familiar with it. If you ever need help, don't hesitate to ask me.