I did one similar to Sky's when I taught in a K-12 school. Except I was
the art print so it say. You know those catalogs that you get in the mail
selling us art prints? Well I cut up the catalogs. I glued the tiny prints
onto scraps of matboard and then glued the matboard to pin backs. I wore
one art print every week. (pin size ranged from 1" in size to 6") Monday
through Friday the same print. Kids just loved looking at my pin and
guessing. I too had boxes in my classroom for guesses. I pulled out 10
names every Friday and gave away prizes. I announced the answer and winners
every Friday at the end of the day, over the PA system. It really
encouraged the kids to look up information and learn. Parens got involved
too. Soem kids would sketch the pin on paper to take it home and have mom
or dad help find the answer.
Melissa Chaney
Ray-pec High School
Raymore Peculiar Schools, MO
I'm having great success with a contest I came up with at my school. I
teach art to grades one through five.
I hung up 10 big prints by famous modern artists (19th and 20th century) in
the hallway outside of the art room. I covered up the information at the
bottom and taped over the artists' signatures. I taped a clue to each
picture such as:
"This artist invented pointillism." or "She was famous for her paintings of
mothers and their children." Inside the art room door I have a box on the
counter filled with pencils and small pieces of paper. The children have to
guess the names of 5 of the artists if they are in 5th grade, 4 for 4th
graders and so on down to the first graders who just have to guess one
correctly. They have to write their guesses on the slips of paer and drop
them in the raffle box
which is also on the counter near the door. The contest is open to teachers
and parents but they have to guess 6 artists out of 10. On April 15th I'm
going to pick a winner from each grade level and one adult winner. I have
art supplies to give as prizes and a great book on Van Gogh which I got for
the parents.
Many of the artists are familiar to my students because we have studied them
in class. But I put up some web sites for them to visit and encouraged them
to look through any art history books that their parents might have.
I am amazed at how excited everyone is about this contest. Some of the
teachers have taken a surprizing (to me) interest in the contest and refuse
to put their slip in the box until they have guessed all ten artists. I've
taken pictures of the children out in the hall filling out their slips.
They are not allowed to do it during class. This has turned out much better
than I expected.
