Spring 2017
by Ashley Lodato, Arts Education Director Are you debating which flowers to get for Mom for Mother’s Day? Omak fourth graders have a beautiful solution: custom watercolor paintings. The five fourth-grade classes at East Omak Elementary School worked with teaching artist Margaret Kingston last week to create these vibrant paintings. After a lesson in the… [Read More]
Winter 2017
Methow Valley sixth graders examined the fish, flora, and fauna of the Methow River watershed through the lens of artists by designing and carving images on linoleum blocks. In this interdisciplinary unit students first learned about the creatures that inhabit the riparian zone, forested areas, and other ecosystems of the Methow Valley in a workshop in… [Read More]
Winter 2016-2017
by Ashley Lodato, Arts Education Director for Methow Arts For three snowy weeks in February, the music room at Virginia Grainger Elementary School was alive with unusual sounds: the patter of small feet and the thump of hands on the djembe–the skin covered goblet drum of West Africa. As Methow Arts teaching artists Brooke Bourn… [Read More]
Winter
When the ten dancers and drummers from Paschal Sherman Indian School and their two teachers stepped off the bus at Methow Valley Elementary School, third grade students were ready for them. The third grade curriculum includes a year-long journey through Native American studies, beginning with the Wampanoag culture in the New England region and culminating… [Read More]
Spring 2017
Each winter, Brewster 5th graders participate in a 5-week poetry residency, working with Methow Arts teaching poet Kelleigh McMillan. Students become familiar with “painting pictures with words” and with relating their emotions to the natural world. Each week they experiment with a different poetic concept: simile, metaphor, free verse, stanza, etc. Students write poems about their bedrooms,… [Read More]
Fall 2016
by Ashley Lodato, Methow Arts Alliance – Arts Education Director no one comes to relieve me of this solitude presented to me on a silver platter in all its splendor and i welcome the heartache ~ from “Abandoned Tree” by Liliana Hart-Beck For a kid raised in the valley, the Methow… [Read More]
Winter 2015
by Ashley Lodato Education Director, Methow Arts Alliance When do you get to see the Methow Valley Elementary School art room filled with eagles, cougars, rattlesnakes, herons, and black widows? Second graders know the answer to this–when Jody Olson visits the school, that’s when. Olson, a Riverside artist and art teacher, has been leading papier-mâché residencies… [Read More]
Winter 2017
[METHOW ARTS EDUCATION REPORT] Third graders at Brewster Elementary School integrated biology, watercolors, and 3D design in a residency that allowed them a close study of owls. The art residency was preceded by a classroom unit on the habits, characteristics, and habitats of various nocturnal animals. Working with Twisp artist and naturalist Bruce Morrison, students… [Read More]