Welcome to Mrs. Day's Art Class! 

Art

Our art program is based on the district's visual arts curriculum and is aligned with the Colorado State Standards. The art program also allows for integration in conjunction with school grade level curriculums. Every child develops skills, knowledge, and the tools for creative thinking.
Wilder Elementary participates in four district art shows yearly, including our annual school-wide "Wild Art Show". Units include ceramics, observational drawing and mixed media projects. Special units may include paper mache, sculpture and robot building. The Original Works program allows student artwork to be made into products like journals, mugs, t-shirts etc.

Art Shows

Wilder has several art shows throughout the year. The LPS District Art Show at Bemis Library is in January. The Curtis Center for the Arts and Humanities Show for Youth Art Month is in the month of March. Wilder students will also have artwork on display at the Educational Services Center, dates to be announced. Our own art show here at Wilder will be in April. In addition, this year Littleton Public Schools will participate in a Littleton Main Street Show. Student's work will be displayed in Main Street Shops for two weeks in April.

The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.
The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution
and that questions can have more than one answer.

The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor number exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
The arts traffic in subtleties.

The arts teach students to think through and within a material.
All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

The arts enable us to have experiences we can have from no other source
and through such experiences to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young
what adults believe is important.


SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications.