Throughout the course of my CSGC Summer Grant Project I learned a myriad of lessons as I prepared and held art camps for young children, which taught them about the intertwinings of art and math through patterns. The largest challenge in the early part of my project was reaching out to organizations to potentially partner with. As I contacted a variety of organizations seeking partnerships, I learned the invaluable skill of resilience as I was met with some voicemails and no responses. However, my search was not in vain as I partnered with the Lena Pope Early Learning center, an early childhood school that serves students from a variety of backgrounds regardless of their respective family’s ability to pay.
Given the young age of my audience, I created a curriculum, which I taught to the students, about patterns and their significance in math, nature, and art, demonstrating the immense ties of math and art. My favorite moment of my project was when the children’s faces lit up as they saw the brand new art supplies that they would be using to create art with patterns. It provided me with such a unique sense of fulfillment as I was able to have a positive impact on them by sharing my passion for both art and math. I was very fortunate to have left some of the art supplies to the school to give to students who wanted to take supplies home and to continue making art.
The student ages ranged from three to six across the different groups that I worked with, so each student had different levels of comfort and proficiency creating art and patterns. So, I strove to support each student as they created art, by reaffirming how well they each were doing. Throughout the teaching portion of my project I learned of the true joys of being able to share one’s passions with others, and it being met with enthusiasm.
