Art in the Time of Quarantine
(Picture above by Calvin Barratt, grade 3, and Dean Barratt, pre-k)
By Henry DiZefalo
As most of you know, my mom, Mrs. DiZefalo, is the art teacher at BBES.
Since we’ve been home doing virtual learning, she started making YouTube videos for her classes. Even though we are not at school, Mrs. DiZefalo is still coming up with art lessons and kids are turning them in.
She makes me help her a lot. Once, she made me video her painting tulips and it made my arms sore. I also taught her how to make a video public.
On Friday the 13th of March, we found out we might have to do our school work at home. Mrs. DiZefalo gave the younger students art activity sheets to work on at home. The older kids got paper, pencils, and directions on how to draw a self-portrait. Since then, she set up Google Classrooms for fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Seventh and eighth had already finished art for the year. She started posting art lessons for kindergarten to third grade on her school webpage.
Some of the art lessons she has posted are the color wheel challenge, art using objects in nature, still life, and self-portrait, to name a few.
Allison Herrera Montoya of the fifth grade described her experience making her self portrait. She said it took 30 to 40 minutes to draw. She also said the videos Mrs. DiZefalo posts are very helpful. When asked what she thinks of distance art class she said, “I like having Google Classroom for art. Art class at home is not that bad but I would still prefer actual art class during school because at home I can’t ask questions about my work and working in school is way easier.”
Kindergartner, Fabian Segoviano, has been making projects from Mrs. DiZefalo’s school webpage. Fabian was asked what was his favorite project so far. He said, “My favorite project was the mini gallery because Minecraft is my favorite and I had fun drawing the characters.” Fabian is talking about the tiny art show project. For the tiny art show project you use tiny action figures and have them set up looking at tiny paintings. Students from several grades, even some teachers, participated in the Tiny Art Show.
“ What I like about the Tiny Art Show is that students from kindergarten through eighth grade participated,” Mrs. DiZefalo said. “I was delighted that eighth graders, Joshua Goodwin, Jackie Neice, and Haylin Pena-Martinez participated in this mini exhibition. They are all unique, talented artists I am going to miss. I’m happy they chose to engage in this end of the year art project.”
In an ELA project, seventh and eighth graders have been taking photographs every day since quarantine began and adding them to a shared Google Photos album.
“It has been really nice to see the kids being creative and using what they know about photography,” said Mrs. Vitale, a seventh and eighth grade ELA teacher. “Art is so important for keeping people connected and processing what we are all going through together during this difficult time.”
And now, please enjoy The Tiny Art Show. Thanks to Mr. Mulligan for making the video.
The Tides 