25 Days of Art: An Introduction

Hey ya'll! Welcome to April. I know, I know, I don't usually post on Mondays but this month we're doing things a little bit differently.

April is a stressful month in our little corner of the world. The first week is spring break for public schools and the state mandated standardized tests take up the rest of the month. Standardized tests that will require a lot of kids who do not like to sit still to sit still for a very long time. In other words, it's about to get cray-cray in here.

We were going to do a huge Poetry Month project wherein there would be a different poetry prompt every day of the month. I was going to involve teachers at the local elementary school to make poetry a center in their classrooms, and at the end of the month we would have gathered all the poems into an anthology that would become a temporary part of our circulating collection using one of the burner bar codes that we have on hand for magazine check-outs. Maybe it's just because I'm a huge geek, but the idea of other people being able to check out a book that I'd contributed to would have made a 10 year old Lucy die of happiness.

I still love the idea of a huge poetry initiative but sadly April, National Poetry Month, is simply not the time for us. Instead, this idea has morphed into the 25 Days of Art challenge. 

There will be one new art project every single day that the library is open in April. That boils down to 25 days and 25 art projects once you take into account Sundays and Emancipation Day (we have the best holidays off). Some of the projects will focus on the style or art of individual artists, some will just be a fun activity. Most of the projects will be drop-in, no instruction or supervision needed but once a week I'll be leading a more structured project with demonstrations and my full, undivided attention for helping out.

So what does that mean for the blog? Well, the blog is going to look a little different in April. I'll still do Flannel Friday, because I love it and have been missing it the last few weeks. But everything else will change. Instead of Tuesday and Thursday posts there will be a post every day, except Sundays, about the art project that we did the previous day. There will be supply lists, instructions, what worked and didn't,some pictures and, if applicable, book lists. All of my sources and inspirations will be documented to the best of my abilities.

I'm traveling some in April for weddings, so the blog posts that go up might not be 100% complete, but they will be updated as soon as possible to include examples of kid made art and how smoothly or not so smoothly the project ran.

I'm really excited (and a little lot nervous) about April, but hopefully we'll all come through with our sanity in check. 

See you tomorrow with our first installment- Complete the Picture Drawings!