It is Black History Month, and I thought a fitting way to bring that into the art room with my 4th graders would be a lesson on Freedom and Oppression. After a class discussion on the difference between the two, we paired up and traced our "Profiles". I had the students work together to trace their partners. Then, I showed Marc Chagall's " I and the Village" and we talked about Profiles, Abstraction, and the idea of using color for expressive reasons. I had the students take their profiles, and add images/words of things that represented freedom. Be it the freedom to listen to whatever music, or eat whatever food, or have whatever friends. I gave them freedom of choice as to how they would abstract/change their images. This was a drawing lesson, and we did not spend a great deal of time on it, but I think the students enjoyed it very much, and I'm loving the results.
