The Christmas of 2022 is just around the corner, and our children are taking online sessions at home. Teachers at YWIES Beijing keep thinking the questions:

How to mobilize children's attention and interest at online sessions? How to engage students with their interests?

When students are learning new knowledge through online sessions, how to stimulate their practical ability?

Here is how our art teachers started the online art course based on the theme of [Christmas].

"We want our students to pay more attention to those artistic elements that have not yet been fully developed, so that more fresh vitality could be implanted into creative ideas and artistic design”, said Aiko and Melinda, the art teachers.

G1-3 students，Conformal Design

The students used the left-over Kraft paper bags as their design materials, and our designers tried diverse shapes based on the characteristics of the materials in their hands, and then use Christmas elements to decorate Christmas stockings. Some students were stimulated to independently explore alternative solutions due to the limitations of online courses. This could be an unexpected gain of the course.

These creation practices students' ability to select and use appropriate tools, materials and techniques, including drawing, cutting, pasting, etc. It is challenging for students to confidently use Christmas elements to express their opinions and feelings, and to articulate their design ideas and preferences.

Grade 4 students，Artistic Design of Gnomes

When planning the online art course for Grade 4, the teacher first asked: What artistic images impressed you about Christmas? To deep dive with the question: What details, colors or patterns make you impressed? The students share the color emotions of the red, green and white which always represent Christmas. The sharing and discussion of the theme deepened their understanding of Christmas creation, they then carried out the artistic creation of Gnomes.

Many students have formed a good tacit understanding with the teacher. If they lack a specific material, they have learned to find similar and multiple alternative solutions to continue artistic creation, and have reached better artistic results. The teacher is impressed that the students could utilize their learning ability, hands-on ability, dialectical thinking ability and their flexibility to achieve a better goal in a limited condition.

Grade 5 students，The use of point, line and surface.

Grade 5 pay more attention to the ability to draw, the use of dots, lines and surfaces. We try to emphasize the ability of concentration. In terms of painting, students need to use line drawing to create, and use different forms of lines to shape the image of elk.

Our teacher designed more English discussions and expressions in the thematic learning for Grade 5. The teacher and students discussed winter activities in Santa's hometown, which involved a lot of new artistic elements. They also completed crossword puzzles together, and these words are closely related to Christmas art elements.

At YWIES, art classes are closely linked to other learnings. Our teachers always correlate our learning with a strong artistic language ability. Students are not just learning techniques, yet they are merely enjoying a holiday, they are learning and paraphrasing art and culture.

A very warm Happy Christmas sent from YWIES Beijing. Enjoy your Christmas and stay safe.