How I got here:

If I have learned one thing, it is this: life is a long journey with many twists and turns you do not expect.

After a long career teaching art to literally thousands and thousands of youngsters. I retired feeling completely burned out and depleted. I dreamed of a new career as a mailman or driving our city's street-sweeping machine.

However, when I retired, I found that my love of art education would not be snuffed out, and I embarked on this crazy journey.

I planned to create a site for art educators to help new art and more mature art instructors develop their curriculum. I also sought to provide them with sub-plans and sponge activities. As a teacher, I found myself scrambling to create meaningful activities for my kiddos when I was ill or out for weeks recovering from surgery. I wish I could go back to my teaching years and have a selection of sub-plans and sponge activities on hand.

As I was creating this product, budgetary cuts forced several school districts in my community to cut their elementary art programs leaving classroom teachers to pick up the slack. I spoke to classroom teachers in this situation and found they were generally using step-by-step drawing activities off YouTube for art instruction. I could write a whole blog on why these activities are terrible. Most importantly, rote drawing activities are completely devoid of creative choice and critical thinking. Equally bad, they will convince learners that they can not create art with their own ideas. Sad.

I have spent YEARS creating this product. 35 years teaching and developing the curriculum and 5 years putting it in a downloadable format. I hope that shows. However, I kept the prices low by doing all the work myself, therefore, please do not expect professional-level video or graphics work. Also, I used links to works of art to save on licensing fees. I know how much of your money you spend providing your students with materials. Keeping prices low is a top priority.

I hope you will give arted4kiddos a whirl. I know I have a LOT to learn and improve upon, and I hope we can work together to help arted4kiddos be the best it can be!