This has proven to be rather challenging to me, learning how to follow blogs! I first started with Feedly. I am an arts education student passionate about infusing arts into the classroom so I began searching for arts educators. I discovered “2 Soul Sisters” that have several ideas regarding art projects they have included in their own classrooms. One idea that I really liked had the students colour an ink stamped post card (designed by one of their own students) that they coloured. The students were then encouraged to write a note of gratitude to someone and then the post card was physically snail mailed. This is helpful because it is an excellent example of cross curricular (ELA, visual art) learning infused with art. Their students loved it! 2 Soul Sisters is relevant and helpful because their ideas have been tried and tested in their own classrooms. Their blog includes a list of arts education blogs they follow. I have just discovered there are millions of possibilities connecting this way. I had not realized the power of blogging until now.
The second thing I did was google “best arts ed blogs” and by sorting and eliminating I came to Mini Matisse’s blog. The author, Mrs. Hahn, is an elementary arts teacher and her posts are directly related to teaching elementary school children, or, as Mrs. Hahn calls them, “mini’s”. Her blog is recent and includes ideas related to the seasons or special circumstances (ex: Earth Day). Mrs. Hahn’s art projects are detailed often with YouTube tutorials embedded directly to her blog, and her projects use easy to find art supplies. Additionally, one great thing about Mini Matisse’s blog is that she has a huge list of blogs she follows!
Jana Ross 