"Kids Create, Art for Primary Schools" is available ONLY at Charran's book store in St James. It is ...

"Kids Create, Art for Primary Schools" is available ONLY at Charran's book store in St James. It is my hope that it become available at all book stores and that all primary schools may have one. It has been an up hill journey trying to get this book published and now it is an up hill journey trying to get it promoted. I have been teaching art to children for about 16yrs and have always advocated the importance of art and art education. Children are naturally creative and this creativity must be nurtured!
I decided to write this book to make art in Primary schools more accessible for teachers and their students for several reasons,
1. Art was one of the few subjects in Primary school without a MOE resource book for teachers. Unfortunately there still isn't one even with the CAC. I am hoping to get this book selected as an option.
2. Having led workshops, classes and art programmes in various schools, I kept hearing over and over from teachers, they just did not know what to teach!
3. My own children would come home with "snowmen" and other foreign type crafts. I remember in a teacher training session one teacher proudly announced that she did lots of art with her students, "they paint snowmen, winter scenes etc." When I asked her if she did anything local, she looked taken aback then said that her students travel. I suggested she give them some projects that would make children aware and more appreciative of where they were from. Why not a Dry Season or Wet Season painting? It ties in with what they would learn in Social Studies and is a great opportunity to teach warm and cool colour schemes.
4. Art periods in schools would be dropped for more academia or children would just do colouring.
5. CAC now includes art for assessment and being one of the facilitators training teachers in this I am aware that they are still unsure, and worse some now only give the assessment projects for art and nothing else!

Initially my book was to serve the entire Primary school from Infants to Std 5 as projects could be adapted to different levels and were cross curricular, however I was told it would be better to have several books and workbooks attached to them so I made the necessary changes( focused more on the Principles of Art) and this first book is for Upper Primary level i.e. those doing CAC (unfortunately the workbook has not yet been published).
There are only 500copies of this book available, if it doesn't sell then it will be shelved and the other levels will not go to print. This book is not perfect I am sure, but it is a start. It aims to give children a good foundation in art and the projects are cross curricular and have local content. e.g. Scarlet Ibis paper mosaics, Amerindian pots etc
Please have a look at the book, it is good for parents and children too! And please spread the word so that it may be made more widely available!