Los Gatos Education Foundation

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  • Home
  • What We Fund
  • The Need
  • Donor List
  • Business Supporters
    • Business Sponsor Program
  • About
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • LGEF Board, Staff, and Volunteers 2022-2023
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • LGEF FAQ
    • LGEF Financials 2021-22
    • BOD Meeting Schedule
    • Volunteer for LGEF
  • DONATE

LGEF Funded Art Programs

What It Is: Funding for one elementary art teacher for approximately 4 hands-on visual art lessons per year to each K-5 class.  In addition, a separate grant is provided directly to the Los Gatos Art Docents.

Why It Matters: These two programs provide opportunities to participate in, understand, connect with and interpret art. This is access to art education that Los Gatos students would not otherwise receive because the state provides no funding for art instruction of any kind.

More about Los Gatos Art Docents

This all-volunteer vibrant community organization provides the local schools with a visual arts education for 3,300 elementary and middle schoolers. Art Docents attend a ten-week training session before teaching students. Annually, forty volunteer Art Docents spend more than 2,145 hours in the classroom teaching kids hands-on workshops, art appreciation and art theory implementing a well-established curriculum. Art Docents work with students in the classroom nine times each school year. 

The Art Docents sponsor visits from well-known guest artists who specialize in a variety of media including collage, watercolor, digital media for demonstrations and workshops. Docents also oversee the LGUSD Annual Art Show, a community event which displays more than 3000 pieces of student artwork at Fisher Middle School each May.

Learn more by visiting the Los Gatos Art Docents web site.

More about Kelly Martin's art instruction

Art teacher Kelly Martin’s lessons are based on California standards, and compliment curriculum offered by the Art Docents. To augment her lessons, Martin provides teachers with possible connections to other curriculum to reinforce and extend the students learning. Each art lesson has an at-home activity connected to each lesson that parents can access on Kelly Martin’s blog (http://mrsmartinartclass.blogspot.com.)

In Kindergarten, students read The Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert and create their own collage of a creature from collected leaves. The students study the color and shape of the leaves during the same month that the Art Docents introduce color, value and shape in their lesson. Curriculum extensions include: sorting leaves by size in the math, writing about the animal or person they have created in writers’ workshop, and discussing how leaves are similar or different in science. This kindergarten lesson ties in directly with the FOSS (Full Option Science System) tree unit, specifically the study of Autumn trees.

In third grade, students paint a watercolor of birch trees during their favorite season, and select the colors for their landscapes according to the season they choose. In this lesson, students learn now to create the illusion of space, and review the concepts introduced in the second grade Art Docent lesson about the use of foreground, middle ground and background. In science, the students learn about shadows and light and use this knowledge to add shadows to their paintings of the birch trees. In geography, third grade students discuss the habitat and geography of birch trees.

In fifth grade, students create an observational contour drawing of a leaf with palmate, pinnate or parallel veins, using pastels. The students use Georgia O’Keefe’s technique of zooming in on object to create a detailed section of that object, and use high lights, low lights and complimentary colors to enhance their drawings. Georgia O’Keefe is studied in detail in one of the fourth grade Art Docent lessons. This leaf abstraction lesson connects directly to the fifth grade science lesson in which students study the vascular systems of plants.

To learn more about K-5 art lessons and see some of the students’ artwork visit Kelly Martin’s blog at http://mrsmartinartclass.blogspot.com.
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LGEF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization
Tax ID  94-2874929

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