Art Sphere is celebrating Spring with virtual live after-school classes open to students grades 5-12 (kids 13 and younger must be accompanied by a parent):
Join us for the free online STEAM program with exciting, new hands-on activities to make learning about space meaningful and fun. Our program is sponsored by NASA and is offered in three, half-hour workshops where students can choose to attend one or all three. Find our additional outer space web resources here.
Do you want to pursue college, get a job, or start your own business, but you feel overwhelmed or not sure where to start? ASI can help by sharing the roadmaps we have used to help students and volunteers succeed over our 23 years of experience. Sign up for classes here. Find our additional entrepreneur skills web resources here.
Sign up for exploring music production and learning how to create music! We will go over simple tricks and patterns to create cool and fun beats.
Learn about the building blocks of Western music using a simple number system that makes creating music easy. With a little practice, you will be on the fast track to understanding how to make chords work together to create songs. Join us.
For parents, teachers, and students, we have 10 new lesson plan books that bring our total number of free lesson plan books to 20. There is something for everyone here, like lessons in singing, creative writing, guitar, science, and nature.
Prefer to take arts classes whenever and wherever you are? Choose from our 48 video program series instructing youth of all ages on opera singing, nature hikes, painting and mixed media, ballet, and much more. Check out our video series page!
Art Sphere will be participating in the Free Library of Philadelphia’s One Book Program. We will be distributing material in April and teaching music instrument making and music composing classes in May.
To get more background and understanding around the special books being shared, we will be offering related, theme-based learning materials about the writers’ place of origin, Puerto Rico, and more!
Register for DIY Instruments and Song workshops on Tuesdays, taught from 4:30 to 5:30 on May 3, May 10, May 17, and May 24, or sign up with Roxborough, Nicetown, Kensington, and Blackwell library branches.
Watch ASI’s Puerto Rican Music and Dance online class and A Walk Around Puerto Rico playlist to learn more about Puerto Rican culture!
Art Sphere believes kids who participate in entrepreneurship and art contests will develop skills that are essential to get prepared for entrepreneurship.
The contest guidelines and deadlines give youth goals to work towards. Youth will build confidence with the creating process as they go from an
“I can’t make it” mindset to one of “I can participate in this contest — and I can win!”
See what preschoolers from the Fishtown class did to make instruments from recyclables here.
Musical Projects Include: Plastic Bottle Rattles, Metal Can Instruments, Paper Towel and Toilet Roll Rain Sticks, Metal Wire and Bolt and Bead Rattles, Plastic Lidded Round Container Drums, Paper Box Drums, Rattles, and Glass Bottle and Water Flutes. Register for DIY Instruments and Song workshops. Click on the handouts below to print them out, and have fun!
Celebrate Spring with us by creating seed paper projects in English and Spanish and how to start seedlings using a cloche. Planting wildflowers beautify the city while also making it healthier to live here for bees, birds, and people. It still may be a little early to plant outside so you may want to make flower garden art to get excited about the Spring, start to grow house plants or even start sprouts in a jar to eat. We also have fun craft projects that honor the value of bees (also in Spanish) and squirrels in gardens!
We were all saddened to hear of some of the struggles one of our students was experiencing. One student responded to the grief another student shared by adding rainclouds on his picture for St. Patrick’s Day, and this student said that we need rain to make rainbows. He found a gold plastic coin in the playground and added it to his work.
His friendship, wisdom, and kind spirit is golden in the classroom, and this gave us all an opportunity to reflect on the resilience that friendships in our classrooms create.
This curriculum has opened worlds that were previously unfamiliar to our students before the start of the program. From careers and vocabulary to looking at their environment with new eyes, students have found the pleasure of discovering new interests. Our work with NASA sparked conversations about geology and how the earth, stars, and solar system were formed. Students looked at coal, mica, garnet, slate, limestone, and quartz, among others, under a magnifying glass and started making observations regarding their weight, color, texture, and shape. Students learned how to draw different types of rocks after taking turns holding each specimen. We also discussed measuring plant growth, tracking precipitation, and testing soil samples.
Students and parents were very engaged in our NASA themed program by bringing in alien toys and recyclables to use for their spaceships, wearing astronaut costumes and alien t-shirts, and bringing spaceship toys that kids played with together.
Students were given a choice of which handouts they would like to complete for the earth science program. Younger students chose coloring, matching, and connecting-the-dots activities, and they found the game of telling the difference between pictures fun. We used this last exercise in the classroom to compare their artwork, which students found to be a great way to notice the project’s uniqueness.
Our students participated in the Federal Duck Stamp Contest by making watercolors of ducks using bird identification books and educational handouts provided by John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge.
Best of luck! You are all winners in our book!
Look through Art Sphere’s participation in the Federal Duck Stamp Contest below.
Thank you to our volunteers who joined us on MLK Day of Service through Global Citizen. We appreciate all the hard work our volunteers have done to help us expand our music web pages and lesson plans through researching music. ASI hopes to continue to host fun and productive volunteer events in the future.
You can support this work by downloading the ‘Volunteer with Art Sphere’ app for free at the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. There are no paperwork requirements, and you can do as much or as little as you want, whenever you want!
“I started at ASI not knowing much about the IT Help Desk but was readily welcomed and assisted by others on the IT team. I love volunteering at ASI because they foster a sense of community; I was impressed by the level of collective collaboration across the different groups and how receptive everyone is to new ideas. This place feels like a second family.“
IT Team
“I’m excited to be working with Art Sphere as a volunteer to help drive forward ASI’s web presence. ASI is a great resource and has built an impressive batch of programs necessary to help spread art throughout the youth population in Philadelphia. Looking forward to continuing the mission!”
Web Design Team
YOU can be a part of Art Sphere’s mission in “Transforming Lives through the Arts.” Art Sphere provides FREE art instruction and supplies to inner-city youth who often have fewer opportunities to take art classes. Here, they learn how to creatively solve problems and express themselves. By donating here to our local Philadelphia organization, your money will go right back into the community. Thank you.
We would like to take a moment to thank The Pennsylvania Statewide, Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance/ PA Council of the Arts, Douty Foundation, and The Presser Foundation for supporting Art Sphere Inc.’s mission.
We would be honored for you to share our free arts projects by forwarding this email address to your friends, family and colleagues. Let them know they can receive our newsletter by sending a blank message to: ARTSPHERE-ANNOUNCE-L-subscribe-request@lists.psu.edu