Art Vistas

Art Vistas is a “hands on” approach to education that brings art from around the world into the classroom.  Our children are given the opportunity to critique, analyze and appreciate historical and contemporary works of art.  The students see and experience the numerous ways line, shape, color, texture and value can be depicted by world-valued artists of our past, and by the students themselves.

This year-long, comprehensive art education program includes art lessons specifically tailored to each grade level.  Projects from kindergarten to fifth grade include drawing in many different mediums, painting, portraits, clay sculpture, still life, cityscapes, seascapes, horses, trains, abstract art, pointillistic (painting with dots), Cubism, Surrealism, Realism, Primitivism, Expressionism, Colonial Art, floral pastels, distance composition, charcoal shading, and photography.

Each spring our cafeteria is transformed in to an art gallery during our annual art show.  The event is open to the community.

The PTA sponsored Art Vistas program is directed and supported by a dedicated team of more than 70 parent volunteers.  Teachers and parent volunteer docents working together have made the program a success for 9 years.  If you would like to become a part of our Art Vistas program, please contact Kathy Clayton, Paula Leonhardt,  your child’s teacher or the school office.

Why is Art Vistas important to your child?

Most of the school day is dedicated to left brain training.  Left brain activity is almost entirely dedicated to the verbal, analytical, symbolic, abstract, rational, logical and linear.  The right side of the brain deals with the spatial, synthetic, intuitive, holistic, imagining, and visualizing.  Right brain training is almost entirely neglected during the course of the school day.  In her book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Betty Edwards discovered how students, through drawing and art training, can be taught how to access the right side of the brain.  While teaching students how to process visual information in a new way, Ms. Edwards teaches them how to make cognitive shifts from one brain mode to the other.  This skill can be applied to all areas of study requiring creative thinking.  This is precisely why Los Alamitos Art Vistas is committed to the idea that an art education is important to every child.