Where the visual arts are concerned, distance learning can feel like an impossibility, especially for our youngest learners. However, within SPUSD, teacher Sarit Swanborn provides engaging art lessons through live sessions and recorded videos (followed by step-by-step pictures) so that even the youngest participants can hear the voice of their art teacher, watch up-close, and then pause and rewind as many times as necessary to learn a new concept and/or technique. Students in first grade are currently learning the art form of traditional Chinese brush painting using watercolor on textured paper to create bamboo stalks and leaves. Next week, the students will follow along to draw and cut out a baby panda to place within their paintings.

Carefully chosen art lessons and diverse art materials have been bundled and made available for remote learning for every child within SPUSD, in transitional kindergarten through grade five, to maintain an enriching connection to the Arts at a time where fostering imagination and self-expression is more important than ever.