Advocacy & Recycling

Don't know what to do with those old, inefficient incandescent light bulbs that you replaced with more efficient CFLs and LEDs.

Lights On Afterschool is a nationwide event celebrating afterschool programs and their important role in the lives of children, families and communities. 

To draw the attention of parents and educators and advocate for the importance of afterschool programs, this year for Lights On Afterschool one of our schools decided to have a lightbulb gallery! The kids spent the afternoon painting lightbulbs with glass paint and displaying them for families to see. The kids loved that they looked like hot air balloons to represent New Mexico!

Things you'll need:

1.Any glass light bulb

2.Glass paint and markers ( from craft store)

3.Air dry clay 

Don't bake the lightbulb a as the paint instructed as it makes glass explode! Place light bulb in clay before they star paining to hold as a base and start painting. Let dry at least 4 hours!

By Sarafina Nagle

Jim Dine Hearts

Jim Dine (1935), is an American Pop Artist and Abstract Espressionist who is known for his colorful and iconic painting of robes and hearts. He is considered an important figure in Neo-Dada and a forerunner of Neo-Expressionism. He is the undisputed King of Hearts. He paints, prints, draws, and sculpts them. When asked how many hearts he has made, he responded, “Millions… I have not idea but it’s mine and I use it as a template for all my emotions. It’s a landscape for everything.”

In this art class, we showed the students an example of a Jim Dine heart painting.

We asked them, “What colors were in used in the art.  How does it make you feel?”  Then we told them that we were going to do our own version of the heart picture.

Materials needed:

·      Paper

·      Crayons

·      Pencil

·      Watercolors

·      Water

·      Brushes

We first showed the students how to draw a big heart on their page with pencil.  Then we had them trace over the pencil with crayon.  Once their heart was drawn, the students then used watercolors to fill in the heart.  We had them think about the colors inside the heart, and outside and asked how they wanted them to contrast.  

Here are their heart-filled results.