Education
Galveston Bay Children's Art Calendar
For the past 17 years, the Galveston Bay Foundation has provided an exciting outreach opportunity to local fifth graders with the Galveston Bay Children's Art Calendar. This is a unique opportunity to form a relationship between students and Galveston Bay. It also provides a beautiful yet educational calendar about Galveston Bay to the general public. Students from four school districts in the area use their art to reflect answers to the questions "What people, plants, or animals can you find in and around Galveston Bay?" or "Who uses Galveston Bay?" Through their gained knowledge, observance and creativity, they draw a picture with their interpretation of the answer to one of the questions.
Each classroom is given a Bay Ambassador presentation to introduce Galveston Bay to the students and get them excited about the calendar. The project encourages children to explore Galveston Bay and let their artistic juices flow. The students put their images onto paper, drawing with crayons, ink, watercolor, pencil or felt tip markers. Galveston Bay inspires the artist within them to create a picture of what the bay means to them.
Each year several hundred applications and drawings are received. This project has reached over 6,500 students to date. Fourteen winners are chosen; one for each month, and one for the front and back of the calendar. GBF attempts to select at least one winner from each school submitting entries. An awards ceremony and reception is arranged for the winners and their families and teachers.
Each picture is captioned with the artist's name and school, and comes with an interesting fact about the object(s) of the drawing. It also offers expanded monthly entries that outline Galveston Bay's seasonal "Coming and Goings" (such as birding sites). GBF printed 4,000 copies of the Galveston Bay Children's Calendar in 2010. GBF distributes the calendar to members, donors, schools, science teachers, community leaders, elected officials, and the general public. GBF also distributes them at special events around the five counties that surround Galveston Bay.
For more information, please call Rani Henderson, Manager of Education Programs, at (281) 332-3381 x212 or email at rhenderson@galvbay.org.
