Artists Cultural Education (ACE Arts) program

Dec 10, Artist/Teacher Jared Bastin held his 2nd ACE Arts session outside, sharing drums and rhythm patterns. Naming thr types of drums, he let each student lead the group witb the basic beat, and had individual students embrllish on it to make a group synchopated rythm. Emphasis was on listening to each other while expressing themselves!

Dec 9, 2025 ACE Arts, one of 12 art recipients in the county, receives State of the Arts Grant from the St Johns Cultural Center at the Waterworks. Our organization was one of 42 applicants! It was a Gala affair at this St Jons Cultural Council, Open House snf Awards ceremony, and 7 of our Artist/Teachers were able to attend with me!

DEC 3 2025 saw a nes Artist/Teacher Jared Bastin lead a session in drumming. He broughtt in several drums, established a rhythm, had the children play in unison and then solo-featured. Her also taught them an African Call and Response, where they all shouted “AWAH!!”He also allowed to girls to teach him a rhythmical hands-slapping chant.

On November 14 , 2025 we received word that we have been one of the winning recipients for the State of the Arts Grants by the Stjohns Cultural Council! We will use this grant to pay our Teacher/Artists for their one-hour sessions during this school year! Thank you. St John’s Cultural Council and the State of Florida!

Nov 19, 2025 Nancy Christensen assisted the children with Gratitude cards for Thanksgiving. (Upon arrival, the chdeen were being led in singing by a former choir director, now volunteer!)The children wrote what they were thankful for and were helped with spelling. Construction paper and magazine illustrations were used with glue, scissors, pencils and marker pens to decorate the cards. Each card was dedicated to someone and the children signed the cards. Happy Thanksgiving!

Nov 12, 2025 Chris Kastle with 11 children aged 6-10 helps the children finish their personal
“Aquariums” with glue, sponge, paper, scissors and markers. They participate in their “Ocean” song together, and the code word for stop talking and listening “OCEAN!!”

Nov 4, 2025
Chris Kastle leads the group of 9 children aged 6-10 to introduce the first of a 2-part session:
They sang a song including hand gestures about the ocean and the creatures that live in it, and then decorated or created 8 pairs of fish on paper with marker pens. These will be cut out by Chris for the next session where the children will assemble the pieces and make individual “aquariums” out of clear CD jackets.

October 29, 2025 10 children age 6-11 Drawing. Nancy Christensen led the children through a basic system of geometric shapes to build a human body. Ovals, triangles and rectangles were stacked to get a facsimile of a proportionate human being. The children had fun costuming and coloring their “humans”! Pencils, paper, colored pencils and markers.
One buy drew the hairstyle of the child next to him and Nancy learned about football “flags” from a 6-year-old!

Oct 22, 2025 ACE Arts started the new season with Nancy Christensen getting to know everyone‘s name and how to spell them. 7 children aged 6-11. Nancy shared watercolor paintings from her July trip to Wales and the children got a little lesson in geography and history by locating Florida and Wales on the globe, along with a story about warm ocean water there because of the Gulf Stream, connecting Florida and UK that fascillitated ships coming and going from Europe to the New World. We also located Jamaica which had just experienced a terrible hurricane. Some of the kids had relatives there. Then we shared watercolor supplies to make paintings. At the end children got physical and practiced cartwheels and backbends.

Getting in the Final Report tail end of the grant procedure, ready to apply for next year!
Calling for additional Artist/Teachers! Make up a program in your discipline that can be hands-on executed in one hour, allowing for homework stragglers in the beginning and staggered pickup times at the end of the session !

On April 9 Katherine Archer came and shared her baby ukelele with the children, aged 5-9. They loved it! 0ne them was thrilled how her outfit matched the ukelele! It was also nice enough to play outside! There was a program of swimming and new program of soccer being offered at American Legion Kid Safe Zone, so many of the children attended that through the remaining weeks. Wednesdays became activity days!

March 19, 2025 was Spring Break.
March 26, 2025 We made birthday cards using colored paper and marker pens for one of the adult helpers. Children learned to express their own message and color and form for their cards.