Teacher Assistant Valentina Yanchak Unleashes Students’ Creativity with Life-Size Art
In the Art Corner of her classroom, Teacher Assistant Valentina Yanchak helps students turn tiny hands into big, joyful creations.
Every day, a dozen Marcus Avenue students look forward to spending time in the dedicated space – where they work on creative projects – both big and small – with Valentina’s help.
Valentina has been crafting memories with Marcus Avenue students for 20 years, leaving them, and their families, with lasting treasures.
Hailing from Ukraine, Valentina began her career as an educator working with older children. At Marcus, she brings that same passion for hands-on creativity to preschoolers.
“I always worked with kids, but there it was older kids,” said Valentina. “In Ukraine, we do it differently. We make a lot of natural things. I actually taught them how to make furniture, how to sew, how to draw, and all different kinds of art.”
In Ukraine, Valentina’s classes were a mix of art and what people in the U.S. would do in a Home Economics class, like functional crafting skills and life skills. Valentina excels at paper crafts and integrates her lessons from Ukraine into her present-day classroom.
At Marcus Avenue, handprints are a signature part of Valentina’s art projects. She said that at this stage in a child’s development, you can see their growth from year to year. To provide parents with a memento of that growth, she starts all her students with a journal at the beginning of the school year.
In the pages, she marks the month on the right-side as a header and has them work on two activities; on the left, students make a creative handprint that illustrates the season or theme. In December a student painted Santa’s red hat over their upside-down handprint. Another drew their handprint inside a snow globe and decorated the fingers as snowmen wearing fun hats.
The activity is simple, but the results are remarkable as you can see the students’ progress throughout the year. The squiggly unconnected lines from September gradually turn to well-defined shapes and letters as students near graduation.
With each holiday, students work on decorations and a topper to decorate their class tree, a robust six-foot tall structure that stands near the center of the classroom. It is made up of cutouts of students’ handprints in different shades of green to add texture and show volume.
For St. Patrick’s Day, students created a shimmering four-leaf clover tree topper – a character with gold handprints for eyes holding a pot of gold and wearing a whimsical top hat.
Valentina’s work has increased her students’ love of learning, awakened their passion for art, and made working on practical skills—like holding a pencil and thinking creatively—fun and enjoyable.