Monday, November 26, 2007
So for my performing arts linked lessons I did lessons that centered around Reader's theatre for grade one. My dramatical focus was the use of facial and vocal expression. My ADDM group and I discussed how the use of expression needs to be taught yada yada. I also brought in how my youngest is a rare bird and that I get a kick out of listening and watching her read because she uses a fair amount of expression while reading - especially for a relatively new and developing reader. Anyhow, as my children are an extension of me, i figured I would post her creativity - the story she read to me tonight at bedtime. She did a pretty good job for the first run through of this book (which has some pretty out their vocab in it) and of course watch her face and listen to the vocal expression - hope you get a kick out of it as much as I did ( but hey it just might be that biased Mommy pride).
Video Fun
Ok so this isn't exactly art blog focused - but thought I would share anyway! enjoy with giggles.
So we've all done our assessment presentations. Way to go everyone, you did a great job. I must say I am rather impressed with the number of you who went outside the box and created something other than a poster. I personally was not able to wrap my mind around anything other than a poster - so my hats off to all of you. However, I think I have come a long way. As I was talking with Dan today, when I first started this educational journey I was frustrated when told to synthesize and think, rather I just wanted the facts so I could spit them back out - yes a product of my education I was! I've come a long way baby! Any way, although I have always been a creative person, always made things, posters and projects were always my favourite at school, the analogies some of you made today are still a little out of my own creative realm - but I'm working on it! Also, thanks for all the wonderful comments on my poster today - it was a great ego booster.
Art Show Brochure
My second major contribution to the art show was the Art Show Brochures. From a parent’s perspective I found this would be “icing on the cake” so to say. As a mom, nothing is more thrilling then to see your child’s name in print, and from a child’s view (at least most of the ones I have encountered) it is also sooo exciting – when your name is in print it means you’re FAMOUS! In addition, I also thought it would be snazzy to have little pamphlets to hand out and something recognizing our accomplishments. So there are my reasons behind thinking we should have a brochure. As for making the brochure – let me tell you I am no publishing whiz and it probably would have helped if I knew more. As it was I started working on it after supper (so about 6-7pm) and worked on it until almost 2am, and that was the first night before I had everybody’s info. Even though it was time consuming, I thoroughly enjoyed the act of creating the brochure, and I am proud at the finished product. as I have said before, I enjoy creating and making visual things like this. This was definitely a learning experience for me as well because I have never created a pamphlet before. I tried to get templates, however, I couldn’t get them to work the way I wanted so I made my own template using a table. There were many problems with this template (like there was a third page that I just didn’t print and didn’t really have anything on it but when I tried to get rid of it, it screwed everything else up), but it worked well enough to get the product out.
Art Show
Art Show
I am really impressed with how well the Art Show transpired. My students and their parents seemed to be very impressed and pleased at their achievements. I am amazed at the quality of art and the diversity of the art in our show. With this I say way to go everyone; we all deserve a round of applause! I also want to say a special thank you to Jodi, Dena, Tracy for your help with getting my art together and getting it on the pole; I really appreciated your help, so Thank-you.
So now to showcase myself. I would say I contributed in 2 major ways for the art show. One I would say that having my students do an art lesson, picking only 5 of those pieces of art, sending out the invitations, following up the invitations with a phone call to the parents, and then being their for my students at the opening is a contribution worth mentioning (though it is no different from many others in the class). With out all of us doing this there would not have been an Art Show. I’ve already discussed my grappling over what to have the students do for the show so I won’t go into that again. I found the picking of the art somewhat difficult, but not as difficult as I thought it could be or some others may have found it. I went in with the opinion that it is not wrong to only choose 5 students from the group. Although some could argue that it fosters competition, feelings get hurt and so on, I feel that students need be recognized individually as well as collectively, that they should be honoured when they excel, and students (people in general) need to be able to accept not always getting what they want, not always being in the limelight, and showing joy at other peoples success (not just their own). When I set out to pick the pieces of the show I laid them all out on my living room floor (what a mess that made, little confetti pieces everywhere) and looked them over without knowing who made which window. I picked on this premises as well. I looked for little creative touches, aspects that were different, evidence that instructions were followed, and ones that were aesthetically pleasing / caught my eye. This took time, but it wasn’t as difficult as I thought. I was surprised at some of the students that got picked however, they weren’t ones that I thought would have been picked (yes a biased statement, but at least it was acknowledged). When I went to school and told my cooperating teacher who I had chosen I was a little disheartened that she suggested I change some of these because “their parents wouldn’t come anyway”. Despite my hesitancy in doing this (especially because of my philosophy behind thinking it is ok to only honour a handful of students) I bent to the thoughts of my teacher. At any rate, I did find it harder to face the students and tell them I couldn’t honour them all and here are the students I’ve chosen – I wussed out somewhat by doing it Friday afternoon on our last day of practicum, but I did it nonetheless.
I am really impressed with how well the Art Show transpired. My students and their parents seemed to be very impressed and pleased at their achievements. I am amazed at the quality of art and the diversity of the art in our show. With this I say way to go everyone; we all deserve a round of applause! I also want to say a special thank you to Jodi, Dena, Tracy for your help with getting my art together and getting it on the pole; I really appreciated your help, so Thank-you.
So now to showcase myself. I would say I contributed in 2 major ways for the art show. One I would say that having my students do an art lesson, picking only 5 of those pieces of art, sending out the invitations, following up the invitations with a phone call to the parents, and then being their for my students at the opening is a contribution worth mentioning (though it is no different from many others in the class). With out all of us doing this there would not have been an Art Show. I’ve already discussed my grappling over what to have the students do for the show so I won’t go into that again. I found the picking of the art somewhat difficult, but not as difficult as I thought it could be or some others may have found it. I went in with the opinion that it is not wrong to only choose 5 students from the group. Although some could argue that it fosters competition, feelings get hurt and so on, I feel that students need be recognized individually as well as collectively, that they should be honoured when they excel, and students (people in general) need to be able to accept not always getting what they want, not always being in the limelight, and showing joy at other peoples success (not just their own). When I set out to pick the pieces of the show I laid them all out on my living room floor (what a mess that made, little confetti pieces everywhere) and looked them over without knowing who made which window. I picked on this premises as well. I looked for little creative touches, aspects that were different, evidence that instructions were followed, and ones that were aesthetically pleasing / caught my eye. This took time, but it wasn’t as difficult as I thought. I was surprised at some of the students that got picked however, they weren’t ones that I thought would have been picked (yes a biased statement, but at least it was acknowledged). When I went to school and told my cooperating teacher who I had chosen I was a little disheartened that she suggested I change some of these because “their parents wouldn’t come anyway”. Despite my hesitancy in doing this (especially because of my philosophy behind thinking it is ok to only honour a handful of students) I bent to the thoughts of my teacher. At any rate, I did find it harder to face the students and tell them I couldn’t honour them all and here are the students I’ve chosen – I wussed out somewhat by doing it Friday afternoon on our last day of practicum, but I did it nonetheless.
Art Lesson for the Art Show
Art Lesson for the Art Show
I’ll be honest; I had no idea what to do for an art lesson to go with our art show. I grappled over it and knew I would come up with something eventually and I had many art ideas for my students, but to connect it to the Windows theme, I really had to think. As you know I came up with a kind of collage with a window frame and curtains. It actually transpired because my teacher – self proclaimed to be not on the artistic/creative side – found some Halloween confetti in her file cabinet and showed them to me saying think you can do anything with these. I found some more confetti at the dollar store and I went home and started creating, my youngest joined me – apparently what I was doing looked really fun. I knew I was on the right track at that point. At any rate I came up with the looking out the window on Halloween project which worked well. I want to share the process I had the students go through as I found it somewhat out of my box (in my mind anyway), especially for grade oners, but I found it worked so well that I will use it again. At the beginning of my lesson I had the students all lie down on the carpet and close their eyes and pretend they were laying in bed looking out their window on Halloween night. I probed with what would be out there, what would be flying through the sky, and so on. Students of course came up with some wonderful and creative things that they say out their “window”. I then went on with my lesson showing them what we were going to do and so on. I found that my students appeared really relaxed and focused on the art project compared to other art lessons we had done. I think giving them this time to lay back and think and relax really made a difference opposed to hyping them up for the project.
I’ll be honest; I had no idea what to do for an art lesson to go with our art show. I grappled over it and knew I would come up with something eventually and I had many art ideas for my students, but to connect it to the Windows theme, I really had to think. As you know I came up with a kind of collage with a window frame and curtains. It actually transpired because my teacher – self proclaimed to be not on the artistic/creative side – found some Halloween confetti in her file cabinet and showed them to me saying think you can do anything with these. I found some more confetti at the dollar store and I went home and started creating, my youngest joined me – apparently what I was doing looked really fun. I knew I was on the right track at that point. At any rate I came up with the looking out the window on Halloween project which worked well. I want to share the process I had the students go through as I found it somewhat out of my box (in my mind anyway), especially for grade oners, but I found it worked so well that I will use it again. At the beginning of my lesson I had the students all lie down on the carpet and close their eyes and pretend they were laying in bed looking out their window on Halloween night. I probed with what would be out there, what would be flying through the sky, and so on. Students of course came up with some wonderful and creative things that they say out their “window”. I then went on with my lesson showing them what we were going to do and so on. I found that my students appeared really relaxed and focused on the art project compared to other art lessons we had done. I think giving them this time to lay back and think and relax really made a difference opposed to hyping them up for the project.
Creativity in the Classroom
Creativity in the ClassroomI wanted to share some of the fun things I did/made/created in the classroom during my practicum. I’m sure you all have heard that I did a bat unit for my class, and as they were grade oners I had to make things visual so that they would understand. Sooo I went bat crazy – some of the kids actually called me the bat lady. I had a lot of fun decorating my area of the classroom, making posters to go along with bats, doing a display bulletin board – I forgot how much work is involved and how time consuming all this is – it took me hours to do the bat posters. However, I found it was all worth it, the posters helped my students so much to understand the difference between mega and micro bats. They were also so thrilled at my decorations and having their bats on display. I also really enjoyed doing all this even though it was time consuming - I always have. It is like an outlet or release being able to make something or create something. Hope you enjoy the pics.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
So here is my children and I cultivating our creativity in the name of Halloween. These Halloween houses are foam kits. Therefore, I cannot claim total creativity, but hey I did put it together, and of course in true Cathy fashion I did not stick to the instructions, rather I did what I wanted to do (yes, I made my own rules!). Notice the little black bricks in disarry around the fun down castle - yup that was all me, I was so darn pleased with myself ;) Joking aside, something I noticed during this family craft time was just how much of a visual person I am, particularly when making something. I was able to look at the picture and figure out how it was done as well as visualize what I wanted to create.
Must say I am very proud of my children. They made some damn fine haunted houses. Jessica (12 yrs old) made the green haunted house. She also did not follow the kit exactly and seemed very proud of her creation. Jessica had a short attention span with this project however and finished before both her sister and I. Raylin (7 yrs old) on the other hand worked on her house for a good couple hours - not because she was slow or anything but because she was having so much fun and trying different things. Her house is the one with the purple fence. this kit did not come with a purple fence, she used the shutters that her sis did not use to create this fence, she did this all on her own and it looks awesome - like that is the way it should have been.
Anyhow, my chidlren and I used to always do things like this, however, lately because I am so busy or tired we seemed to have stopped, so I really enjoyed the family time and crafting especially becasue I was able to hit 2 birds with 1 stone (fun time and blog homework).
So although I haven’t been very diligent in this blog quest, I am trying to turn a new leaf and share and reflect on my creativity more regularly.
First on the agenda, I’d like to share about the art gallery fieldtrip. I really enjoyed this fieldtrip. This was the 3rd organized art gallery fieldtrip for me – 2 with the education program, and 1 I organized for the daycare I worked at. With each trip, I am amazed at my level of enjoyment, especially because I seem to have a preconceived notion that is always in the back of my head, that is that art galleries are boring and stuffy. Yet each time I have attended an art gallery tour I acquire new insights into interpreting art. I suppose this is one of the elements of the tours that I enjoy the most. To me, looking at the art and interpreting it in my own way (no mistake here – my interpretation may be far off from the artist’s intention, and honestly that is fine with me) reminds me of other activities I have always loved such as finding pictures in clouds and looking at the stars at night. In a way, interpreting clouds and stars is like interpreting art.
Of course, I also love making the art. I have always liked making things and the way the art gallery connects the art we see and interpret with the art we make creates a lot of meaning for me. It will definitely be my goal to reproduce this connection with my students.
Lastly, I’ve included my picture (or I am going to try to) of me with my boat art I made at the gallery. As you can see I am so proud of it! For those of you whose picture was also taken, I will be posting those pictures on facebook shortly so that you can access them and comment about them as well – sorry I haven’t made them available to you sooner.
First on the agenda, I’d like to share about the art gallery fieldtrip. I really enjoyed this fieldtrip. This was the 3rd organized art gallery fieldtrip for me – 2 with the education program, and 1 I organized for the daycare I worked at. With each trip, I am amazed at my level of enjoyment, especially because I seem to have a preconceived notion that is always in the back of my head, that is that art galleries are boring and stuffy. Yet each time I have attended an art gallery tour I acquire new insights into interpreting art. I suppose this is one of the elements of the tours that I enjoy the most. To me, looking at the art and interpreting it in my own way (no mistake here – my interpretation may be far off from the artist’s intention, and honestly that is fine with me) reminds me of other activities I have always loved such as finding pictures in clouds and looking at the stars at night. In a way, interpreting clouds and stars is like interpreting art.
Of course, I also love making the art. I have always liked making things and the way the art gallery connects the art we see and interpret with the art we make creates a lot of meaning for me. It will definitely be my goal to reproduce this connection with my students.
Lastly, I’ve included my picture (or I am going to try to) of me with my boat art I made at the gallery. As you can see I am so proud of it! For those of you whose picture was also taken, I will be posting those pictures on facebook shortly so that you can access them and comment about them as well – sorry I haven’t made them available to you sooner.
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