Ridiculous!

This week while taking back my Kindergartens I stuck with a tried and true paper weaving lesson. Besides all the Art objectives I try to stuff the lesson suitcase with as many cross-curricular connections as possible. If we're going to make the trip we should be prepared when we arrive.
The first steps though can be a little dry-fold the paper, draw the lines, number pattern so enter the RIDICULOUS!
Every time I called a color table up to they had to quietly, stealth-fully, sneakily move like a spy from their stool to the paper strip box and back. After a couple rounds of successful spy practice runs, their mission if they decided to accept it, was to gather the rest of the strips they needed to finish their weaving complete with Mission Impossible music courtesy of me. It was ridiculous, had nothing to to with lesson content but we all had a ball!
Was it ground breaking, changing with the times, utilizing technology, or even moving towards choice based lessons (any of those goals I set for myself) ? Sadly, no. However, it has rejuvenated my enthusiasm, demonstrated to the students that the loss of their student teacher is not all sad, showed my student teacher that it is okay to relax and have fun with her lessons...so, Viva La Ridiculous!

Try It, You'll Like It

My student teacher has only two weeks left, so I'm beginning to take back my Kindergarten groups and picking up where I left off. While I have sat back and thought about changing up my style of teaching, I still see the need to give them the buffet of options from which to choose.
If they never try weaving, how will they know if they enjoy it or not?
Perhaps with the younger ones I need to wait and cover a few more methods and materials before I open up their options. I could break down the steps of teaching for artistic behavior and add step one first of coming up with the idea independently instead of dictated by me. This could work well for the backgrounds for their tree sculptures.
Alright now that I have one step to implement next week, I can reward myself with the first cup of coffee (it's always the best one!).

Fifth grade ideas

Students are currently working on recreating a small section of 3 Impressionist paintings with my student teacher and my first change instead of just going back to stained glass windows http://www.artsonia.com/museum/gallery.asp?exhibit=580787 which they still may complete, challenge them to create a new original art project to show what they learned from the painting exercise.

My thoughts are it could just be another painting in an Impressionistic style or it could be a blog post about what they liked or disliked about the exercise with our student teacher or a work created at home on their IPad, uploaded to their Artsonia site with an artist statement attached.

My dilemma, is how do I stop from spoon feeding the ideas to them and have them successfully brainstorm instead of choosing from my brainstorm? I'm so used to control I don't want to let go!

I feel I need more info on Project Based Learning (PBL) & Teaching Artistic Behavior (TAB) before I jump in, but if I believe in "learning by doing" I need to make me the student and be alright with "I'm not good at this YET!"

Right? Of course right.

What do you think?

Times they are a changing

Thinking out loud publicly is scary, but my PLN has helped tremendously. That lightbulb above my head is going off big time so it is time to shake things up. I've been up since 6:00 deciding that it's about time to begin blogging, but I have no idea where my first "post" went. It reminds me of the very first e-mail I sent and wondering where it went.
I want to change how I teach to have the learning more student driven, but it is hard to give up that control of what & how. I of course stated this quest much more eloquently in my first lost post, but there it is, my commitment to change, publicly committed.
The journey begins for this Hobbit...