Shoebox Activity and Artifacts

This week we had to bring in a shoebox and whatever items we would fill it with if we could only take what was in the box. This was an interesting activity for me, because I was basically living with what you could fill a shoebox with at the time. My daughter was born and sent right to the NICU and I had to make use of some clothes, but only what I kept as essentials stayed with me beyond that. For my activity I had my hospital band, phone, camera, laptop, watch, and wallet on me. I kept these with me at the hospital and at school. I carried them everywhere I went. I realized as this activity was going on, these are my cultural tools, and why they are significant enough to take them with me everywhere and everyday.

This activity is a good way to look at what defines us, and this in turn is a great first step in helping students to gain a concept of culture. These things I carried might not have been tools for surviving the great outdoors, but they were tools for surviving my culture. I needed these things for the days at school and at the hospital. My world depended on it. That is a great starting place for culture and cultural tools. Someday down the line, people  might scoff or laugh at what I would have taken with me at that point, much the way we might scrutinize the tools a caveman took with them. But to the time and place- these things matter. That is an important aspect of a globally integrated world that we and our children will probably live in. They need to understand the context of time, place, and culture in order to learn how to respect and coexist with other peoples.

Van Gogh meets Dr. Seuss

In an older project that I took down this week, I realized I had not included it in my previous blogs. The project was to take a Van Gogh painting done in the Impressionism style and mix the art with something that we could create in Dr. Seuss's style. I think it would be fun to do this during Dr. Seuss week (which I don't know if all schools celebrate). It was a fun project because it encouraged us to re-work somebody else's art while simultaneously making our own.

I learned that the Impressionism style is done with layers of paint and many brushstrokes, with only primary colors. To achieve the balance and colors that they wanted, the artists really had to know how to mix contrasting colors and schemes that would produce the paintings that they wanted. I think that both of the styles used brought artwork that encouraged thought and are still largely appreciated today.

Home and cinquain poetry

Today in class we worked with a new type of poetry (for me), and combined this with the use of pictures about our homes. The lesson behind the pictures of "home" was a broad and inclusive concept in which we challenged ourselves to think about the possible variations our students might reserve for the word home. Taking a picture of our own home is an opportunity to show students that we are just people as well, it breaks through this barrier of teachers as school faculty. The use of photography and simple poetry, the cinquain poetry, created a dynamic project in which we not only showed a picture of where our "home" is, but we worked with creative imagery describing our homes. From this we then made mobiles that brought all of the pieces together. I think that this could be a great way for the teacher to get to know the students, and where the students are coming from in the classroom. As any good icebreaker project, I think that it would be the most effective to be done at the beginning of the year. Here is a link to a generator that can create cinquain poems for you.

Drama Conclusion

In our classroom conclusion to our drama section of the course, we performed a redone version of "Wolf in the Hood". Our version ended up being radically different that the original in which we were all involved in the "Dating Game". The classroom was in an uproar as the three contestants battled for Wolfie's attention, and I am glad that Wolfie was wearing a mask because I was probably red from laughter.

The drama portion of my course surprised me because I was dreading it so badly, and yet every activity that we had in class was so much fun. I walked out of there everyday I laughing, and feeling like I experienced something new. I hope to keep the drama integrations in my class, because I have seen some of them in action and I was very impressed with the benefits in vocabulary acquisition.

Salt Dough

For our final in class project we did salt dough, and Mike and I chose to make ours after the Coloseum. In our picture you can see a yellow lion viciously killing a gladiator (depicted by the macaroni noodles). There is a chariot and horse riding around the arena taking part in the bloodsport that was the Coloseum. Although our picture depicts the brutal reality of European history, the salt dough was fun and easy to make. The ingredients are here!

The salt dough is a great alternative to the expensive classroom use of clay. It can be made relatively quickly and is non-toxic. It can be painted as well.

Introduction to Music

This week in art class we started working on music. We were all asked to bring in our favorite piece of music and share it with the class. I brought in "59th Street Bridge Song" by Simon and Garfunkel. The entire album reminds me of a time when I gave my dad's music a shot and really started to enjoy music that I had not heard on the radio.

Bringing this piece in to share with the class was another experience in which I felt that I had opened myself up for scrutiny by exposing a piece of my life. In return the rest of the class also shared with me their favorite music. By the end of the activity I felt that we all knew a bit more about each other and that was informative and a special moment.

Following the sharing of our music, we got to investigate some different ideas about how we could use music in the classroom and benefits of doing it. I like this idea of bringing fundamental human culture to the classroom because students want and deserve a real experience. The more of it we can provide through enriching facets of our activities the better we have served our classroom, school, and community.

Geography Activity

Today we worked with the overarching subject of Geography in the classroom. I thought it was interesting how many different concepts can be introduced and linked under the Geography 'umbrella', as it was so aptly named in class. There were many activities talked about at surface level, but the one that stuck so deeply brought it close to home.

While looking at this subject we talked about our favorite places that we have experienced and why we chose to share them. This took me to a very happy place at the bottom of a mountain in Colorado. I have been there twice and probably spent an entire week there altogether. Somehow though, I feel like I have years in that spot. It is so alive in my mind that thinking and talking about it in class reminds me of the wonder of that place. I think this would be a great way for students to bring places and locations alive for each other in the classroom.

Anyways, this was a fun exercise to spread our knowledge of places to others (along with pictures), and would have many applications in our elementary classrooms. I plan on bringing fun knowledgeable approaches to Geography in my classroom.

And to top it off I have posted a picture roughly from where I wrote about in my classroom journal.