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Thursday, January 26, 2012

Kid-Directed Art & Free Time

We had science homework due last week. I would love to say that all our kiddos complete and turn in their homework. Unfortunately, that is far from true. For daily work that is unfinished we keep our students in during recess to complete it. This is true for weekly homework too. However, for our monthly calender and monthly science/math project the students miss out on some wonderful free time. Our science experiment write-up last week fell into the free time category.

During free time students had the choice to make foam snowmen, draw winter scenes on black paper with chalk, or play board games. Some free times we allow students to play computer games, board games, or draw on whiteboards. We try to limit the choices just for crowd control.

Normally for art projects I try to control the outcome by doing a focus and art lesson. Allowing kid-directed art goes against my natural inclination and it is something I am working on (especially with little ones at home). When the host teacher wanted to hand out black paper and chalk I was a little nervous. How would it turn out? Would they just write messages or letters to their friends? Would they think it is boring? I felt beyond foolish when I saw the art work they produced. It is simply beautiful. It was a shame some friends had to miss out and write about science instead.

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