weeks one and two.

So... I didn't post last week. "So far- off to a bad start." I will do better, especially because I'm getting really excited.

Week One:
First Graders- Drawing Station. I basically opened the station and told them about their choices. I didn't want to talk a lot more to do a five minute mini lesson (I think I'm going to start calling that FMML) because I didn't want to take up their art time. They had a hard time understanding the chart to record what they were doing. I got a lot of "Can I try again?"s and "Can I do another drawing?"s. To which I emphatically responded "YES!" with a big smile and nod.

Fifth Graders- Drawing Station: Talked a little more with the 5ths about what we are doing in Art and why. They were psyched that they were the "special" class that gets to do something different right now. This is a chatty bunch with no concept of "inside voices." There was a lot of drawing going on.

Both groups had a hard time with clean up- too much fooling around.

Week Two
This was yesterday, so I will go into more detail...

First Graders- Opened Painting Station.
They did very well. There was one point in class where it was eerily quiet, and all students were contentedly working away. When their teacher came to pick them up, I learned that they were having a particularly difficult day... One student in class decided that he was going to draw and paint on the same paper. I told him this was called "mixed media."

Fifth Graders- Opened Painting Station.
Pretty smooth. The kids did a good job deciding taking care of their materials. I have yet to see anyone go into any particular depth in any project, but I think this is probably the hardest thing about this style of art- getting them to commit... I had one student who didn't want to draw or paint, so I talked with him and asked him about what his favorite thing in art was last year. We talked about coil building and he made plans to build a set of coil vessels.



Now I've got to order some clay....