Free-Writing

I know we give our kiddos lots of opportunities to read independently on their level-but do we give them enough time to just write independently?  I can remember being in one of my all-time favorite classes, a Themes class my senior year in high school. I didn't like when we just had to write stories without that prompt, but I know that it made me a better writer. Learning strategies to be able to break through that writer's block I think is very important.

On Fridays, I like to incorporate art into our lessons. One way I justify that is through language arts objectives. See, they paint something and then write a story about it. I was so busy trying to keep track of the wet paintings and cleaning up spills, etc. that I really wasn't monitoring what they were writing like I usually do. When they were done, they put it in our basket for finished work and moved on to workstations. I took their papers home with me to grade and was really, really impressed by some of the stories they came up with! They are using titles and adjectives (without really any reminders about that)-they are creative. So I know it's hard to read their writing in this format-but I just had to share!

I talked to them about Seurat and one of my favorite paintings of his:

We tried painting in that same style:

So cute--she means "dusk". :)

My painting is a vase...

We've been working on adding suspense!

She was having so much fun mixing the primary colors!

I made flying ice cream and a rainbow.

...the rainforest and the trees and roses.

Once there was an enchanted forest that had fairies that sparkled and moves as they walked. :)

Teacher in a butterfly sunset-one not raining day ;) a sunset, bu she had to leave for a meeting. She got there and she never saw it again. But she saw a new one every day and she was happy! :)

 Once there was a tree and he was lonely.....