Ethics and Miss Nelson

Ethics is a tough concept to teach little ones. A lot of things, in their minds are black and white where in the real world there is much more grey area. I give them a lot of scenarios in the beginning because at first they want to answer the question to make you happy-what answer does she want to hear? And the more we do it, the more I question things with them, the more they start to be able to develop their own arguments.

I like to use Miss Nelson is Missing in the beginning when I introduce ethics because as a teacher I do think what she did was kind of sneaky! So my question to them was, is it right or wrong for a teacher to trick kids like she did. I was actually very impressed by some of their answers.

right because the kids weren't listening.

My favorite! It's wrong to be mean just because others are mean-I say that all the time! :)

Our First Divergent Art

Well, our year has gotten off to a great start! I have 20 kiddos which is something different for me since I've had upwards of 25 for as long as I can remember. It's definitely different this year as 15 of those kiddos are boys! I'm observing all this new phenomena like when you say sit on the carpet we can't just sit, no, boys have to roll and slide and wrestle and fly like Superman. I've never before in all my career had to demonstrate how to sit.on.the.carpet. We've been doing things like our JustDance Kids videos and yoga to try and channel all the energy but let's just say it's been a bit exhausting these first 2 weeks. :)

I've written about divergent art before. It's when you give the kids a shape and ask them to turn it into something. It's an exercise in creativity that is really harder for them than it sounds. I start with an "s" shape. I model for them using a circle-here we can make a snowman, or a face, or a car wheel and then draw the picture around it. Then I give the students their s-shape and ask them to create something with it. Some make snakes, some make a picture next to the S, I even had one student turn the paper over and draw on the back. I also had one turn it into a bow and arrow which I thought was very impressive. So when we were done I had them share what they made. There are so many snowmen because that was one of the things we demonstrated with the circle shape. Some of them also obviously just copied off one another. The more we do this throughout the year, the more creative they get with their ideas. This was our first try:

My favorite one!

Self-Portraits with Food

One of our objectives for the year is to use different kinds of media when creating art. Well, you know I have to think outside the box a little bit when it comes to implementing that! We do several self-portraits at the beginning of the year. They draw them with crayons, they paint with watercolors. I actually send them to the mirror to look at themselves because believe it or not, many of my Kinder students do not know what color their eyes are-I think they just never took the time to notice before.

Another way we make self-portraits is a favorite for them because they get to eat their products afterward! I ask them to make their faces using different kinds of snack food. We start with a tortilla, use a little bit of cream cheese for glue and then they can stick the foods where they see fit. I really like that this year's group thought to do things like eyebrows and eyelashes!

A fun way to end our week! :)

Inventing New School Supplies

The little ones get very excited about their school supplies. So excited that some of them are reluctant to even turn them over to me in the beginning of the year! We have read several stories this week about crayons and after talking about how we use our supplies I asked the students to invent a new school supply. What would they need to help them get their work done. Here's what they came up with: