Mallory and Jen Week 4: Junk Food and Miniatures

Teacher example: Oil Spill

 This week’s lesson “Junk Food and Miniatures” went amazingly well.  It was the first time I walked away from Saturday school satisfied with how things played out throughout the lesson.  At first Jen and I were very skeptical about the idea and were worried that the kids would not generate meaning and learn from what we were asking them to do.  To our surprise the children were so excited to create this week.  During the project introduction our class discussion elevated into such excitement for the project we could not help but smile.  I really think that this week goes to show how taking risks can really pay off in the end.

The objective this week was for the kids to explore junk food as a medium for art making.  Using miniature model train figurines and junk food they were asked to tell a story by creating a small scene.  Their imaginations soared with ideas as they began to experiment and tell stories as they were creating their artwork.  They began making small scenes that transformed into entire towns.  One of our student’s Christina named her scene the Town of Chew and Swallow and proceeded to explore countless possibilities using the junk food.  She even found her own way of using a whip cream bottle by putting the nozzle on the table and pushing down.  This project was so successful we ended up adding two additional stations to accommodate student requests.  Even our “trouble maker” of the class Alexander was engaged in the activity which has been hard for us to get him to do each week.  Really being able to connect with the students using junk food, something they are familiar with, really made all the difference in the success of our lesson.

Christina's town of Chew and Swallow

Christina making cool whip tornadoes on all the towns after class

Fun with fruit roll ups

Skier about to ramp a marshmallow

Something we have been thinking about is the idea of freedom and chaos within the classroom.  We really strive to give the students as many choices as possible but would still like to keep some type of structure.  We are finding that no matter what there will always be a little bit of chaos yet in this case is not a bad thing.  Productivity through chaos is how we are choosing to look at it and for the most part this is what is happening within the classroom.  From week to week the type of chaos seems to change and for this week it seemed to be a very engaging and exploring type of chaos.  The type of learning that goes on in our classroom is done in a very non-traditional way but through discussions with the students and the documentation we do each week, we have been able to assess that they are learning what we had planned.

It will be a difficult challenge for us to replicate this week’s success for next weeks lesson however we are ready to take on this challenge.  I think it is important for us to keep in mind the student’s interests as we plan out the lesson and it’s materials.  We did a really great job of adapting quickly to student needs during the course of the lesson, which is a great skill to practice during the following weeks.  One thing we could prepare a little better is showing a specific video during snack time to keep the students occupied while we clean up and get ready for the remainder of the lesson.  As we continue with our classroom setup of centers, we need to consider the ones in which students have been most interested in and have continuously been engaged in productivity.  Using this as our model, there should be very little discipline problems within the classroom and student experience and exploration will be that much more rewarding.

Swimming in a pool of sprinkles

Olivia's candy town