it's only just gone dark, the earliest i have been home this week. i'm hungry. lolo is in the shower, singing. i'm grateful for the peace of the house right now. both parents are not yet home. there are no questions being addressed to me, and no activity that could distract me. it's quiet.
i'm sitting at my table and feeling the momentum slow just slightly. because it's friday. even though there's an event tomorrow... there is just a tiny bit of a breather going home on a friday night.
but my head is also running through what still needs to be done. there's a lot. well it seems like, maybe not a lot. it's just tying loose ends. and a lot of little things end up cropping up in the process.
i think i really need to prioritise getting my laptop repaired. it hasn't been slow in a while but today it was so it was a bit frustrating. it's difficult to find the time where i am not using this computer though.
it doesn't seem to be as easy as i thought it would be, updating trello. because it is just a lot of information and most of the time, i have to keep going and working lest the momentum change and i actually forget what my next task is. this forgetfulness has been more apparent in the last couple of years.
K commented on my last post about not agreeing with the sentiment that the art class be a place where pressure is absent. because without pressure there is no growth. and i actually agree. i'm trying to remember my thought process when i wrote otherwise. maybe i was thinking of the case of that particular class. my objective this morning was to just slow them down. way too much energy. restlessness. and pressure seems to clash with that in a sense that being insistent as a facilitator about the activities they are to do just make them more hasty and less thoughtful. i'm thinking about how the pressure can nurture, or rather hone, the energy.
the specific activities were a good start i suppose.
upon entering the room - sit where there is a piece of paper (i had prepared this before the lesson). draw your favourite animal. if some had said they had none, i suggested a few and they would respond to one and i got them to pin that down. some drew quickly. so i asked them to wait for their other classmates. this resulted in them working on their drawing some more - adding scenery, decorating it with shapes like hearts or stars. one even named their bunny. so - regained and sustained focus. once the majority of students had drawn something, i started handing out clay.
limiting the clay they used greatly helped focus their efforts - and kept the work area cleaner. i gave much smaller balls of clay than the last time. the next instruction was to make what they drew. the response was slow at first - and i became a bit afraid they wouldn't be able to grasp it. but they did eventually. i pointed out shapes in their drawings. as additional help for some students, i made separate shapes quickly and asked them to put it together to make it look like their drawing.
for those who had finished that with time to spare, i asked to draw again - drawing what they had made in clay. this was a good wrap-up and i pointed out differences in their 2 drawings.
i liked the variety of work produced - some were elaborate, some were a little more abstract. all showed engagement and relationship between 2D and 3D. which was the general objective.
but i think i need to allocate time for a debrief with the whole class, and not just individually. this could rope in those who didn't participate. a good question that could have been asked was what kind of differences can be seen in the 2 drawings. or in the drawing and the clay piece. which was harder to do? which one was more fun? which one would you choose to take home? (if someone had said both, it could suggest awareness of links between progression of work.)
12 out of 15 participation is a good start for a pretty complex activity. it ended on time too.
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