What I learned in Kindergarten yesterday

Yesterday I went to Carter's school to help the art teacher while Carter's class was there.

Let me note, that I also took Alex and Aaron with me, so I wasn't an extraordinary amount of help--but I can cut and supervise so I figure it is better than nothing right? (and I didn't ask that question to his art teacher!)

The class was doing a project they had started the previous week. They had used pastels to color stripes on two pieces of paper. One paper had warm colors going vertically and the other had cool colors going vertically. When the papers were fully colored than I would help cut strips from the warm colored paper (not cutting all the way through the edges so there was a 1" boarder around the paper. The art teacher took the cool colored paper and cut strips--all the way through. The kids then weaved the cool strips through the slots in the warm paper.

Alex was given some paper and crayons to color on. He (on his own) decided to do the same project as the rest of the class. The art teacher had talked about what colors were warm and what colors were cool at the beginning of class. Alex remembered and colored cool on one paper and warm on the other. After he had me cut and the teacher cut his paper (I tried to cut the strips, but the teacher saw me and offered to do it)--really, I was still helping everyone who needed help :) Carter finished his weaving really early and he helped Alex weave--it was great. Alex was proud to have a finished project just like Carter's :)

Now to what I learned.... The project was, obviously, to weave the papers together. There were 2 kids (Carter and another boy) that finished really early--about 1/2 way into the class period. The teacher told them the next step was to glue the ends of all the pieces that were woven through so that they would stay. Once they did that she gave them the next step--taking construction paper (cut into rectangles) and making a pattern on the two long sides of the paper--gluing the pattern in place. Next they took different colored paper and made a pattern on the short sides....

About the 3rd step I realized that she was making it all up. She needed to keep the kids busy so they wouldn't go crazy and run wild in the class, but some kids were still coloring their papers when others had finished the project...so she just added steps to the project. The kids thought that each step was vitally important and worked hard to do it exactly like she asked..as soon as they were done she would add something else--it would have just kept getting bigger and bigger had class not ended.

I thought it was brilliant. She didn't let them run wild, she gave them small, specific tasks that they could do, and it didn't get overwhelming. She also did not make it seem like busy work--each step was very important in completing the entire project.

I loved it--I will be using this strategy often!