Old School

You just never know how long it will take for Kindergarteners to do something. Today I tried encorporating some formative assessment drawing pages from the book Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes. It's a great book, but the title makes me think of picking up a child and drawing with their head...

This is a book that my school librarian was getting rid of, and I'm glad I snatched it up. There are some really old school but brilliant ideas in here. And I tend to favor old school. Vintage, baby. :) Anyway, I tried this warm up I took from the book:

I asked the kiddos to copy the pictures and draw them in the boxes. They did very well looking carefully, but I made a front and back to the sheet so they'd be occupied long enough. I'd planned another two short activities for after this. Keep in mind, last week they came to my class and within seconds of starting their drawings, they were all shouting, "I'M DOOONE! HEY!!! I'M DOOOOOONE!"


But this time they worked so much more slowly that I didn't have enough time for my next activity, let alone the third one. Geez.


Also, 5th graders can stipple with sharpies. Oh, yes. They really can. I swear. I'm not even kidding! I made this part of the project optional, and about half the class wanted to try "shading with sharpies." So I showed them up close at a separate table, and even the ones who are not typically advanced artists were able to use stippling successfully. This was something I wasn't instructed how to do until I got to Art I in High School. So we're getting technical here, and it's actually working out.