Hour 9

Today I began teaching my lesson on Eric Carl's brown bear to the first grade class.  The lesson went well over all, but there are a few things I would change.  The students were all very familiar with Eric Carl which I expect, I was happy to see how excited the students were to be read to and to create the project.  I think however I would maybe move this project to the beginning of the year or perhaps the end of the year for kindergartners so that it would present a little more difficulty to them.

The parts of the lesson that were very successful were the reading and the power point.  The demonstration went well also.  Once the students were dismissed to the tables they really became engrossed in their painting.  Mrs. A had suggested that we roll the paper over the table and allow the students to work on covering the whole paper with paint and then scrap with different tools to cover the paper with texture.  I explained during the power point to the students that texture can be something we feel like rough sand or a silky ribbon and it can also be what we think something might feel like an for example the fur of a bear.  They had a ton of fun with the paint and texture tools, but had a little trouble filling the entire length of paper with texture, as they focused on one spot.  If given one sheet of paper perhaps they would have had been more aware of the surface.  The second problem came when I asked the students to clean up.  The paint dried on their hands and they kept scrubbing and scrubbing to get it off.  Part of the problem was that they need to use soap, but think a different paint would solve this problem.  I have a paste paper paint recipe that I wanted to use, I had tried the recipe at home and loved that it dried slowly and created a really distinct texture when scraped.  It also cleaned up quickly.  Mrs. A used acrylic mixed with a gloss medium for a similar project and wanted to stick with this type of paint.  The color was more saturated and glossy plus the paste paint requires that I boil a mixture of water and flour (wheat or rice) before adding color so paste paint is a little more work.

If I use acrylic in the future for this project,  I think that I will set up stations for the students to work at. One table where the students are working on a less messy project with minimal clean up such as drawings and one table where the students are working on the paintings.  This would eliminate lines at the sink for hand clean and the amount of tools that I would have to clean after the project was done.