Community Cardboard Challenge!

On October 1st, from 9am-12pm we are hosting a Cardboard Challenge at WHES as part of the Global Cardboard Challenge!  The challenge is all about bringing the community together for a day of collaboration, imagination, and play.   The Columbus Museum of Art is spearheading the effort to get many local schools and organizations to participate, and will be on site helping to document the event.  Inspired by Caine’s Arcade (http://cainesarcade.com/), the Cardboard Challenge has grown to an annual event celebrating creative thinking and active play.  

Check out the following links:
http://imagination.is/our-projects/cardboard-challenge/
https://cbusatplay.wordpress.com/


We need materials to help make the event a success, and are asking each grade level to contribute specific items.

K- aluminum foil, foil scraps, boxes of any kind

1- duct tape

2- fabric scraps, fabric remnants, yarn or string

3- markers

4- cardboard tubes (toilet or paper towel rolls)

5- packing tape, masking tape

6- cardboard, cereal boxes, shoe boxes

Please send in items to school with your child.  Ms. Koontz will have collection bins outside her classroom. 

Questions or would like to volunteer?  Email Ms. Koontz at lkoontz@wscloud.org or Karina Hohn at hohnk@hotmail.com.

Thanks in advance for your contributions!

1st Days of Art: 2nd Grade

Save Fred!

We're back with another creative challenge, and this time the stakes are high!   Fred the worm, who is not very skilled at swimming, is lost at sea on a capsized boat.   Can you and your partners save Fred by retrieving his life preserver and putting it on him?  Here's the catch, you can't touch Fred or his things with your hands!  Only paperclips!



Teams discovered new ways to use the paper clips, like unfolding them and creating hooks.  They also saw the power of teamwork, noting that none of them could save Fred alone.  Some teams failed multiple times before rescuing Fred, and that's okay!   The important part is to keep trying and to try to learn from the failures!

1st Days of Art: 5th Grade

You guessed it folks, we're back with another creativity challenge!  This time with 5th grade!   5th graders worked with partners to complete this problem solving activity.   Students were given a piece of paper with a problem on it, for example; "Create a way to reverse a bad haircut" or "Create a cell phone that never needs to be charged." It was definitely a challenge to not only think abstractly, but to make a creation with nothing but straws, tin foil and tape. Students worked though the ambiguity and thought up all sorts of solutions from the silly, to the thoughtful, to the inspiring. Scroll down to see a few examples.

A group testing if their boat would actually float.

"Imagine a new public transportation system"
This group created a form of bubble transportation.  I wanna try!

"Imagine a way to keep your pillow as cool on the other side."  This pillow
has straws on the inside, acting like an air conditioner.  Plug it in
and have a fully cool pillow!

"I need to transport 1,000 lbs of metal across the country without a motorized vehicle"
This structure operates by expelling air out the straws.  One is on each side to make maneuvering different directions easier.

Thanks again to CMA for the inspiration!

1st Days of Art: 4th Grade

4th graders began art with another creativity challenge.  This one, along with many of the others, are inspired by challenges I participated in this summer while attending the Teaching for Creativity Institute at the Columbus Museum of Art.

Students, in groups of 3 and 4, were given a bag with an assortment of materials including and old CD, popsicle sticks, markers, rubber bands, paper clips and a sock.  Their challenge was to work together to create a sculpture that showed an emotion.

One group working together on their
sculpture of "amazement."  Their
inspiration was coral and scuba diving.
"We thought
that it would feel amazing to go scuba
diving and do something you've never
done before."

First and foremost, I was blown away by their collaboration!

Students demonstrated respect for each other, listened to one another's ideas, and compromised.  I was also inspired by their experimentation and creative thinking.

"Curiosity" 

                                               

 This group's strategy was to experiment and build first, and then to think about what emotion it reminded them of.  This is actually their second sculpture, because the first one fell down.  Students thought this sculpture reminded them of destruction, because it looked like a saw and was made from the destruction of their first idea.  When we were sharing the creations with the class, a classmate thought it looked like uncertainty, because the hanging pieces looked like they were about to fall off.
 

First Days of Art: 6th Grade

6th Grade

Creativity circle challenge!  We started 6th grade art by talking about creativity and engaging in a creative challenge.  6th graders each received a sheet of paper filled with circles.  Their challenge was to transform as many of the circles as possible in 10 minutes.  Some students were unsure how to begin, but the persevered and thought of many unique solutions!

Check out Ben's swiss cheese.  With just a few holes and some yellow he transformed his whole paper into something new.

Zane changed the orientation of his paper and combined many circles to create a fish.Paige completed her whole sheet with a variety of solutions!Cece began with an emoji theme but soon transformed it into a screening of a movie!

Welcome Back!

On Wednesday, students will return for another great year at Worthington Hills.   Less then a week! And as I prepped at school this morning, though there is still much to do, I couldn't help but become more and more excited with each smiling face I saw skipping down the hallway.

For this first post, I wanted to explain the reason for switching websites and give some insight into what we will be focusing on this year in art.

In our class, we emphasize the process of learning and creating over the final project.  I wanted to switch to the blog format to better showcase all the ideas, challenges, inspirations and discoveries that happen along the way to a finished work of art.  I say showcase, because that's what I want to do; elevate all of these moments of learning in their importance.  Sometimes, when we only look at a photo of a completed project, we miss out on all the learning that happened along the way.

In congruence with focusing on the process, we will be working to make thinking visible this year.  Students will be developing their creative thinking through the skills of fluency (generating many ideas), flexibility (taking an idea and changing it into something new), originality, and elaboration.  We will also be focusing on thinking like artists by focusing on asking questions, reflecting, collaborating, play imagination, making connections, experimenting, and persisting through failure.

A major inspiration for me was the Teaching for Creativity Institute I attended this summer at the Columbus Museum of Art.  Here is Columbus Museum of Art's Cindy Foley talking about the importance of art education as a medium to develop students who think like artists.

Here's to trying new things this upcoming year, whatever that may be, and being comfortable with that ambiguity!


Thanks to the Columbus Museum of Art and to the book, Making Thinking Visible for inspiration.