My favorite question in the classroom: "Can we do it this way?" I get lots of variations of that question throughout the morning. And this week was no exception.
We're talking about families and this week we made family flags. We had some paper triangles, paper strips, glue sticks, and markers.
My idea: draw pictures or print names of your family members, one on a flag, and glue to the strip. Create a picture representation of your family.
But, as always, I told the kids they could choose what and how to do. Here's what my group did.
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| Decorated strip and flag - no names |
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| Decorated flag and... |
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| ...names on the strip |
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Flags glued along the strip - all names on one flag
(note: there are flags of other colors on the opposite sign aligned with these) |
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Names on flags - flags on both sides
(The "girls" in the family got pink flags; boys got blue.) |
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| Mirror image flags - these were the only ones so it looked like a T-square |
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| Flags glued askew - a message written across them |
I often heard: "Can I glue it like this?" or "Can we draw whatever we want?" But, mostly, the kids just jumped in and did what they chose to do. I loved their great ideas.
Kids need open-ended activities and exploration - activities that allow them to use their own ideas, to explore freely, and to decide when the activity is complete. We'll explore some other ways that has happened in my classroom this week.
