What could this be?
Sometimes it’s fun to begin a class brainstorming ideas. Today, the boys were each presented with a strange little sculpture, and I asked them to imagine what it could be.
“A trophy?”
“A joy stick?”
“A dinosaur!”
Josh “Look he’s eating rocks! My guy is going to eat your guy!”
H: “Hey I’m gong to put pom-poms so it could have a fuzzy body.”
David: “Oh I know what I can make, a birthday bear with a humongous hat on it!”
M: “It’s a b-day hat!”
Josh: “It’s the birthday of Mr. Moon!”
After some thought and idea processing, the boys chose paint colours, and painted their “guys.”
Creature Making
While the boys added the teeth and spikes and eyes to their creatures, they were fully engaged with not only their own work, but to each other’s progress as well.
“Can I please have some red paint for blood on the teeth?” M
“How many teeth does your guy have, M?” H
““My eyeballs are big! …M, why doesn’t your guy have eyes?” H
“They’re coming, they’re coming… You can't just throw something like this together.” M
M observed and interpreted the expression on H’s creature.
“He looks like he’s on a roller coaster.” M
H was inspired by M’s use of red paint.
“All right I think I’m ready for some red paint! Can I borrow some paint, I m just going to paint his gums in now. Look at mine! Yum. Yum. Yum. Yum. I’m putting a bone in his mouth. It’s red because he ate something. There’s blood all over it. He ate his victim.” H
“I need to make a birthday bear! I need a bouncy ball for the hat! Where should I put it?” David
“Can I put this in his mouth? … He’s chewing up a gun. Now see the position. This is how he’s holding the gun.” Joshua
H successfully trouble-shooted through his attempts to create scales on his creature.
“Too big…. I can’t get them the same size!”
“Perfecto! I traced it!”
“I put scales on his head! Do you think that’s ok? There we go.”
Interaction furthers Creativity
I’ve observed time and again that imagination continues to evolve beyond the time-frame of creation. After the creatures were built, they became through they boys’ imaginations, more fully developed and interesting. The interactions between the creators and their creations revealed just how much thought was going into their work!
“My has the most teeth and the most blood.” M
“No reflectors?” Josh
“Yah his butt is a reflector.” H
“Mine ate your head off and that’s the bone from inside your head. My guy love bones from the insides of heads!” H