Not a Box Genius Hour -- Week 3

All week, our teacher had this picture on her desktop:

Photo Credit: Communities and Collaboration

So we started our genius hour by moving to the art room, sitting in groups of 4 and talking about what we thought this picture was trying to tell us.  Many of us figured it had something to do with teamwork, being creative and how 4 people could work together to create something.  We were also asked to try and give one word that described this picture.  We needed a few clues before finally coming up with the word "collaboration". 

We then watched this video about students and teachers collaborating.

Next, we heard about "collaborative circle paintings".  Some of the grade 2 classes and kindergarten classes have done these and they are on display around our school.  We watched this video of a grade 3/4 class doing collaborative circle paintings:

Since our theme is "not a box", we got to try this kind of painting but instead of circles, we could only draw boxes--squares and rectangles.  Here you can see our work at the beginning of the project:

Every student had 2 paint colors to work with.  As we worked, we listened to music.  Each time a song ended, we had to pass our two paint colors to the person to the right.  Then we had another few minutes to paint again, using our two new colors.  We continued this way until we had our original paint colors back. 

 

Then, after each song, we had to change spots. This got interesting, because now we had to work on a space that someone else had started on. Some of us did not really like this part because someone else was changing what we had started. It also got a little more tricky as our paper filled up -- where would we paint? We had to be brave and go over top of other people's work.  

In this video, you can see us working near the end of the project:

After we were done, we spent some time thinking about and discussing this project.  The first question we had to answer was  -- What one word would you use to describe your completed painting?  Our answers included: awesome, wow, messy, soggy, boxtastic, beautiful, extraordinary, amazing, colorful, worst, creative, horrifying, ozmazing, unique, genius, boxome, crazy, ripped, cool.

The other question we had to answer was -- How did you feel during the process?  Did it change during different parts?  Here are some of our thoughts...
     -- Breanna: creative all through the process
     -- Taya: not that good when we changed spots
     -- Evan: rollercoaster the whole way through
     -- Makayla: calm the whole way through
     -- Landon: disappointed because I wanted to do pirates
     -- Sam: mad and grumpy when we changed spots
     -- Kade: nervous because I was not sure what was going to happen and if I could do it
     -- Jaxson: mad because I didn't get to use a thin brush
     -- Tristan: a little sad because some people didn't like me going over their stuff

Now what are we going to do with our completed masterpieces?  That's yet to be decided.

We were wondering...

Have you ever done a collaborative painting before?
Have you ever collaborated on a different kind of project?

Not a Box Genius Hour -- Week 2

After last week's Not a Box genius hour time, we were excited for what was coming this week!

Day 1
When looking for activities to go with the "Not a Box" book, our teacher did some searching in the internet.  She found a website that talked about doing yoga as one of the activities.  Now, our teacher told us that she knows nothing about yoga and has never even tried it herself.  So she decided to talk to a friend of hers that teaches yoga.  Isabelle agreed to come in and teach us some yoga poses, based on the book. 

We started by lighting some candles, turning the lights off and focusing on our breathing.

Next, about half of our class was given cards with different poses on them.  They showed us the pose and we made suggestions about what we thought each pose looked like.  Then, we got to try the pose ourselves.

Here's a video of us doing the warrior pose.

Next, came the "mountain"...just like the bunny in the book did!

We loved doing the "elephant" pose!

 

Here are a few more we tried.  What do the poses look like to you?

 

The airplane pose was tricky!  You had to have really good balance.



But, our favourite was the lion.  Here us roar!

To end our yoga session, we just laid quietly on the floor, trying to clear our mind and stay as still as we could.  It was harder than you might think!

Thanks Isabelle!  What an awesome experience!

Day 2
Today we finally got to touch a box!  Yay!  We started the class with our teacher showing us a flattened box.  We worked in groups of about 4 kids and she challenged us to build it as quickly as we could.

Then we got to play Charades in our small group.  In Charades you act out something, without talking and then others have to guess what you are doing.  For our game of Charades, we had to include the box in some way.  Mrs. Cooper-Shand showed us how it's done.  Can you figure out what she is doing?

Here we are giving it a try...what are we doing?  How are we using the box?

Here's a video of one of our groups doing charades:

To end this "Not a Box" lesson, our teacher shared the video of Caine's Arcade with us.

We were amazed at what Caine created and how, with a little help from a friend and social media, he was able to share his genius with so many people. 

Here are some of our thoughts about this video:

Oops...the last l in cool got erased! :-(

We are now so excited to see what cool things we (3C) can create with a little collaboration!

We were wondering...

Have you tried yoga?
Have you played Charades?
What did you think about the Caine's Arcade video?