Manipulative Art

A couple weeks ago I was in my practicum class, and one girl was using blocks, similar to these, to help her figure out the math. But not really. She was mostly just playing with them, making patterns, outlining her paper with them, etc.

I tried to get her on task through proximity and by trying to help her with a question, but as soon as I left she would just keep playing with them.

I can't say that I don't understand why this girl was playing rather than working (as evidenced by the "art" pictured here that I made during Prime Math class). Sometimes you just wanna play with blocks! I was intrigued by the bright colours and wanted to make art with them. 

I remember someone once telling me that it is important to give students time to play and explore manipulatives. I was thinking it might be useful to have time allotted during a lesson in which students could quickly make some manipulative art. If they are going to play with the manipulatives, as teachers we could make the play instructional  by incorporating art PLOs, and we could potentially increase their focus on math during the rest of the period by giving them a designated time to pay with the manipulatives. 

Thoughts? Do you think it would be best to have manipulative art/play at the beginning, end, or in the middle of the lesson? Or should play with manipulatives be completely separated from "math time?" 

Art a la Carte

The other day my roommate told me that his mother had written a series of 4 art books, so I thought I'd share the resource with you all. The image to the left is from Art a la Carte: Art in Math. His mother, Vanessa Isitt wrote and illustrated these witty art integration books for math, science (nature), aboriginal education, and social studies (cultural art). Rather than theory, they contain activities, reproducibles,  and evaluation criteria for art lessons. On amazon.ca (see link above) you can take a peak inside two of the books. I appreciate the artwork she has done for her readers (teachers). Conversely textbooks that are all text based are much less engaging than ones with on topic humorous cartoons, and artwork intermingled with the text. Even at my age art helps me to stay interested in texts, and this is likely true of the average student as well.

STOP...motion.

Want a free app? If you are an iPad or iPhone user this app, Stop Motion Studio is free this week! It is really easy to use and makes stop motion video a breeze to create. Not to sound too much like an advertisement for this one app, I'll mention that there are many other apps available on iTunes and Google chrome that work well to create stop motion video.

 

Stop motion video is something I have always wanted to try, but never learned about in school. With the proliferation of technology in schools today making stop motion video is easier, but I don't think many teachers really consider it, or think it would be too difficult. Storing and organizing digital photos makes the job much easier than it was in the days of film canisters. 

We should be promoting the use of technology in all areas of the curriculum, here is a PLO that would support this type of activity: B3 analyse and use a variety of materials, technologies, and processes to create images.

 

 

Dance group, I stole your beat!

When the dance group performed their stomp routine for the class I still had "the cup song" stuck in my head from when the music group had played it for us. Thanks to the marvels of technology, and soundnation studio, I was able to pilfer the audio from the video posted to facebook. Then I edited it, looped the beat that worked best, and recorded some singing of "When I'm gone" to go with the beat. The result is in the video below. 

It took me a while to figure out how to use this site, but it is free online software for audio editing, and I just think this would be a really cool program to expose students to. I haven't vetted all the prerecorded sound files, but assuming they are appropriate, students could learn about and edit music with this program! Many students say they are no good at singing or can't play an instrument, so why not let them mash up sound files and create music in an alternative way? (Thanks for counting us in Amanda!)

Why do I love Indian Music?

So, as the title suggests, I really like traditional (okay, and Bollywood) Hindi music. So what? Let me give you some context. I distinctly remember the first time I heard some traditional Japanese music in Elementary school. I thought it was pleasant, but it was very different than anything I’d ever heard. Hindi music was different, I liked it in the way that you like something familiar, like a favourite dish that your grandmother use to cook you. This was strange because I didn't listen to Hindi music growing up, but I think I may have stumbled upon the answer. The woman in the image (left) is playing a Tanpura, a member of the lute family. And this next picture is of an instrument used in much of the Greek folk music I listened to at Greek community events growing up.

This instrument, the Bouzouki, is also in the lute family. Some Hindi and Greek music seem to share a similar sharp metallic sounds, so I wonder if my exposure to this as a child made it easier for me to connect to Hindi music.

I was thinking of the teaching implications of this possibility, specifically that simply exposing children to many forms of music and art could make them feel more comfortable with them later in life. Therefore, it seems it would be good practice to expose students to a wide variety of music and art.

(Tanpuna pic, Bouzouki pic)