Let the Wild Rumpus Begin!

Today felt like Monday, and I am totally exhausted. There is every possibility this post will make little to no sense in places.  Hopefully I am awake enough to avoid that.  : p

So yes, I am doing a lesson on Where the Wild Things Are. And such a funny coincidence that I started just when the movie came out (which I still totally want to go see). The lesson was recommended to me by my mentor teacher from Internship, and I'm doing it with the kindergartners right now.

It's quite a lot of fun. Except for that class that got banned from painting FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR because they were so completely out of control. I'm talking about a child covered from head to toe in paint, paint on the floor, paint on the wall, the tables (and not the top) and chairs. Paint. Everywhere. Egad.

But I digress.

So, lots of fun. Today I had a pretty hyper class, so I did something different. We were reading the story, they were fidgeting badly. When it got to the part were the "rumpus" occurs, I suddenly decided that we would rumpus too. After I showed them the pictures, I told them to line up behind me, and we marched down the stairs into the cafeteria and had our own wild rumpus around the room.

It was very fun and the kids loved it. It also had the pleasant side effect of settling them down, especially when I told them that if they made good choices and worked hard, we'd do it one more time before they went back to their homeroom. And the walk back to class was spectacular! These kids are pretty noisy in the hall, but today? Total angels. Awesome, and a great way to end the day (not counting bus duty of course). Now I'm wishing I'd thought of it earlier so that all my classes could enjoy it. There's next year, I suppose.

On another note, I totally feel like I'm getting back into the groove of lesson planning. When I sit down and really think about a good, involved project, I plan in units. After all, I have to have lessons building up to that great project I want to do! I can happily lay this revitalization at my fellow art teacher's feet, as she was the one who prompted me about my planning process, and because yesterday was an in-service day, I had plenty of time to get my brain jump started and plan.

I started with 3rd grade, as they needed a new lesson for next week. Somehow, my brain got caught on abstract art, and now I have a whole unit (comprised of 4-5 projects) all mapped out and am extremely pleased. All I have to do now is flesh out each individual lesson. I'll say more about the actual lessons after I've worked on them more.

I decided to precede the unit with my much smaller Laurel Burch unit to give the kids an introduction to some of the concepts the abstract unit will cover, like communication through line and color (hopefully I will not be lazy and upload the lesson plans this weekend). Since the LB unit will take about 5-6 weeks (I've got them for 40 minutes a week), I'll have plenty of time to work on the new unit. I'm excited and raring to go on it and the other grade levels!