Portfolios

This week was a really productive one at Hamilton. The Kinders I work with are such a great group - seriously one of the mellowest group of kids that age I have had in a loooong time! They are already getting into the rhythm of our class, and come in ready to get to work in their journals, and area able to do so without much fanfare. So this week, we came into our room, journaled, shared our work, then got to business making our portfolios.



There are several ideas at work behind this project: 1. To introduce students to the idea of creativity and expression. 2. To teach them to value their work and creations. 3. To introduce them to collage and symbolism. Doing ‘collage’ work with kids might seem like a natural, easy thing, but it’s actually a fairly big concept for them to grasp. They tend to want to cut and paste a bunch of pictures of things they like - which is fine of course, unless you have a specific theme or concept you want them to work around.


So, for their portfolios, we asked each student to pick one image that to them represented (and we had an accompanying brief conversation about what it meant to ‘represent’) ‘discover’ or ‘exploring’, the idea being they were going to use their creativity to explore and discover their voice and capabilities this year. It went over surprisingly well, with even my young K and 1st grade students grasping the concept and getting into it. The first day this week was about explaining it, picking an image, cutting it out and pasting it, and some initial drawing. The second day was a bit more involved, but they LOVED it: we did painting, more collage, drawing, coloring, stamping, etc.

The portfolios themselves are turning out great, and the students really liked to get a chance to do such hands on ‘messy’ work so early in the school year!

As I mentioned, I am also working with a 1st grade group during my days at Hamilton this fall. Being 1st graders, they are a bit more ‘busy’ than the Kinders, but they are actually responding really well to the class. The first week was a bit chaotic, but by the end of this week, they seemed to be mellowing out, understanding the class, and engaged. In fact, out of the 7 or so groups of kids I work with at various groups, they are probably the most excited about journaling - the second I walk into the room, they ask me about it! I also did some of the Yantra/meditation designs with them this week (more on that in another post!) and it also seemed to make a positive impact and help to focus them a bit.

We’ll see what next week brings!