Art for Art's Sake

Thursday afternoon I got delivery of most of a Donors Choose grant that was entirely extremely fancy crafts stuff:

• flower rhinestones
• wikki stix in large enough quantity for making things to take home
• stamper markers
• fabric shapes
• shiny things
• class pack of scented stix markers (I haaate scented markers, but oh do children love them.)

Anyway, on Friday I put out many of these things and let the kids go to town.  It was a bit more than a half hour of creative exploration with no goal other than making stuff.  I mean, this is Kindergarten, so there was motor development, cooperation and language stuff embedded simply through supply manipulation, having to work with a couple of kids in one's group and describing what you were doing.  But there wasn't any strict content integration, thematic purpose, BIG GOAL or any of that kind of stuff.

It was really quite marvelous.  In fact it was the kind of period where the kids get into little competitions about who can come up with the best description for how great a teacher I am.  I'm not going to lie: a little self-validation by happy five year olds is a great thing.  Beyond that, everyone deserves the opportunity to go to town with a sheet of acrylic gemstone stickers, a sentence strip and some paint.  We all need the opportunity to be creative just for fun.  Everyone should have the chance to use materials that are beautiful (I assure you: acrylic gemstone stickers are beautiful to five year olds).

In other news, I wore a new coat on Friday and no child complimented it.  This was disappointing.  Also this week, a first grader I had last year asked me why all of my clothes are always too big.  Apparently he does not understand why one buys a 100% cashmere coat at a thrift store even if it is a couple of sizes too large (and a swing style at that).  In what may have been some kind of self-subliminal response, the next day I wore a skirt suit with a shorter skirt than I typically wear and was very, very popular with the Princess Society all day long.