Lesson #2 Documentation

Cooper Home, Lesson #2, Nature Tree, 10/24/22.

This lesson is related to a type of community-based education. Everybody participated to make small creations that were put together into one cohesive piece. Everybody created things that you would find in a tree. Some created leaves, birds, butterflies, caterpillars, and more. I think one successful aspect of this project was the engagement level. We provided so many materials including, paint, plain and colored paper, colored pencils, crayons, markers, fabric scraps, pipe cleaners, scissors glue, ect. Having so many possibilities really kept the group interested and allowed them to use their creativity. A great memory I had from this lesson was students asking me for materials that we hadn't originally put out. A student asked me for feathers and another for googly eyes. This just showed how much they were thinking about what they wanted to create and once they had an idea they were determined to make it come to life.

During the lesson, I noticed that people didn't really want to move around and tended to stay at the tables they originally sat at. Considering some materials, like fabric, were only on one table I feel like some people were limited in what they were going to create. I feel like we could have made sure to give a little bit of each material at every table or we could have set some sort of timer and had people move from table to table to interact with all the materials. In terms of our teaching, I think we could have been a little bit more organized and communicated better about who was going to do what during the lesson since there was so much going on at once. I also think that more examples of what they could create would have been helpful to get some people's ideas going.

I think that this was a great art experience for the students as well as the teachers. It was so meaningful to have everybody create their own personal additions and then to have this piece hung up on the wall after so they could come back and see what they created together. I also think that the choice of a tree is the perfect choice for this project because so many things live in trees and a tree is its own sort of community all working and existing together.