I love giving my students free choice to choose how they want to demonstrate understanding of a standard.  I also love giving them exposure to the art of other cultures.  Though we do many low-tech things in the art room, technology helps me to make this happen.

When I demonstrate a  new concept, I like to film the demo so I can later load it onto an iPad for students to watch when they choose to try it out at one of our art centers.  Some teachers call this “flipping” a lesson, because the students view the demonstration on their own and the teacher gets to spend more time on the “hands-on” part of the lesson.  This is great because I don’t have to re-demonstrate the technique, and I can walk around and help students decide what they want to do.  I can also easily share these demos with other teachers so they can try new things, too!

This week, I introduced my first graders to Suminagashi, which literally means “spilled ink.”  The ink isn’t spilled, so much as dripped carefully into water and swirled, then printed onto paper.  The results are gorgeous, even if the patterns don’t work out the way you had in mind.  I think my students liked this lesson!  It will definitely be one of our centers for a while.  Check out my flipped lesson video here:

Suminagashi from Rebecca Recco on Vimeo.