Session 4 - Somerly Primary School Year 3 - Health and Technologies

Practicing Creative Habits - body movement, collaboration, discipline, persistence, imagination, inquisitive

1. You will each be given a bug - beetle, spider, butterfly, ant, centipede, cockroach, moth

2. Bugs don’t have voices. How can find your bug group?

3. The timer is on. Last week it took us nearly 5 minutes. How quickly can you form a circle in your bug groups?

4. Your group challenge is to join hands and see how far you can lean out without falling or moving your feet. How much trust do you have? Which group can do it for the longest amount of time?

Creating Creatures - imagination, 

1. Working in pairs, can you gather a small selection of objects (set a limit on the number) in, inside 30 seconds or outside 60 seconds? Set a timer.

2. Using the seeds, nuts and objects (can be from outside or personal collection), how can your pair create a creature in 30/60 seconds? (grown ups to photograph)

3. Can you keep it only on the inside of the black board?

Creature building

1. Reflect on your creature from last week. In your groups, take turns to discuss what you would like to keep and what would you like to change. 

2. Do you want to redraw your creature?

3. Using the different body parts on the desk can you build your creature?

4. Do you need extra parts? If so, how can you use the foam to create them?

5. How could you add movable parts? Can you use the split pins to join your body parts together?

6. Join up with another group. What could you do now with your creatures? 

7. Groups take it in turns to give their suggestions (write these on the board).

Which creative habit did you use today?

1. Which coloured paper corresponds to the creative habit you feel you used most today?

2. Discuss with a partner why you chose that colour

3. How can you attach this to your flower to begin your Creative Habits flower garden. Will you stick it flat, roll it up, overlap it or do you have another idea?

4. Attach your paper to your flower, cut it out and have it ready to add to the garden.

Successes

• They loved the warm up and were very imaginative in demonstrating which bug group they belonged to including climbing up the trees

• Great at remembering and implementing the Creative Habit poses when called to attention

• Linking of ‘Monkey Mind’ by Rebecca Palmer to their Zones of Regulation. They were able to determine which zone the little girl was in

• Mat work was really positive and taking one thing at a time worked well with maintaining enthusiasm and engagement

• Following instruction much better and a quicker response time that last session

• Creativity but with limitations is working well with the level of the students in this class

• Lots of ongoing recognition of creative habit skills. In one case, a very quiet student was able to use the action for the creative habit to signify what she had used rather than verbalising the word. Having the option to use both in their responses is beneficial for students who have less verbal skills that others. 

Challenges

• Remember to add a time limit when giving instructions for warm ups

Although initially the foraging for seeds was only a 60 second time limit, they were so engaged that we let it go much longer. One of the students who will often move in and out of activities and was initially not participating in the warm up, ended up taking part in the entire session, particularly the making of their creatures. He also incorporated sand into his small, quick creations on the board and then was able to share it with the others in his group. The book reading during Crunch and Sip is engaging them and means we are not losing time either. This also led in well to the making of their creatures by discussing what their own monkey mind creatures might look like and the comment that in order to tame the monkey mind ‘all you have to do is be kind’ (student). They were all curious about what they were going to make and engaged in the making process and solving problems of how to connect their various parts together.