HP is always blogging about cool projects her kids do at school or fun science lessons she's taught to Inwe's and Larien's classes. So I thought I'd share one, since I do this every day.
This Trimester in Fundamentals of College Writing, the girls are studying, among other things, diction and syntax. At this point in the term (only 2 weeks in), they pretty much know what those terms mean, can explain why they're important to consider in writing, and can give examples to show their understanding. As the Trimester progresses, the girls will be asked to examine and improve their own diction and syntax choices as well as analyzing those choices in others' writing.
Another part of the Trimester is writing about a place. This includes a focus on using specific details. So here was my project -- I printed out color copies of 20 or so interesting painting. Each girl got a different painting, and they had 20 minutes to describe it in as much details as possible, with no concern for unity of their writing or grammar errors. After, they traded written descriptions and used crayons to try and recreate the painting based on the other student's description. You could see who had done a good job on the writing and who had rushed. Even the ones that were hard and would be nearly impossible to describe effectively in writing -- like Klimt's The Kiss -- could be recognized in pieces. The kissing couple was there with the right colors and some of the piecemeal detail of the original print.
Overall, the girls saw some famous art, got a sense of what is meant by specific detail, and they liked coloring. I'm taking them to the Art Institute next Wednesday (pray for me) to look at art and choose a landscape or setting in a painting to use as the setting for a short story.
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