Glitter Stars

One of my main philosophies in my classroom is the joy of exploration and discovery.  I especially emphasis this because kindergarten has basically taken out all of their early childhood things and replaced it with regular reading, writing, and math.  Only at home (maybe:) and in preschool will a child be free to paint with as much paint as they want or play in a sensory bin of rice, or use as much glitter as their heart desires.  With that being said that doesn't mean it is always easy on the teacher.  Case in point: glitter.

Glitter is one of the most fascinating things for young children to play with, and if they get an opportunity to use it however they want, well - there is SO MUCH room for discovery and just pure...well... joy.  And isn't that what childhood is about.  But how easy is it to watch a child pour a whole bottle of newly purchased glitter onto a piece a paper?  Or all over the carpet?  We all know that once glitter is there - it will be there for years!!  But I wanted to do it.  

Now some might be thinking, shouldn't we teach self restraint, appropriate use, sharing with everyone?  Yes, yes, and yes.  I teach that all the time.  But today, with glitter, I wanted them to be free.  I set this out the night before.  And I kid you not, I literally had nightmares about glitter that night.  ha ha.  Maybe I wasn't as ready as I thought.

The point of the project was to 1) cut out the star.  I wanted to teach them that they could cut, by moving their paper around and making just cuts into the shape.  Does that make sense?  Stars are perfect for that, because it is really hard to cut a start by just continually cutting and turning the paper - the triangles get in the way, it is easy to see that it is better to make a cut, take your scissors out, turn the paper, and then make another cut.

See what I mean.

They all did a great job.  Better than me.  I did find myself cringing and a few times I did suggest they might not need so much... I eventually had to walk away and just leave that table alone.

I didn't get any pictures of them covering their starts with glitter - we had some epic glitter stars and plates.  And one child did not like how slow the glitter was coming out, so they unscrewed the lid and dumped the whole jar of blue glitter onto their star.  But as soon as she they did that, she saw that it was probably a mistake and was very concerned and worried about that.  Hows that for a teaching moment?