This is where you can watch the simultaneous space to earth concert for Music Monday.
So excited. What a great way to draw attention and excitement toward something so important: the importance of music in our schools and in our communities.
Have you seen this music video? I didn’t quite understand at first that this was truly a live performance from space even though they show the guitar pick floating from weightlessness!
This video published earlier this year features the first space-to-earth musical collaboration with Chris Hadfield, commander of the International Space Station, singing along with The Barenaked Ladies and the Wexford Gleeks, Canadian Nation Showchoir champions.
The song, “I.S.S. (Is Somebody Singing) was commissioned by CBCMusic.ca and The Coalition for Music Education with the Canadian Space Agency to celebrate music education in schools across Canada.
Seriously, Chris Hadfield is so awesome! A true Canadian hero in my mind. The educational short videos he’s been sharing have been phenomenal in teaching kids, and adults alike, what it’s like to be an astronaut on the International Space Station. According to Wikipedia, “Hadfield was described as “perhaps the most social media savvy astronaut ever to leave the Earth” by Forbes after building a considerable audience on social media, including over 700,000 Twitter followers as of April 2013.
Monday May 6th will be the last live event Hadfield will perform from the International Space Station before he completes his mission and returns to earth. You can watch the live webcast by linking from the www.musicmonday.ca homepage starting at 11:55 EDT.
I’m personally so excited for this event because my sister in law will be signing along with students in her class from E.C. Drury School for the Deaf! I’m so excited for her and her students to participate in this once in a lifetime experience.
This is a true collaboration of artists, musicians, scientists, students and teachers celebrating the power of music and importance of music education. I’m inspired just thinking about it.
With all of the discussion around how much screen time children should or shouldn’t be getting and with it being Screen Free Week, I was intrigued when I came across this online game with the goal of engaging students in practicing decision making with the focus on ethical issues and solving moral dilemmas.
The question Quandary in the Classroom raises for me is: In what ways can technology in the form of games challenge students to practice critical thinking, decision making and collaboration?
“The aim of the game Quandary is to solve moral dilemmas on behalf of and for the good of the colony Braxos and you are the captain of the colony who is in charge of making those decisions.”
Children are given facts and problems then empowered to make decisions. One little guy in the video says “I come from a big family so I never get to make decisions..” It was cute, yet sad and probably true for a lot of children in all sorts of families big and small.
Another little guy in the video says “The game had a pretty good UI…” ! He knows what a UI is?! Impressive! (User Interface for anyone reading and wondering…)
His comment reminds us that children are living in a world much different than the world we grew up in, particularly if you were born before 1990… Which makes me think that technology based games that engage kids and teens to think independently and practice decision making based on ethical principles is nothing short of really awesome.
What’s more is that it’s a free online game! Check it out. What do you think?
This game reminds me of ‘The Adventures of Meep on Earth’ game that my team and I created back in 2000 to help children manage emotions and feelings of anger. As our alien, Meep, experienced new encounters on his journey on earth for the first time, he would model ways to self regulate his emotions. Children learned the technique of Stop – take a deep breath, Think and Talk – express how you feel. That was back in the days of cd-roms! I bet that UI kid doesn’t know what a cd-rom is!
Nothing.
Sometimes it’s true, it’s best to do nothing. Don’t plan a play date, don’t set up an activity or schedule an outing. Scheduling free time for unstructured play is one of the best things you can do.
The beauty of allowing free time for unstructured play for your children is you never know what is going to come of it! It’s fun to see where their curiosities will take them.
Today V decided that it was Mr. Dragon’s birthday! Who knew?! He was turning 7! She got to work straight away deciding what she needed to do to pull off a party in such short notice! She set out a plan: get party hats out, make a birthday party sign and prepare loot bags. In fact she even found an activity to be played ‘at the party’!
Before getting the party hats, she had to determine how many she would need which involved counting all her animal friends. I asked if she included herself and her sister in the number she had come to which led her to recount all her friends plus herself and her sister.
Next she pulled out the paper and pencil crayons and delegated the sign making to me! She coloured it in and stuck it to the wall with tape. Then share thoughtfully prepared the loot bags for each of her guests and guarded them so that her sister would get into them!
~ Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne, M.Ed.
The party was a great success! Judging by the picture, I think it’s safe to say a good time was had by all!
Writing is a powerfully liberating experience. One that allows you to express yourself, express an experience real or imagined and/or share a story. Writing, creative writing, makes me a little nervous, I’ll admit. But when you allow yourself to get in the ‘mode’ where you really consider your words, get descriptive and even a little poetic I actually find it to be a lot of fun.
I was recently invited to join a group called 420 Characters. 420 Characters is a creative writing group on Facebook where members write short stories using 420 characters or less to fit in a single facebook status entry. The goal is to reach 420 characters in a story, to reach 420 members in the group or to collect 420 stories.
It was a couple of weeks before I tried my hand at writing a story. Initially I thought I would just read along and comment, but one morning after reading some new entries inspiration struck. An idea came and I quickly worked at expressing my idea, choosing my words carefully and ensuring that the story met the 420 character limit.
Here it is:
Creativity
Born to explore, investigate, learn.
Naturally curious, inquisitive,
Processing information constantly.
Making things, making connections.
Uninhibited experiments, intuitive markings,
The evolution of a true artist happens naturally.
Let it happen. Watch. Enjoy. Nurture.
Cultivate curious little minds into creatively confident adults.The best gift you could give your child.
420 Characters was started by Suzi Poland, an artist and writer in Australia who is passionate about capturing moments of the everyday and celebrating them through drawing, painting, photography, textiles, illustration, and short stories. Anyone is welcome to submit a story. You can learn more about 420 Characters and how to join here.
The above photograph shows a story that Violet drew and dictated when she was four.
Up until now my writing practice has gone as far as journalling, writing here on this blog and the occasional morning pages but I’m reminded through 420 Characters that writing is a wonderful form of expression. One that I’m going to try to practice more often. What about you, do you practice creative writing?
I’m all about options and looking at things from different angles and perspectives. This is why when I saw this Ted talk by Raghava KK, it awakened an important realization for me in my quest to learn about ways to nurture creativity. The following statement (a screen capture) from Raghava’s talk, says it all:
Looking at situations, things and issues from different perspectives brings to light so much more information and IDEAS, thinking, and as Raghava points out biases. This next screen capture further intrigued my desire to teach perspectives:
It’s so true, isn’t it? Understanding others’ perspectives equals empathy. So how do we teach perspectives to children? Here are some of my thoughts…
I’m sure there are many other great ideas, please share your ideas in the comments!
“If you want to be something start being it. If you want to be a writer you should be writing. Not tomorrow, but today. If you want to be an artist you should be drawing and painting.. Not tomorrow. Today. If you want to be a stand up comic, write jokes and figure out somewhere to stand up and tell them.”
So well said I don’t really have anything to add.
Just want to highlight some key points:
Around this time last year I posted his video An Invocation for Beginners. You can see more of Ze Frank’s videos on his website.
Is there something you want to be but not doing it? A running? A yogi? An artist? What do you need to start doing today?
With World Creativity & Innovation week upon us I’ve been thinking of ways to celebrate! Being creative on cue can sometimes feel overwhelming so I took a step back and decided to hold a good old fashioned brainstorm session with my girls to come up with ways that we can be creative this week!
I love brainstorming! If you love making lists you’ll love it too. Brainstorming is one way of practicing divergent thinking: a way of generating several possible solutions to a problem. To be clear, divergent thinking is a technique for thinking; brainstorming is a tool used to think divergently.
Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions.
Me: “We’re going to brainstorm ideas!” V: “What’s a brainstorm?”
Explaining how to brainstorm to a five year old is tricky. I kept it simple and explained that we would be coming up with a lot of ideas and we would choose our favourites later so we don’t need to decide if we like them or not just yet.
The four general rules of brainstorming established by Alex Osborn, a pioneer of Creative Problem Solving and brainstorming sessions, (taken from Wikipedia) are:
We kept the problem simple: “What are some creative activities we could work on this week?” The way the question is phrased is important. Having typed that out I just realized that had I phrased it “In what ways might we celebrate Creativity Week?” our ideas would likely have gone in a completely different direction! … Throw a party! Make a cake! I’ll have to give that further thought next time.
I went into this with the best of intentions. Having worked in a creative field and having attended a CPSI conference I recognize the value of practicing divergent thinking and I figure it’s never too early to practice this with my daughters. Well.. they had a different idea about what they wanted to do…
E was enthralled with the brainstorming ‘tools’… Okay, she’s only two... 🙂
… and I lost V when she decided to start working on her creative idea… 🙂
.. but I carried on with the brainstorm and V jumped in from time to time approving or disapproving of ideas (we need to work on withholding judgement!) and adding some of her own. (The squiggled post it notes are the ideas she chose to write herself. When I asked her what they said she replied: “You just can’t read my writing, can you??”)
That was our first family brainstorm! I’m sure the first of many to come.
In what ways might you celebrate Creativity & Innovation week?
Through my contemplations about what it means to be creative I keep going back to one thing: Confidence. Having the confidence to try new things, to explore and to create.
A few days ago I came across a link to a blog article titled “Would you let your baby do this?” Intrigued I clicked through and read the article and of course watched the video. It really caused me to pause and think about my own parenting style and how I would have handled myself in that situation.
Then I was in that situation. A day or two later I was at the park with my girls. E went for the climbing wall and I decided that rather than help her climb the wall as I had the week before I would watch closely… and on a whim I decided to video tape the experience.
This video absolutely captures for me what Janet Lansbury’s article is all about: allowing children the opportunity to practice their gross motor skills without interfering and observing the benefits!
What struck me the most as this was taking place is that E asked for help remembering that I had helped her before. She had developed a bit of dependency and thought she needed the help. I let her climb and she asked again “Mommy Help Evelyn.” Again I didn’t say anything but I watched closely, not touching her. (The part where the camera moves was me carefully watching to make sure I was there to catch her if she fell, but I didn’t touch her and she made it to the top!) In this moment she realized she could do it! I can watch this over and over and over again.
This video was her first solo attempt. After reaching the top, she went down the slide and practiced her climbing an additional 3 times, each time proclaiming “See! I did it!” with great pride and confidence!
I share this experience here because it was a great reminder to me that sometimes it’s best to stand back (but not too far back in this case!) and observe. To let children practice, fall, explore, try, concentrate, make decisions, question and find their own answers because when they do the reward is so much greater than if I had helped her climb the wall.
This experience also demonstrated for me that helping our children doesn’t always help them. I’m just glad that I realized this soon enough that she didn’t not try because she didn’t think she could do it herself.
I have come to understand that creativity has everything to do with confidence. Building confidence is a practice that needs nurturing. It can be lost and found again. Artist Kelly Rae Roberts thoughtfully talks about this on her blog and offers ideas for inviting confidence back into your life.
Thank you Janet Lansbury for sharing your article again highlighting the benefits of RIE parenting and reminding me to stand back sometimes.
Photo credit: ‘ I can because I think I can’ letterpress print by Print and Be Merry.
Thank you to everyone who entered The Artful Parent book giveaway! Congratulation to Kristal, our giveaway winner!
When I asked you to leave a comment sharing your favourite childhood artful moment I didn’t realize what a great collection of inspiring stories I would hear. I loved reading each and every one of your artful experiences! I felt as though I was able to get a glimpse into your childhood memories; moments that I could tell you hold dear to you.
Many of your memories included engaging with nature and exploring. Several recounted stories of mothers and fathers leading by example with their own creative endeavours and creating opportunities for art making. So many great ideas came out of this that I want to highlight them here.
What has really come through is that all of these artful experiences were born out of the following…
A wonderful artist friend of mine coincidentally posted this beautiful photograph of her artist mother making art with her in her studio today. With her permission I’m sharing it here because apart from the fact that everything in this photo is beautiful, including the colouring and composition, I was struck by what a fantastic example this is of sharing creativity! Most definitely an artful memory captured perfectly!
Thank you for sharing your stories! It was so much fun to welcome new visitors here and I especially LOVED hearing about all of your artful moments from your childhoods and artful moments in the present with your own children!