Not a Box Genius Hour -- Week 3

All week, our teacher had this picture on her desktop:

Photo Credit: Communities and Collaboration

So we started our genius hour by moving to the art room, sitting in groups of 4 and talking about what we thought this picture was trying to tell us.  Many of us figured it had something to do with teamwork, being creative and how 4 people could work together to create something.  We were also asked to try and give one word that described this picture.  We needed a few clues before finally coming up with the word "collaboration". 

We then watched this video about students and teachers collaborating.

Next, we heard about "collaborative circle paintings".  Some of the grade 2 classes and kindergarten classes have done these and they are on display around our school.  We watched this video of a grade 3/4 class doing collaborative circle paintings:

Since our theme is "not a box", we got to try this kind of painting but instead of circles, we could only draw boxes--squares and rectangles.  Here you can see our work at the beginning of the project:

Every student had 2 paint colors to work with.  As we worked, we listened to music.  Each time a song ended, we had to pass our two paint colors to the person to the right.  Then we had another few minutes to paint again, using our two new colors.  We continued this way until we had our original paint colors back. 

 

Then, after each song, we had to change spots. This got interesting, because now we had to work on a space that someone else had started on. Some of us did not really like this part because someone else was changing what we had started. It also got a little more tricky as our paper filled up -- where would we paint? We had to be brave and go over top of other people's work.  

In this video, you can see us working near the end of the project:

After we were done, we spent some time thinking about and discussing this project.  The first question we had to answer was  -- What one word would you use to describe your completed painting?  Our answers included: awesome, wow, messy, soggy, boxtastic, beautiful, extraordinary, amazing, colorful, worst, creative, horrifying, ozmazing, unique, genius, boxome, crazy, ripped, cool.

The other question we had to answer was -- How did you feel during the process?  Did it change during different parts?  Here are some of our thoughts...
     -- Breanna: creative all through the process
     -- Taya: not that good when we changed spots
     -- Evan: rollercoaster the whole way through
     -- Makayla: calm the whole way through
     -- Landon: disappointed because I wanted to do pirates
     -- Sam: mad and grumpy when we changed spots
     -- Kade: nervous because I was not sure what was going to happen and if I could do it
     -- Jaxson: mad because I didn't get to use a thin brush
     -- Tristan: a little sad because some people didn't like me going over their stuff

Now what are we going to do with our completed masterpieces?  That's yet to be decided.

We were wondering...

Have you ever done a collaborative painting before?
Have you ever collaborated on a different kind of project?