Hershey Kisses and Coal

I am still a little in shock that we completed the week relatively unscathed.
I pumped myself up for a long week of behavior issues, attitude and anxiety after students received their progress reports and we all waited for the holiday break. (Thats awful, but like a big game, you have to psych yourself out) Maybe I got used to the high energy of middle school students before vacation, but the week was calm while students continued to work on their value drawings.

I didn't want to be a complete scrooge, so Friday we took it easy.
I started class, when technology was working for me, with the Disney short, Paperman. If you have not seen it, go do a quick youtube search. The imagery is beautiful and the story is classic Disney. There is no dialogue, but much like the images students have been working on, it is a visual language.
As the movie came to an end, I passed each student a baggie with three Hershey Kisses and a black piece of paper (my dorky art teacher self referred to the paper as a lump of coal... nerd). I asked students to try not to eat all the candy, but leave at least one to try to draw on the black paper with charcoal.

It was not an easy challenge. However I was not met with resistance... either students now know me too well or really didn't mind. I forgot to take pictures through out the day, so the selection above was from my last class. 

I wanted to try it out too! Thats my drawing above. 

The last twenty five minutes or so of class, students chose their own art adventure. I had these handouts and supplies available. The top half of this handout came from Tiny Art Room. I added another challenge and re-phrased a couple of things.

All in all, students were entertained, I snuck in some learning and we're now on VACATION!