Pop-Up Studio Edu-Retreat: Day 2

After an amazing first day, I was didn't think anything would top my experiences.  It's amazing how you can be proven wrong so quickly.  

During our Material Mingler, we were challenged to play with some modeling clay by using three body parts.  This sounds much easier than it is and I was challenged to be creative.  From my pile of clay, you can't tell that I reused it several times and tried to come up with various ways to use the clay.  I did prefer it to playdoh, because it would have crumbled after some time.  I wonder how plasticine would held up? 

One benefit to my material mingler was having time to chat with Sean Walker.  I've been following him on social media and have been impressed with his work within early years.  He's all about the free use materials, play, and inquiry.  As a wannabe early years teacher, I rather marvel at the ease in which he creates art and puts ideas together. 

I may have fangirled just a little. 

One of the highlights for me was revisiting our watercolor paintings from yesterday.  Misty cut them into strips and we had to write down impressions, sentences, words, or phrases from a reading passage within Pop-Up Studio:  Responsive Teaching for Today's Learners.  

We took our ideas and wove them together into a tapestry of knowledge.  Every culture weaves together ideas and stories that shape their understanding of the world.  In this engagement, we reused materials from prior engagements in order to synthesize our ideas to create summary statements or found poems.  

The biggest takeaway is using less engagements and reusing materials from prior learning.  I plan to use these ideas in my future workshops. 

The sweetest part of the day was a chocolate lesson from Youri, one of our hosts from Bogaerts International School, North Campus.  He studied to be a professional chef and master chocolatier.  We tasted from a range of chocolates  - American to high grade Belgian - which I did not mind at all. 

The highlight of this experience was seeing the complete joy on Debbie's face as she chose the chocolate covered cherry.  We all were dying to get that one, but she was the lucky winner.  She was all smiles after that!

Here's the final group picture from the edu-retreat.  What a treat to meet so many wonderful new friends from around Europe and the world.  I can't wait for our paths to cross someday soon!

A big thanks to Misty Paterson for giving us her passion, ideas, and excitement for inquiry and concept-based learning.  I walked away with even more clarity on how to lead my own professional development.  

We always hear less is more.  This workshop reminded me to create less activities and reuse materials to extend the learning.  I can't wait to get started!