Last week the students completed the fourth in a series of art activities based on a character they created. Some students created fictional characters, selected favourite fictional characters from books, or used a real life person as their character (e.g., musicians, professional athletes, etc.). After drawing their character, they designed or created their house, and then the environment where their home may be located, and finally a vehicle that their character may use. Check out a slideshow of our vehicle artworks HERE!

The students were creating a day and nighttime setting on opposite sides of the same sheet of paper, for the character and their homes that we created inthe first two assignments. After creating daytime and nighttime images, students then cut them into spirals. Check out a few of our works.

For our second art exchange project, we completed etchings create with oil pastels and layers of black paint overtop. Once the black paint dried, students etched off some of the paint to create a picture. Check out the process in the following slide show.

Students received packages of information on Canadians and they examined how they experienced conflict. Some examples include Josiah Henson, Mary Murakami and Chief Poundmaker. What lessons can be learned from the experiences of people before us?

Most days we would have an opportunity to play a game that gave us a firsthand chance to experience conflict and develop skills that would help to resolve the conflict created in the game.

On one of the first days, without looking at each other (facing directly out away from the rest of the class) students were provided with a rope and given instructions to form a specific shape with the the rope and themselves... sounds easy? Not in actuality, but practice does provide an opportunity to improve our skills!

In the picture above, you can actually see one of the corners we created as part of a rectangle.  This was one of our later attempts as students realized that they need to listen to one another and by designating a few students as "corners" it made it easier for other students to know where to move... still a challenge, but doable! 

After examining symbols of Canada, the students created their own crests related to their personal identity, their heritage, their community, and Canada. Here are a few pieces of student work.

What would be included in your personal crest? Let us know, we'd love to hear about it!

The Ripple Effect Education (TREE) is based out of Conrad Grebel University College at the University of Waterloo. TREE is an educational initiative run through the Kindred Credit Union Centre for Peace Advancement at Grebel, in its inaugural year of programming.

This fall we learned about Canadian heritage and identity through activities infused with social justice and conflict resolution skills. Students were encouraged to learn about their own heritage, and that of their peers.

The next few posts will be about our learning and activities that we did as a class to deepen our understanding of social justice and acceptance towards the differences in others, as well as understanding how to resolve conflict when it occurs.

One of our first lessons examined symbols that are associated with Canada. Check out some of the images as we talked and disucssed out thoughts on these images.