Put First Things First, especially before a holiday

I've been saying this a lot lately "put First Things First" to the students as they impatiently await the next step on just about everything I've shown them this past week. My art lessons are broken up into small segments and a project can easily take five weeks to complete. At the start of each segment I usually perform a demonstration of what I want the students to accomplish in class that day. The last week before Christmas break I gave our older students a choice of either painting a hand-made Christmas card or making a wire sculpted reindeer. I split each class in half and had the students who were painting attend the first demonstration. As I'm showing them the first step which is marking out the border, some students are questioning the second step... "How do we draw a santa... or reindeer etc." And I say "lets put first things first, pay attention to the first step and then we'll continue on to the next step."
I later joined the other group as we worked together, one step at a time on the reindeer sculptures. I demonstrated the first step, and then the students would follow along with the instruction. Not everyone works at the same pace however so some students get it right the first time and others struggle. As I help the students who need assisstance, the others grow impatient and want to know whats next, some start guessing and try to continue without knowing the next step. I had to keep saying "first things first, remember? You can't go on to the next step until you know what it is, be patient and lets all take it one step at a time". Or as we're working on the first step they're already far ahead in their thinking, talking about the third and fourth steps.
Maybe its the excitement of the season that makes my students so impatient, but every project always works out in the end including the wire sculpted reindeer.

Leader Portraits

I've decided to borrow an art lesson from the AB Combs presentation that we viewed this past September during our training. The lesson was the TIME Magazine self-portraits which I really liked. So I created a lesson plan to present to my 6th grade art classes. I started the lesson as I always do by showing them a power point presentation. The slide show begins with this question "What Makes a Person a Leader?" I ask the students this question and they answer... "someone smart, a person that tells us what to do, someone responsible, someone that is proactive, etc." which are all good answers. We begin to view the slides which are actual TIME Magazine covers with portraits of leaders; some well known like Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Bruce Springstein... and others not so well known like our American Soldiers, Michelle Rhee, leader of the Washington D.C. schools, and the creators of GOOGLE. After viewing all the slides a statement is next that reads... You could be on the cover of TIME Magazine someday. I ask the students if they believe that statement and most of them say yes! The next slide asks... "If you were on the cover of TIME magazine, what kind of leader would you be?" Here's the reflective question. What do these 6th grade students imagine for themselves in the future? I want them to imagine images of successful, happy, well adjusted adults that are doing what they love, leaders in what they wish to do in life. So I ask them to look into the future and picture what type of leader they will be. Stay tuned for the Time portrait results, I'm sure they will be very interesting, imaginative and entertaining!