Maybe you have heard about the 30 Days of Creativity Challenge. If not, you should – From the 30 Days of Creativity website:
30 Days of Creativity is a social initiative encouraging people to create stuff (anything) every day for 30 days in June.
Your brain is like a muscle. When you exercise it, it gets stronger.
Yesterday I pledged and I have to say, I’m a little excited. It’s just what the doctor ordered when you think about how much time we spend doing our day-to-day activities and forget to “feed our creative flames“. The best part about this is that being creative isn’t only about the big things, it’s about the little things as well. Drawing a sketch, writing a short poem, making a creative snack, inventing a new game: these are things I would like to try this month and they fit into my life. I have high hopes here – maybe I will come up with a new recipe for dinner or make a drawing with my kids, all the while, it will be something I do for me.
I introduced this to my students yesterday too, offering the challenge to any volunteers who wanted to take this fun journey. 18 of my students decided to pledge as well. It’s my hope to inspire them to be creative by being creative myself. We will share our stories, our artwork, our poetry, our dances, and our pictures with one another and with the world through our Twitter account. You may want to see what we come up with over the last weeks of school! If so, you can follow us on Twitter @MrsEPeterson.
This all goes back to being inspired so that we teachers can be inspiring. If we do this type of thing for ourselves, then we will be more apt to extend these opportunities to our students.
This summer, The Inspired Classroom will be hosting the first Teacher Art Camp where teachers will gather to CREATE ART and get inspired so that they can bring these experiences into their teaching. This could simply be some of the best hands-on professional development out there: a place for teachers to get creative. Amazing things can happen and ideas can sprout when you give yourself the opportunity to set your mind free.
I urge you to pledge to create for the next 30 days and, if you are really up for it, join me this summer for 3 days of teacher specific creation!
~EMP
What a terrific idea you have here, Elizabeth!! Ironically enough, I started this 30 day challenge yesterday, and I didn’t even know that I was starting something really cool.
I’ll explain. After talking on the phone with a friend overseas…I tried to picture what he might have looked like at that very time. So, I grabbed a sticky note pad and a pen, and began to sketch my friend’s face. I was quite impressed with what I came up with!
That is such a cool idea! I hope you can share the sketch sometime. What else have you made so far on your 30 day challenge?