Rock Thoughts

I'm all about collaboration and here is a new one to join… I saw Karla Valentis post on Art Educaiton 2.0 and love her idea of Rock Thoughts. Check out her post or read more about on the Rock Thoughts blog. Rock Thoughts is designed to empower children through creativity, specifically through art and collaborative storytelling.

Karla writes… "Rock Thoughts seeks to offer children an opportunity to develop their creativity and connect with others in a meaningful way through art and storytelling. The process is simple. Participants paint rocks to resemble "monsters" and hide them in public spaces for others to find." How fun is that. I think that would be a blast to start your students on this project and fins Rock Thoughts all over you city.

Here is where the literature comes in… She writes "Our site also features crowdsourced storytelling as well as opportunities for visitors to adopt rocks that have been previously painted and are awaiting stories. At the moment, Rock Thoughts is in effect in various parts across the United States, Switzerland and Mexico. We are working on expanding the reach of this project to other countries.

I love the mission of this project, She continues to say, "This project has great appeal for institutions committed to developing and inspiring children's creativity. In particular, Rock Thoughts has great potential to be used as a virtual learning tool. To this end, we are currently working with a number of schools that have incorporated Rock Thoughts into their art program as well as their reading and writing curricula. We are also in discussions with children's museums about creating Rock Thoughts workshops for their visitors. In addition, given that we intend to feature stories in multiple languages and from different countries, we have approached language programs with the goal of using Rock Thoughts as a tool to encourage foreign language acquisition and development."

Here is a video that simplifies the whole concept. These kids are so darn cute!