Room 10: Beautiful Oops!

As we challenge our students to use their creativity, we want them to feel comfortable taking risks. This is in all areas...spelling, art, science, problem solving, writing, and math. As we know, risks can sometimes lead to mistakes. However, when a mistake can be turned into a learning opportunity, it is a "beautiful oops!" Barney Saltzberg's joyful book, Beautiful Oops! does a wonderful job illustrating the positive opportunities that can come from mistakes. A torn piece of paper becomes an alligator's mouth. A few splotches of paint, becomes a scene of pigs in a car. Students were delighted and inspired by Saltzberg's creativity.

After reading Beautiful Oops!, students were asked to turn mistakes into their own "beautiful oopses." Fortunately, Mrs. Riccomini has made a lot of mistakes....coffee stained paper, spilt paint, and papers crumbled and torn by her dog, Benny. She brought those seemingly ruined pieces of paper into the class, and we were amazed at the wonderful things that students were able to create from them! We were very impressed with their creativity! Here are some examples...

Oops! A paper is all folded up!

Now, it is a beautiful oops!

Oh no! Paint splashed onto my paper!

Welcome to the ocean!

Yikes! Mrs. Riccomini accidentally set her coffee cup on some paper!

It's time to celebrate!

Unfortunately, I was not able to take "before" pictures of the following pieces of art. However, I will explain what the paper looked like before in the captions.

A few holes in some paper....

Can be rain...