To participate in this blog post, play in the Sandbox for a few minutes.

Click your mouse to start the sand flowing.
Type "c" to change colors.
Click on the small gray square for more directions, if desired.


Fun, yes? But kind of hard to really make something.

Now click through the slideshow below. I took one of the sand artists from the This is Sand site, Kolibri, and began with his most recent submission to the Sand Art Gallery back to his (her?) very first.


He started at just about the same place I did! Click back through the slides to see his progression :)

This reminded me of a scene from the Benjaimin Zander video on Classical Music (#1 on David's list of top videos to inspire teachers). I've taken the clip from the video- it is only 2:28 seconds and well worth watching : )


Learning is often a painful process, at some points full of frustration, even sometimes to the point of despair. How do we encourage our students to push on through to the other side while respecting their right to choose for themselves what is interesting and worthy to study, and without violating their personal boundaries?