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Lesson Plan Image

From Oops to Aah

Mistakes can be opportunities for unexpected learning when creativity is applied. Students will explore this concept and turn an "oops" into a work of art.

Lesson Plan

Supplies Needed

Gather all the supplies needed to bring your craft ideas to life! From paints and markers to glue and scissors, our crafts section has everything to spark creativity and make every project truly special.

  • Paper

Steps

  • Step 1

    Learning to embrace imperfections is an important part of the creative process. It's been said that mistakes are just "happy accidents." This can apply to art or any other area. We learn valuable lessons from our mistakes. Thomas Edison famously said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Ask students to reflect on times when a mistake provided an important lesson. Maybe they misunderstood someone and responded without knowing the intent. Or maybe they thought it would be okay to run a race without any preparation and learned the importance of training for an event.

  • Step 2

    Ask students to identify a written or visual art mistake that they have made such as a smudge, wrong letter, or scribble on a piece of paper, or find a rip in a paper that they could us in a new way. Then ask them to swap mistakes with a classmate. Now each student will examine at least one mistake made by another person and use their imagination to turn the mistake into aesthetically pleasing art.

  • Step 3

    Students can embellish or extend the oops by making it part of a scene. They could cut out the mistake to reveal a new artistic layer beneath that image. Or they could even crumple up that paper and use it in a new way adding a 3D aspect to the scene. When done, have students present the art and talk about how they came up with the image they created. Have a class discussion about finding beauty in things that may have been discarded and what we can learn from embracing mistakes.

Standards

ARTS: Explore and invent art-making techniques and approaches.

SEL: Self-Awareness: Recognize one’s strengths, emotions, and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose.

Adaptations

Talk to students about kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the cracks with gold or silver filler in order to highlight them. Show them images of some of this beautiful pottery and explain that it stresses the importance of embracing imperfection.

Create a bulletin board that displays ways to turn a negative comment into a positive one. You might write, "I failed at my homework" then ask students to suggest a way to rephrase it, such as "I will learn from the mistakes I made and get the answers right next time."