Learning Through The Arts

Grade 3 students are studying math, language, and social studies. For math they are studying geometry: flips, turns and rotations. For language: retelling stories and distinguishing between nouns and verbs. For Social Studies: pioneers.
Today I brought in a set of steer horns from my Grandmother, a couple of books, and some of my stone carvings. I told them a little about growing up on a farm, and how my grand parents and great grandparents had to do lots of things for themselves. "There was no Avondale or Giant Tiger around if you ran out of stuff!"
I had found a book about pioneers at the Lock 3 Museum. All the library had were books about contemporary farmers and Inuit. I imagine everyone had scooped up the books about pioneers. The museum was very gracious and had pre-selected a story book with loads of nouns, as per my request. The kids listened for nouns and yelled 'Ding!' whenever they heard a noun, which the teacher wrote on a small piece of paper to be put in a hat for later.
Then after pulling nouns from the tuque the students began drawing their pictures. Next week the plan is to start arranging the pictures on a large cloth sheet, to form patterns for a 'quilt'. The students' pictures will be flipped and turned to make a complex symmetrical pattern which they can colour in later.