Try This At Home

Shared Drawing Experiment

1. Find a partner.
2. Get one piece of paper and one pencil to share with your partner.
3. Choose a song you both enjoy listening to.
4. When the song begins, you both take hold of the pencil and begin to draw on the paper.
5. No talking. No agreeing ahead of time what you are going to draw.
6. When the song ends, stop drawing.
7. Celebrate your drawing and talk about how you worked together. Did one of you take the lead and the other follow? Did you take turns leading and following? How did you communicate without words? Was the activity fun or frustrating? How does this activity relate to your relationship with one another or with others? Are you usually a leader or a follower or does it depend on who you are with?

I did this activity with 7th and 8th graders today and there were smiles all around. However, it can be very frustrating. Try it and see what you think. Under what circumstances might it be difficult? What concepts can it teach us? How can it make us more self-aware?