Stormy skies, but smooth sailing!

In Keats' A Letter to Amy the children noticed that the skies were stormy (not at all like our serene snowflake filled skies we made yesterday). So after looking closely at the pictures and deciding what colors we might mix together to make a stormy sky, we donned our smocks and painted the sky...there were claps of glee rather than thunder, however! They all seemed thrilled with the process and proud of the end result. We have taken pictures of some of the buildings in our school neighborhood and will use black and white copies of those to add to our stormy sky scenes (just as Keats did in his illustrations).

And as for the smooth sailing, just ask our sea-faring captains where the ship is heading next.

As we continue to study the illustrations and artwork of Ezra Jack Keats, we are paying closer attention to some of the details in his books. Today we met in two small groups to talk about the differnt types of materials he might have used in his collages. Be sure to check out the work we did yesterday with fabric and yarn. Today, we sponge painted and stamped to recreate the illustrations in The Snowy Day. It even felt like a snowy day in our classroom as we skated around on paper plates while listening to a waltz during music.

Faces everyone, faces everyone!

The possibilities continue to be endless with the laminated pictures of our faces. Today, we put pieces of plexi-glass over them, painted over different details of our faces and hair and then pressed blank sheets of paper onto the glass to make prints. Our prints ranged from whimisical to abstract and again showed us that using our own faces for artistic creations is still quite captivating!

Welcome Back!

It's amazing how much we can grow in just one week! We noticed changes in their writing and attention to details. We read A Letter to Amy by Ezra Jack Keats and then asked them to close their eyes and imagine what they think Peter wished for at his birthday party. Some ideas were balloons, a rocket ship, a letter, a cake and the sun! They drew pictures of their ideas and then added color to them and even labeled some of their drawings. We also explored the Beautiful Stuff and after making their own creations, they accepted my challenge to put everything back in the tubs and then pick out only the circles. It's beautiful, isn't it? And yes, bowling lane constructions continue in the block area!

Capture the light

We passed by the chapel on our way to the commons and wondered what it might look like from the inside. So, with clipboards in hand, we headed back on a beautiful sunny afternoon. We sat outside for a moment and studied the stained glass doors and then stepped inside. We turned our shoes different colors by stepping into the colors on the floor.

Learning with Beautiful Stuff

After two weeks of collecting, it was finally Bag Opening Day!

We gathered at the tables, gave each child his or her bag and then began emptying the bags onto the table. Before this point, we had class meetings to talk about the Beautiful Stuff becoming part of our classroom and that, at least for a little while, the treasures would stay at school rather than be glued together and taken home.
As we sifted through the treasures, we began talking about how to organize it all. The children at Kim’s table thought it should be sorted by the way it felt (soft, squishy and hard). The children at Amanda’s and Catherine’s tables decided to sort by color.
When the ‘soft, squishy, hard’ containers became too full and overflowed, they decided to try sorting by color also.

After we finished mixing our food colors to make ALL the colors in the rainbow, several of them wanted to paint using the colors we created.


Scientists and artists in the same day...just as it should be!

Somewhere between making making pumpkin bread, visiting Michelle's class for worktime and getting a wonderful visit from Ellery's pumpkin growing 'paw-paw', Amanda got the call from the girls. It was time to bowl. So, the "Sweet Biscuit and the Muffins" bowling team hopped into their imaginary car and zoomed off the the bowling alley (aka the cubbies). High-fives all around--each roll was a strike!